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XBox 360 unstable and crashy after one day
Consoles are typically thought of as entertainment devices, with pretty limited scope. The expectations for consoles are pretty standard, too. You plug in a game, the game works, you have fun. Consoles are becoming more and more advanced though, and though there have been some issues in the past with instability, apparently the Xbox 360 has taken the cake for the most unstable console, only a single day after it's release. In some ways, you could almost say we knew this would happen eventually. Numerous reports of the console crashing have been reported at various other sites, with crashes happening even with all default settings in single player. They don't seem to be related to particular games or particular reasons, happening randomly.
This may or may not be widespread, but this is the first I remember since the launch of the SNES nearly a decade and a half ago, where a console was plagued with reports of defective hardware and instability. Perhaps the console has become too much like a computer. And it seems that maybe Microsoft jumped the gun on the release of the 360, in effort to beat the PS3 out the door. As more on this develops we'll keep you updated.
This may or may not be widespread, but this is the first I remember since the launch of the SNES nearly a decade and a half ago, where a console was plagued with reports of defective hardware and instability. Perhaps the console has become too much like a computer. And it seems that maybe Microsoft jumped the gun on the release of the 360, in effort to beat the PS3 out the door. As more on this develops we'll keep you updated.
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User Comments (14)
Post a comment| fiziks on November 23, 2005 4:20 PM | glad i invested in a pc video card instead
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| genericuser100 on November 23, 2005 6:36 PM | This kind of "journalism" belongs only in a tabloid
newspaper, not a website promoting itself as an "information
resource". How can you call the Xbox 360 the "most unstable
console" when you admit yourself that the problem "may or
may not be widespread" - in other words, you have NO IDEA
how big the problem is, and are just repeating a bunch of
hype?
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| saisumimen on November 23, 2005 6:48 PM | Originally posted by genericuser100: This
kind of "journalism" belongs only in a tabloid newspaper,
not a website promoting itself as an "information resource".
How can you call the Xbox 360 the "most unstable console"
when you admit yourself that the problem "may or may not be
widespread" - in other words, you have NO IDEA how big the
problem is, and are just repeating a bunch of
hype? "no idea", huh? many, many different people are
posting reports on many, many other sites and forums all
over the web and you're wondering if this problem is
widespread? this is not a PC we're talking about here, son,
this is a CONSOLE!!!! consoles are supposed to be
rock-freakin'-solid, since they cater to a wider audience
that includes many younger or un-tech savvy people. Sorry to
rain on your parade, fanboy, but it's safe to say the
problem(s) with this console are pretty widespread.
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| Julio on November 23, 2005 6:58 PM | First of all, the "most unstable console" was referring to
the fact that problems have been reported only a day after
its release. Second, no matter how many reports (5, 10, 50?) you can see online, we will only be able to tell how really widespread the problem is once official reports are in. That means we will be able to get an overall scale of the problem, and most importantly the source of it.
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| MS_Employee on November 23, 2005 9:45 PM | I work for Microsoft, so I am really getting a kick out of
most of these replies. Some of you guys are very good at
making it sound like you know what you are talking
about. But trust me. You dont. I think you just want to make yourself sound smart, when in reality you dont know what you are talking about. This is how bad info gets passed around. If you dont know about the topic.Dont make yourself sound like you do.
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| unnamednewbie13 on November 23, 2005 10:08 PM | Originally posted by MS_Employee: I work
for Microsoft, so I am really getting a kick out of most of
these replies. Some of you guys are very good at making it
sound like you know what you are talking about. No offense, but don't you think any
comment against the detractors of the XBox 360 console by a
Microsoft employee (assuming you're telling the truth) is a
bit biased? I could go into a whole diatribe about playing
telephone hopscotch from company to company on tech support
lines that try to blame issues on everybody else, but that
would take volumes of blogspace to fill out. In a console's
case, there is no excuse for this kind of avoidance
behavior.But trust me. You dont. I think you just want to make yourself sound smart, when in reality you dont know what you are talking about. This is how bad info gets passed around. If you dont know about the topic.Dont make yourself sound like you do. Not that I totally hate your company. In Microsoft's defense, when you guys finally do (occasionally) make a good product, its stability is usually above and beyond the competition's.
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| CrossFire851 on November 24, 2005 2:48 AM | Well when I was at Wallyworld playing "Cally Of Duty 2" on
Xbox 360 (very fun game might I say)but when I was playing
it froze on me so, I did what anyone would do continue about
there day but I felt as if I didn't take that last step and
and i wated there for a momment and reloaded my gun maybey
it would have not froze. It only happen that once but, still
I thought hey it's just demo the full thing will be
fine,well mabe not and I beat ppl are not posting to much in
forms becasuse the main amount of of them are not puter tech
so they probly don't no about them but the user should not
fell at uneasy when playing it hmmm mabe some need to get
recalled just a segetion don't hype on me thanks but
yea...... [Edited by CrossFire851 on 2005-11-24 02:52:44]
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| saisumimen on November 24, 2005 3:40 AM | Yeah, let's all listen to Mr. "Microsoft PR guy/grown man
with too much time on his hands scouring forums to defend
his precious xbox 360/troll who doesn't really work for MS"
because i'm sure he can enlighten us who have heard of
dozens of reports of a new high-tech console crashing under
normal circumstances ON THE FIRST DAY OF LAUNCH as he plays
down the severity/embarrassment of the situation.
Please sir, explain to us that "don't know what we are talking about" exactly what it is that is happening to these fancy high-tech boxes, since you obviously know to be saying that we don't.
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| thekaiserroll on November 24, 2005 4:21 AM | So a Microsoft guy tells us three times that we do not know
what we are talking about, when we are saying that since
there are widespread reports about 360s crashing, there may
be hardware problems. MS_Employee, you are not doing any good to anyone. You are ruining any ethos you may have had, and your reply seems designed to insulate your ego, not to alleviate customer concerns, if you really work for Microsoft and are not a 15-year old kid getting giggly about insulting nerds. Right now, the biggest thing we notice about the 360 is that it has technical problems. We are talking from experience, and we are discussing causes, effects, and solutions, not the size of our respective e-peens. Sorry to be so blunt, but it's 4 in the morning and my temper is short. My apologies if I have offended anyone.
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| CoLD_SToRAGE on November 24, 2005 5:47 AM | Right guys, lets get some fact straight here. Most unstable console ever? Random crashing due to it being a Microsoft product? Because Microsoft sucks right? IF you think that, then chances are nothing anyone will ever say will have any bearing on your opinion, so run along and start up some kind of Anti-Microsoft blog that you and your sad little friends can read. Now onto the problem. In a word, overheating. Simple as that in most cases. Almost all of the reported cases of crashing have had random shut downs and the green light on the front of the box turning orange - which is the 360's way of telling you that its too hot and wants to move to Siberia. Widespread, afecting loads of consoles, most unreliable piece of junk ever!!! Not quite. It seems that there are hundreds of reports across the internet of 360's crashing, now lets not forget the people with the problem are probably complaining on multiple message boards about it, what else are they gonna do, its not like they can play Perfect Dark Zero. Now, lets take a wild guess at the number of people with faults, say hundreds maybe a thousand posting on message boards about it. lets be really liberal and multiply that by ten for the total number of people with faults. Say 10,000 people, sound fair? Now Microsoft apparently had a little over 1,000,000 consoles for the US release (They never confirmed that, but it seems likely). That would make the problem affect all of 1% of 360's, but wait it gets better. How many buyers do you think appreciate the fact that it is a high powered console, that can get rather warm. Not everyone I would assume, now Microsoft seem to have done all they can to make a nice cooling solution for it (Check Anandtech's dismantling of it), but, some muppet, somewhere, probably a few thousand of them are going to stick the 360 in a cupboard, or a small cubby hole in their entertainment centre. It's gonna get hot, and it'll all be Microsofts fault, or something like that. Now before people castrate me with their wailing knashing teeth, I'm not saying user error is the reason for all the faults, but at least a few of them. The rest, well to be honest I wouldn't be surprised if a few (Say 0.5%) 360's came out with some slight defect in the cooling, they are making quite a lot of them I hear. Alternatively, maybe a few 360's took a nasty knock somewhere between china, besy buy, the crowds, the car, and home. You ever seen a HSF on a Processor that wasn't sitting right? How long did the processer last? If its a P4 you'd be lucky to get into windows before your motherboard shut it down. or a HSF thats taken a knock and the fan is damaged, it doesn't spin as fast as it should, it makes a lot of noise, your processor gets hot and lookie-there it crashes. Long post I know, but I cant stand people discussing these things without thinking about the facts of the matter and just jumping on the Anti-Microsoft bandwagon. [Edited by CoLD_SToRAGE on 2005-11-24 05:56:12]
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| thrudd on November 24, 2005 8:43 AM | Nice explanation and good commentary for something like a
home PC but a consumer grade peice of electronics has a much
higher standard of durability and tollerance to
meet. Any peice of consumer grade electronics that can not survive a bump (outside of Displays) and does not have adequate / durable cooling is bound to have very high levels of complaints .... This is only day 1 and I bet not even a fraction of the units sold have even been taken out of the BOX . I bet you forgot most have been snapped up as christmass gifts, so they wont see the light of day till weeks from now. So the proof in the pudding so to say wil be on how this initial burst of problems pans out. I had worked on the toy industry in the past for a certain manufacturer and on initial release there were a few complaints and a small stream of returns right up untill the week of christmass, then nothing, then the week after they stated and we reached 98% by the third week of January and the rest trickled in over the comming months (old store stock). Turned out to be a set of major design flaws on top of a pair of low quality parts. I see this as a yellow flag, not a red but due caution is warrented. So if you do pick one up as a gift I would highly recomend testing the system out before wrapping it up and puitting it under the tree. BTW, I also tried one of the demo systems and it crashed, repeatedly - It was in one of those tamper proof cases with cooling fans, but I took it as an issue with a beta demo model and not a comercial release ....
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| oksun1 on November 24, 2005 12:58 PM | I live in a small town in oklahoma, and at our towns super
walmart they have an Xbox 360 in the display with all the other machines. The difference is the 360 is not on, because they can't turn it on because the power supply overheats and now the thing refuses to come on, according to a walmart slave. When the thing was working, he said it was shutting off the neighboring photo lab. Why this would happen they had no idea, so they called local electricians to come check out the internal wiring of the store. I suppose they couldn't figure anything out because now it just sits there.
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| Darklife99 on November 24, 2005 1:06 PM | Cold_storage: Why is it that a new console(which, as
numerous people have already stated, as a console, should be
rock solid in it's design) that is supposed to be leaps and
bounds over all previous consoles, has a problem with
overheating? Now, i'm not a fanboy for any of the systems, I
personally own a gamecube, ps2, and have played many games
on the Xbox at my friends house, but it seems to me that if
a brand new system can't stay on for a few hours, there is
obviously something seriously wrong with it. I can(and do),
leave my PS2 on for weeks at a time, and ya know what, it
never overheats, never shuts itself off, doesn't even error.
I play FFXI multiple hours a day, and nothing goes wrong
with it at all. The real problem here is that Microsoft was
so determined to beat all other competition to the holiday
market that they took a few shortcuts where they shouldn't
have, and have produced a below average piece of equipment.
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| ChildDamien on November 25, 2005 3:57 AM | created this acct just to make this post, but will probably
make other posts? anyways I'm a young adult and have been
playing / purchasing gaming systems since the days of NES,
im not particular with my systems as i own all the current
ones + the ones that survived my mother from the past...and
after purchasing the new 360 i can honestly say that ive
never had to deal with the problems i get to deal with, with
my new xbox. as stated previous its the overheating issue
that really "grinds my gears." I put up with overheating
issues with my pc (ive learned to deal with the nuances of a
high end system ) but as far as console gaming goes this is
just horrid. I for one will be returning my new toy until
microsoft has givin it some more r&d time possibly waiting
for a v2. as a side note as a reply to a previous post, i
should not have to have a degree in airflow dynamics to own
a high end console system, altho i would never stuff it in a
box to play it i shouldnt have to angle it to the flow of
the wind comming in the window either. a rushed product like
most rushed products that didnt really live up to par
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