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What will be the "Thompson Drive" of the Xbox 360?


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Just curious. Do you all think the 360 will have a prevailing problem that some gamers get shafted with out of bad luck? If so, what phrase will result in a collective groan from 360 owners 2 years from now? Or perhaps, do you think Microsoft learned from its mistakes with the original Xbox and the 360 will be trouble free?

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I think it's probably going to crash a bit more. The 360 is more software based this time around, right? And MS never really had good internal testers as all their launch software has been filled with bugs and security holes.

 

After bouncing back and forth on getting an Xbox360(or at least looking for one), I've decided to wait until next year. Oblivion was the only one I was truly looking forward to, and by then they would have discovered the bugs plus there's bound to be more choice in titles.

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I think that they have learned a lot from the Xbox. As a director of manufacturing myself its my job to figure out what causes problems like the "dirty disc", why they were missed in the first place and make rectifications so that a similar quality issue does not happen elsewhere. With new hardware there is always a higher risk of having problems. It is impossible to come to a "perfect" manufacturing solution as there is a thousand different ways to build something and you are always playing the Cost/volume balancing act. The experience comes in with testing the product and what to test for. They now have a pretty good idea on what people actually do to their consoles and how many wierd things that could cause a failure and I don't think they did before.

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When I dropped into EB yesterday, one of the employee's told me the systems in the Kiosks were crashing. It was the first I have heard of it, so I will take it with a grain of salt.

 

Well, the original Xbox crashed with some games, it just lied about it. I seriously doubt that all the "DDEs" I recieved with my pristine Morrowind disc and still running well Xbox were actually dirty disc errors. I think the DDE message was sometimes used as a proxy for crashes.

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... [W']hat phrase will result in a collective groan from 360 owners 2 years from now?

 

Singularity. If there is too much mass in a given volume, an object -- in this case the Xbox 360 power brick -- reaches a critical density where nothing can prevent its ultimate collapse to form a black hole.

 

A typical astronomical black hole would give off little illumination and only slowly evaporate. Fortunately, scientists at the Brookhaven National Laboratory say a black hole created by the collapse of an Xbox 360 power brick would only have about 1,000 times the mass of a proton and would evaproate in just 10^?27 seconds?that's one-billionth of one-billionth of one nanosecond.

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I think the "thompson Drive" will be wireless controller interference. I was at Walmart last week and they had their demo 360 off. I asked if they could turn it on, and they said they could not, as it interferes with their handheld barcode scanners.

 

Not sure if it would interfere with anything at home, but perhaps the potential is there.

 

Carlos.

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I considered a warranty but decided against. Keep in mind that a warranty is the highest margin product Best Buy sells. That means that if we were to lay out a probability distribution that showed the % chance of a 360 developing each possible ailment, multiply the chance of the ailment by what it costs to fix, then add these numbers together, the average expected repair cost would be much less than the warranty fee.

 

It's like playing the odds in Vegas. You may end up ahead, but over the very long term, gambling has an expected loss. The final decision comes down to how risk-averse someone is. If being shielded against the worst case scenario is worth entering a financial transaction with an expected loss, buy a warranty. Personally, I'd rather accept the risk instead of entering a lopsided transaction.

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Yes. Inside the box is an offer for a $50 2-year warranty.

 

And i will be getting that one as i did with the original xbox. On the original xbox unit i had, The HD had a problem, and the dvd drive was going bad. Called them up, They sent a prepaid box to ship it to them(which arrived here the next day), fixed it and sent it back all in a couple of days. Thing worked perfectly. No hastle at all.

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Heat, apparently. From GAF:

 

Got my Xbox 360 from Pepsi/Mountain Dew today, but of course they shipped a game I didn't ask for, but the game I did ask for with my win will come in 14 days....

 

Ah, I play Kameo (interesting game) for about 30 minutes and the 360 crashes!!! Ugh.... Power adaptor goes from solid green to a flashing orange.... What next? Well, shoot off an email to MS, get one back not too long ago, find out that the flashing orange means that xbox has overheated!

 

Overheated??? Come on! Well, the quick fix was to cool down the system and then play it... Since then, I've been able to play, actually watching Stealth right now, but the catch? My window has to be open and it is 40 degrees out!!!!!

 

Either MS has to come up with a fix to this or I'm going to be pissed!

 

So far, the graphics are great and everything is awesome, just don't like this overheating crap!!!!!!

 

:)

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I just opened my charge and play kit for the wireless controller and it doesn't work! Plugged it in the USB port of the 360 and no red or green light, nothing. I tried the other port and still nothing, plugged in my iPod and it recognizes it right away, so the usb ports work.

 

Tried plugging into the computer, it recognizes it, checks for software( which I don't have) but still no charging light, so it goes back tonight to exchange out for another. :bh

 

As for the cooling, this sucka is loud! When your in the dashboard its quiet, but when u start playing a game, here come the fans! I had the door open in the cabinet to make sure it wasn't going to overheat.:eh

 

Matt

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