Yes. Bioshock is amazing. You know this already.
There are times when I'd just sit in the corner of a room next to a record player spinning some crackly Billie Holiday, soak in the leaky under-scenery, and listen to the amazing radio messages as they unravel an series of stories with genuine characters in the most old-fashioned and new-fashioned of ways simultaneously. Then I'd move about three steps per hour to the next room, eating every candy bar in sight and hacking every camera I could find, self-terrifyingly stalling to avoid what's undoubtedly to come. Talk about the the perfect antidote to my long-standing complaint about the infinite Brown Devil Gun Zombie Space Linebacker Shooters we usually get — please, give us more of this. More points of view. More ideas.
(Besides, who doesn't love a game where a level designer makes a familiar gaming icon out of moldy old cheese and a handful of bullet holes?)
All this being said, I almost didn't get a chance to play Bioshock.
Because, you see, I'm now on my fifth Xbox 360.
Ready for another trip to the magic land
Xbox #2 — This one lasted a little while longer, but eventually games started to completely lock up forcing a hard reboot. On the plus side, the freezing almost felt like a new, extra-challenging minigame built into all games — while playing The Darkness, it might have been harder trying to pre-empt and avoid inevitable freezes than it was to finish the game itself. I very eagerly shipped off this box, hoping to get it back before Bioshock.
Xbox #3 — Freshly repaired and just in time, with the brand new heat sink fix for the GPU, I had high hopes for this little guy. But a few weeks into Bioshock madness — terrible news. I turned on the game, and the title screen was filled with gallons of oscillating blue lines, all over the place. Back to the Dashboard, bright colors turned into somber, gray ones. I quickly turned the machine off, took a few deep breaths, turned it on and... nothing. No video output. Sound? Fine. Video? Ridiculous! I can't stress this enough: this machine was manufactured in early August, had the brand new heat-sink "fix", and still died two weeks later. This is bad! (Worst still, it wasn't technically a "red ring" problem, so it wouldn't have been covered with the newly-extended warranty.)
Xbox #4 — Hoping to start anew, and not wanting to lose any more precious Bioshock-time, I bought a brand new Xbox 360 at Target, a premium with HDMI output. Almost immediately, Bioshock started pausing for extended periods of time in the middle of heated action. Better still, most textures were taking an incredibly long time to load — I'd enter a room, run up to an object, and it would be an unexciting gray blob of polygons. Five seconds later, BLAM! A texture map! Hey, it's a slot machine! Ten seconds later, BLAM! Hooray, a shadow! Thirty seconds later, BLAM! An additional level of detail! While it was honestly a pretty cool effect, I suspected a bum DVD drive, saw a bleak future, and took it back for a quick in-store exchange.
Xbox #5 — Currently working, and keeping the games flowing while Xbox #3 heads back to the repair depot today. Wish Xbox #5 luck, people!
In all honesty, does anyone know how it got this bad? We talk in the office about how an Xbox 360 is like three G5's shrunk down into a small, poorly-ventilated plastic case — surely, using Mac G5's as a reference point, they could have easily predicted thermal issues would be pretty serious? How did this manage to go on for so long? And jokingly-most-importantly, somebody got fired for this, right? I mean, there's a dude, or team of dudes, at Microsoft, who at the very least cost the company one billion dollars in extended warranty repairs. One billion dollars! I don't know much about the corporate culture at Microsoft, but that's got to be worth a pink slip or two, right?
I'd love to hear your Xbox 360 repair stories. And I have one request, Microsoft, if you're listening:
Would you kindly fix your console?
62 Comments:
Please don't die little xbox!
But frankly that can't affect the majesty of this masterpiece. Roger Ebert are you listening?
My Xbox, by the way, I picked up on 9AM launch morning after waiting 12 hours in the cold, and is still in perfect working condition. I'm rather dissapointed, actually - I think I lost my chance to win the lottery...
Yeah, Bioshock is damn cool!
Seriously?
It's clear that the Xbox 360 has major quality problems (especially the first 1 or 2 million consoles made in 2005), hence Microsoft's $1B charge. Peter Moore use to say a "normal" failure rate would be 3-5%, so the rate Microsoft's seeing must be much higher. 10%? 15%?
Which is still small enough that most consoles will be fine, most consumers will have a fine experience, but wow - holy economies of scale. If the airport lost only 0.1% of all luggage, multiplied by the billions of luggage pieces that travel each year that would be a huge problem -- we'd have riots. Microsoft's sold over 10 million consoles, so a failure rate of 10% implies over 100 people have had at least 5 consoles go belly up. If the rate is 15%, more than 750 consumers have had 5 consoles fail.
I will say this: it's a complex machine, and not everything that goes wrong is Microsoft's fault. (In fact, even when the console is to blame, it's usually a third-party -- a component vendor or the factory assembly line -- that's the root cause.) As other commenters have pointed out, games are buggy. Or sometimes the operating environment has poor air circulation (for the console or the power brick) and that can cause overheating outside the norm. Did you exchange the power brick too, or only the console?
By the way, it's not a single "Red Ring of Death" error. The three red LEDs signify many different possible failures (hardware, firmware, and software). If you hold down the binding button on the console and press the eject button four times, you can read out a more specific (undocumented) diagnostic error code.
Too bad it's so good when it's working.
I've been slowly going through the game because once it ends I'll be disappointed and thrown back into a world of Halo clones.
Give us more "BioShock" game designers of the world.
http://www.splitreason.com/productdetail.php?id=468
(Btw, I'm on my third X360)
I'm afraid it's probably even higher. Remember, the failures aren't instantaneous, they are spread out over time. Your system might last five minutes (like Brian Ashcraft of Kotaku) or it might last six to twelve months. But it seems like a LOT of people are getting failures eventually.
With a 10% failure rate, how unlucky would Cabel have to be to have four failures? He'd be one in 10,000.
Honestly, my brutally honest engineering assessment is that it sounds as if the failure rate is closer to 50%. Then he'd only need to be one in 16. And yet I can't even fathom that number. It's damn near unprecedented.
However, I'd imagine it would really, truly suck if your Xbox 360 scratched up your BioShock game disc and made it unusable.
Games like Bioshock are on XBox because people like you buy XBoxes. Stop buying them, and perhaps we'd see them on a more sensible platform.
N.B. The only allegiance I pledge is to which ever console isn't overpriced and broken. I don't really care who's making it. So by "more sensible", I merely mean that, more sensible.
I'm playing on my 1st XBox360 since a year.
What is worst than having 3 red lights? Maybe the fact of not being sure if your xbox is damaged or not. That's mostly like being crazy (couse it works but when you are trying to show the problem at someone suddenly the machine starts working).
My 360 stucks sometimes and some others it doesn't. I played this morning Crackdown and now I tried Splinter Cell:Pandora Tomorrow ( shit, the 3 lights apeared !!! ), but is strange couse it usually stucks but It doesn't show the lights (i've seen them only once).Fuck, it looks like I'm one of the chosen ones.
I hope it's finally broken, just imagine calling the dial number, they ask you to turn on your xbox, yea? imagine how frustrating it has to be watch that it's suddenly working.
Here in Europe they repair them in Germany, I hope they'll fix it.
Based on all I've seen on message boards online, I'm betting it's much, much, much higher than 10%. I've easily seen 100 posts from people who have had 5 or more - just myself.
Think about it: a 1 billion dollar hit - and there are 10 million consoles out there. Say a repair costs $100. Do the math.
I have no interest in buying a product like that, even with the 3-year warranty. My concept of console gaming is "no hassles". Hassles are what PC gaming is for. My first next-gen foray after the Wii will be a PS3, and then, perhaps, the second-gen 360.
The first one (bought at UK launch) had the checkerboard gfx problem after less than 11 months and was replaced. The 'new' one they replaced it with failed to work at all from day one, so that one was also replaced. The current one is still working.
I have a full Live Friends list and nearly all of them have had multiple failures. Only a few (less than 10) have had no failure at all.
Silver lining: they lose money on the hardware right? So this has really got to be sticking it to them... the $1B charge will be followed by others...
Never before have I had so many quality problems with a console. If it weren't for the decent game selection and Gamefly I would have abandoned the 360 already.
My friend is also on his third.
I'm starting to think the 360 is a piece of shit!
nothing would please me more than full reimbursement + tax + a little extra for the legal fees to slap Microsoft in the face (sorry MS - a free month of xbox live did not offset the inconvenience). Would at least give all of us experiencing these problems the CHOICE of buying a new xbox 360 or spending the money on another console that actually works.
- Got it in august 2006, worked fine for about a year and half, then out of nowhere, red ring of death issue. this was covered under new extended warranty and i was shipped a replacement.
2nd XBOX 360:
- Console replacement was refurbished unit from 2006 (even though it was december 2007), and it vibrated to the point where it was rattling the glass on my tv stand, and it was louder than my game was, it also started scratching my discs
3rd XBOX 360:
- there was something wrong with the video output on this one, as it would not display correct resolution on my HDTV, or on my DVD's, it kept showing me 480i letterbox instead of 1080i widescreen.
4th XBOX 360:
- just got it in the mail like 1 hour ago, i pulled it out as soon as I got home from purolator, it was already room temperature, I plugged it in and i hear the startup sounds but nothing shows on my screen at all. I went to check the connection for video and BOOM two flashing red lights. now my xbox turns on, but sometimes it gets two flashing red lights, and there is no video displayed at ALL.
Called XBOX again and they said someone will be calling me back about this issue (a supervisor). To specially handle this issue for me, the thing that puzzles me is that its 2008, and I keep getting xbox's from mid 2006 which obviously have some sort of hardware problems because otherwise they wouldn't have made revisions to the newer xbox models now would they? Hey, they are the ones blowing money sending me xbox after xbox and frankly I dont care, let them. I havn't played xbox in over 4 months because as soon as I get the replacement it breaks right away, so hopefully this time i get a NEW one, but in the mean time, ill just go play my PS3.
Oh, and not to mention the 120GB Hard Drive. I've got more on my Elite than my friend does on his Premium, and I've got 80+GB left.
im going on my 6th Xbox, and its unbelievable. I didnt do anything to these xbox's, they just have personal issues.
1st was extreme graphic malfunction during PGR3 and CoD2
2nd was RRoD after playing Chromhounds after screen truned green and red
3rd was graphic malfunction then RRoD During Viva Pinata
4th had no signs of RRoD after playing Halo 3, then I turned it on one day and it got it.
5th is still in my living room with its disk tray not working properly. And it's "To play this disk, please insert into Xbox 360 Console" saying.
And thats my story of my xbox's, ByeBye =]
well im on my 3rd..its pathetic isant it? How can Microsoft release such a shit console to the public.
I may as well work for f*cking Microsoft and answer the millions of phone calls from angry customers. Id just tell them to buy a PS3 or to save their cash for something which actually plays and doenst seem to have an endless list of problems like the 360 does.
Today I had the pleasure of experiencing a brand new problem with mine :D A brand new hard drive whirring noise everytime I switch on the console.
How totally AWESOME is that..
I mean all I want to do is sit down and play a game..but apparently I can no longer do that anymore..
Fuck the XBOX..I'm sick and tired of it..It's a complete waste of cash whichever way you look at it. Its upto you if your willing to have it sent off to Microsoft and have it replaced on a weekly basis..But I'm not going to do that..
DONT BUY ONE!
Oh, and not to mention the 120GB Hard Drive. I've got more on my Elite than my friend does on his Premium, and I've got 80+GB left."
That's a good point. One of my friends has an Elite, and his xbox never died or had problems, and lucky me, I got my Xbox 360 Elite about 3 weeks ago, so I guess I'm fine, or I have a higher survival rate than other users. Am I right? :) Oh and I got extra memory... :P
Good luck with your 5th Xbox, Cabel!
-Anonymous
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