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Getting All 1,700 Parts of the Xbox 360 to Market

Posted by Zonk on Sat Nov 19, 2005 02:36 PM
from the complicated-process dept.
XBox (Games)
Carl Bialik from the WSJ writes "Microsoft is hoping its Xbox 360 will further the company's goal to 'link the Web and entertainment of all forms in consumers' living rooms,' the Wall Street Journal reports, but 'one manufacturing misstep -- a shortage of graphics chips or a recalled hard drive -- could derail those ambitions and drag Microsoft's unprofitable videogame business even deeper into the red.' The WSJ traces the 1,700 parts that go into the device through the supply chain -- from two southern China factories, Rotterdam, and on to Toledo, Memphis, and ultimately, retailers in the U.S. -- and looks at what could go wrong along the way."
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  • Granted I havn't read TFA, but how is this any different from any other relatively complex peice of hardware? And why would it fsck up MS?
    • This is not a challenge unique to Microsoft, of course.

      Any hardware manufacturer has to properly plan lead times and coordinate parts supplies. At the same time, parts obsolescence is a big challenge to any manufacturer. Every one of those thousands of parts needs to be tracked and if obsolescence is pending, a suitable replacement needs to be identified and validated.

      So the article simply points out the obvious: the more complex a piece of hardware, the more can go wrong with the supply line.
      --
      http:/ [gloryhoundz.com]

  • Soundcard recall first, please. (Score:3, Informative)

    by koonat (914245) on Saturday November 19 2005, @02:41PM (#14071682)
    Really, so if some hardware in the nex Xbox breaks or is recalled it will derail microsoft - would most other companies not be affected? What the?

    I was recently in an IRC channel with basehead (who is an old tracking god, and now works for a video game company and is currently working on one of the 360 launch titles) who said:
    The XBox360 does not have any standard stereo output. It either uses the Dolby digital, or it downsamples 5 channels together as 'mono'.

    So anyone without a Dolby sound system is going to hear complete crap. Maybe this will change, but it will be launched this way. This sounds to me about as bad as a soundcard recall.

      • Re:Soundcard recall first, please. (Score:2, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Sorry, surround sound is a fantasy. I stopped going to the cinema because hearing grains of rice being bounced around on tracing paper behind my head was distracting me and destroying my enjoyment of film. Modern cinemas at least have properly designed accoustics which is more than can be said for the average family room.

        In a controlled listening enviroment, well mixed 5:1 audio is fine but in the average room 5:1 leads to pronounced imaging and phase problems. Additionally, most home cinema systems ship wi
        • Realistically anyone that can afford an xbox and can afford an HTDV can drop $150 on a halfway decent surround sound system.

          I'm not sure there's anything wrong with microsoft trying to force people (particularly early adopters) into having the best possible xbox set up. These are the people that are blazing a trail and advertizing the xbox to the xmas 06 crowds.

          If you really want 2.0, cant you just connect it to your stereo and tell the amp to do Phantom Center and Phantom Rear. It should do a far better jo
          • "These are the people that are blazing a trail and advertizing the xbox to the xmas 06 crowds." Well considering most people will just notice it sounds bad and not know why, they are gonna be doing a lot of that "advertising" in mono.
            • You can quite often get a refurb'd onkyo HT-580S for this price or less, and it's a pretty formiddable system. I have the older model and it's better than most other sub-$500 systems that i've heard.

              Perhaps i'm living in my own little world, but most amps on the market seem to have digital inputs, and the better ones have had this for years.

              Microsoft are essentialy saying "get an HDTV and Surround Sound System or you'll have a far inferior gaming experience", and they know that most of their customers will

      • Re:Soundcard recall first, please. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by shawb (16347) on Saturday November 19 2005, @04:28PM (#14072205)
        Something that Basehead, or Alexander Brandon [google.com] says is probably true. He has had his hand in the music, sound effects and voice acting for Deus Ex, Theif and Unreal. He was one of the most respected Americans in the Demo and tracking Scene, being almost as well known as Necros and Purple Motion. Considering his roots, I would have been suspicious if OP said they had talked to him anywhere other than IRC.

        • Well I'm extremely skeptical (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Sycraft-fu (314770) on Saturday November 19 2005, @05:15PM (#14072387)
          What is claimed here seems extremely unlikely for a number of reasons.

          1) When you have a hardwre sound processor, it's no more difficult to mix to 2 channels than to 1 or any other combination supported. You'll notice that cards like the Audigy can change speaker configuration on the fly with no problems. Thus it would make no sense to deliperatly handicap the system in this manner.

          2) Microsoft is not stupid, contrary to what many /.ers seem to think. They are well aware of the number of people with stereo-only setups, and would have no reason to alienate them.

          3) A quick look at Microsoft's site reveals stereo outputs on all the cables. Have a look at http://www.xbox.com/en-US/hardware/accessories/get connected.htm [xbox.com] that's the cable page for the 360. Notice that all the cables there have stereo anologue audio outputs (the red and white RCA cables). Why would they include stereo outputs, if the sound out was only monaural?

          So I'm going to guess that orignal poster is wrong. I can see one of three situations as to why:

          1) The person he was talking to was not who he believed it to be. The number of pretenders on IRC is beyond count. It is easily possible someone was lying about who they were, and had enough knowledge to make it seem feasable to the uninformed.

          2) The composer may be misinformed. Being good at composing and tracking music does not make one a sound expert. He may well misunderstand the capabilityes of the X-box.

          3) The orignal poster may be lying about the conversation. Given the anti-MS attitudes on /. it's entirely possible.

          Now of course I haven't had hand on an Xbox 360 so I cannot confirm for certianty that there is stereo output available, but I have a hard time believing there isn't. It wouldn't make sense, and all evidence suggests there is.

          Also, even in the extremely unlikely event it was lacking, stereo folks aren't out of luck. All recievers made any time receantly that I'm aware of will happily downconvert 5.1 to stereo if requested. On mine, I simply push the "stereo" button. It disengages all the surround speakers and sub, and mixes everything to the front left and right speakers. The source cab be 5.1, 6.1, 7.1 DD or DTS, it doesn't matter, it will make it stereo at the push of a button.

          Either way I would say you should probably not believe something that some random guy claims that some other guy on IRC said.

  • "XBOX 360 DELAYED BY SHORTAGE (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 19 2005, @02:43PM (#14071700)
    OF #12 TORX SCREWS" sources at Micrsoft reveal...

  • This is a first for the industry! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 19 2005, @02:44PM (#14071707)
    Most things are only made of one or two parts with a very simple supply chain. In fact, the computer industry's previous champion of complexity was the Apple Macintosh which consisted of only two parts: 1 mouse button, and 1 everything else.

  • Competition is Good (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mordors9 (665662) on Saturday November 19 2005, @02:45PM (#14071710)
    Actually this is an area that I hope M$ does well, for the same reason that I dislike their behavior in the OS market. If the Xbox does well and puts some pressure on Sony then hopefully features will be improved and prices driven down for both competitors.

    • Re:Competition is Good (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Y-Crate (540566) on Saturday November 19 2005, @03:04PM (#14071819)
      Actually this is an area that I hope M$ does well, for the same reason that I dislike their behavior in the OS market. If the Xbox does well and puts some pressure on Sony then hopefully features will be improved and prices driven down for both competitors.
      Exactly.

      Microsoft has traction in the console market, but not absolute dominance. Sony and Nintendo were caught off-guard by their strong second place showing in the last generation and have been driven that much harder to make things better ever since.

      Personally, I'd love it if Microsoft outsells Sony this time 'round (not happening), and Nintendo outsells them all the generation after that. I want them all to stay on their toes and avoid the complacency that was settling into the market at the dawn of the last generation before Microsoft was actually seen as a viable competitor.

      Nintendo and Sony were really beginning to rest on their laurels and that has come to an end.

      The 360 hardware aside, the PS2 and to a much lesser extent the Gamecube are beginning to show their age. The GC has been spared the ravages of time a bit because of Nintendo's disinterest in pushing the graphic envelope (they have their reasons, and I respect that. I'm not looking for a flamefest on that issue) but the PS2 has really been forced to hang on a bit too long.
  • Why would they expect failure now?

    Microsoft *DOES* produce other devices and they know the manufacturing/shop floor management. (They run facilities and design the software that manages them)

    I think MS knows what they're getting into.
      • Did Sony make money in this past generation of consoles (PS2)? I thought I heard only Nintendo did, or perhaps it was just that Nintendo made the most.
        • Actually Sony's gaming division is doing quite well(comparatively) to the rest of the company which is suffering blow after blow after blow. Meanwhile, Nintendo is a company that only does video game stuff*(technically they still make Japanese playing cards, but that is a very small portion of their business), and Nintendo has only 1 quarter on record that they ever made a loss, and that was the quarter that the dollar was at one of it's lowest points since Nintendo starting exporting heavily to the US, an

  • Interesting article (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Aphrika (756248) on Saturday November 19 2005, @02:51PM (#14071754)
    But doesn't this hold true for all cutting-edge devices that rely on a single configuration to work? Dell to a degree are lucky because their inventory is built from off the shelf components which can be interchanged at short notice to give working product, but if you look at shortages of devices such as the Sony PSP, you find that there's a trade-off between time-to-market and component availability.

    The upshot of this initial position is that over time the component costs come down, meaning a larger profit margin (or in the case of the X-box, a smaller loss), eventually leading to a machine redesign to minimise component count (look at the original Playstation configurations for examples of that), and eventually reducing the physical plastics cost my changing the form factor (PS and PS2).

    Microsoft have chosen an interesting path with the 360; a combination of off-the-shelf components that are almost obsolete in retail channels such as the 20GB drive combined with unique items such as the processor and GPU. It's a neat strategy that reminds me of the way the Commodore Amiga was designed; custom chips for the guts of the machine supported by OTS components to keep costs down. It should be an interesting machine to watch, my only hope being that they aren't daft enough to supercede it too quickly.

  • Microsoft Owns the Rights on All the Components (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MLopat (848735) on Saturday November 19 2005, @03:20PM (#14071884) Homepage
    That's right, we got the rights to all the components. That includes the CPU, wireless hardware, the bridges and even the GPU. So, if anyone along the way in the supply chain screws up by providing flakey hardware or limiting supply, we get a new supplier.

    If you look at the Anandtech review where they disassemble the 360, you'll notice every component is branded with the Microsoft logo!

    • Re:Microsoft Owns the Rights on All the Components (Score:5, Informative)

      by SiMac (409541) on Saturday November 19 2005, @03:48PM (#14072024) Homepage
      Microsoft doesn't exactly own the rights on the components, but it's pretty close to. According to the Anandtech article, they have a license to manufacture the CPU. Likely (personally, I haven't confirmed it, but it seems probable), they have a license to manufacture the rest of the components as well. So you're correct that they can find another supplier if someone screws up.

      "Full rights" to the CPU would mean they could also, for example, modify the design and license others to use their modified design. Suddenly, Microsoft becomes a powerful player in the embedded processor market by selling other people a chip that contains the results of decades of IBM R&D. IBM would, most likely, never let anyone do that, not even Microsoft.
    • And getting a 2nd supplier for a component isn't quite as easy as you make it out. This is a better defense against what NVidia did to MS (withhold try to renegotiate the pricing) than for covering regular component shortages.

      For a regular shortage, it'll take so long to get the 2nd source up and running (even with the rights to do so) that it won't save you a lot of pain.

      But it eliminates the possibility of a company being able to withdraw their component and put your production on hold indefinitely.

      I also
  • Now all the rabid anti-MSFT activists will head to Memphis to find the Ingram Micro distribution center and disrupt shipments. Hopefully they will eat some BBQ and visit Sun Studios while they are in town (skip Graceland...other than the trophy room, it's overrated).
    • Actually Ingram Micro no longer has a Memphis location. That one got shut down in favor of the Millington location. :P I worked there, just giving ya a heads-up. And knowing how crappy some of the shipping companies have been acting lately in here, (the Dell Laptop fiasco in my journal just being one that I've bothered reporting about,) I have a feeling it's not shortage of supplies/components, I'd be more worried about them getting lost or delayed. I rely upon my experience working many of the warehouses h
  • I'm getting a 360 already, shut up about the slashvertisements!!! ... Though I'll wait till next year [e.g. March] to pick mine up.

    Tom
      • Hahaha, nice. I'd say wait for the xbox. Let yer friends buy it then lets see what the fallout is. Could be the first round of 360s are bunk [or the games suck] who knows.

        That and I'm tired of their little "supply stunts". I want a 360, ..., I also want an Apple laptop [to do MacOS testing of my libraries] but I don't just go around "paying anything" because the say so. If the xbox360 costs 400$ USD this xmas [for the one with the 20GB drive] then they can keep it. It's a fucking toy and I won't pay n
  • Shipping something which is essentially a dumb client to Windows XP Media Edition and is incapable of storing video doesn't sound like supporting entertainment of all forms to me. Even the the original XBox could be hacked into such a system, suggesting that MS deliberately crippled their new console.

    • Re:Entertainment of all forms (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Neopoleon (874543) on Saturday November 19 2005, @05:12PM (#14072375) Homepage
      "Even the the original XBox could be hacked into such a system, suggesting that MS deliberately crippled their new console."

      If you want to do something with the 360 for which it wasn't designed, and if that something turns out not to work, then it isn't a matter of the device being "crippled."

      You don't say your car is crippled when you drive it into a lake and find that it doesn't float quite as well as you were hoping. You just get out (if you can), walk up to shore, and say, "Hey - guess it's not one of those floaty car things."
      • Sorry, but that's the most stupid analogy I've ever heard. The XBox 360 is more than capable of acting as a media jukebox without changing a single resistor in the console. As it is capable of storing MP3s, it makes no sense whatsoever that it cannot store movies as well. It has the capacity and has ample CPU to do it. Neither does it make sense that it couldn't rip DVDs either come to that. No mods are required for any of these things.

        So why restrict movie support on the device? Why can it play movies fr

  • Just as word got out that Microsoft would limit supply of the new xbox in order to leverage the massive amounts of free press this gets( remember the Elmo press coverage? ), Microsoft pushes out a story of how fragile their production process is. Brilliant I say. Now it'll be easy to blame the supply chain instead of getting called on holding back production... Wait, isn't the WSJ.com usually a fee based site? Hmm, no problem getting to this article so I guess we have a sponsor to thank for this. Now who co

  • Article summary: (Score:5, Insightful)

    by deacon (40533) on Saturday November 19 2005, @03:49PM (#14072030) Journal
    I want the 4 minutes spent reading the article back.

    A breathless journalist discovers that putting a product thru manufacturing requires coordination of lots of small parts, from many different vendors and countries. Journalist also learns that a screw-up in any of these parts will cause a PROBLEM!

    Here is a newsflash for Journalists: The xbox is trivial to manufacture compared to other products. Go tour a plant making large Xerox machines, or a Toyota factory, if you want to see something which actually has a challange to it.

    This article seems more like an ad for what is in reality a small, cheap, and disposable PC with some ductwork in it, a technology that was used on mainframes 20 years ago. This smells like an attempt to make people believe in "genius which is xbox"

    I think there should be a new rule for journalists (and for school teachers as well): You are not allowed to write/teach about something technical (math, science, engineering) until you have spent time doing it professionaly. No more "how they build the widget" articles unless you are a manufacturing engineer with factory experience. Cut down of some of this fluff.

    • Probably, but they more than make it up with game licensing/royalties. Just like inkjet printers...cheap as hell, but ink is worth gold to sellers.

      • Re:Speaking of bieng in the red... (Score:5, Informative)

        by kilrogg (119108) on Saturday November 19 2005, @02:57PM (#14071780) Homepage
        Actually they don't fully make up for all the costs, as TFA points out they've lost 4 billion dollars so far.
        • I just don't see how they can keep out of the red, when they're paying off slashdot editors to post every trivially relevant XBOX 360 article. Come on we're getting about 2 crapping XBOX 360 stories a day. The 360 is not revolutionary, it's hardly evolutionary. Higher poly count, higher resolution woooooo. Nothing new, nothing particularly interesting. Who the hell really cares anymore?
      • That's the theory these consoles are made by, but the Xbox apparently runs at a loss (well, look at the Microsoft accounts, the Xbox division's deep in the red), as the subsidy is just too large, due to factors like the retail cost having to be dropped to compete with the PS2, but the actual hardware cost hasn't dropped as radically, due to their use of "off the shelf" components, as well as some stuff with what are basically fixed costs like the hard drive.

        Of course the Xbox 360 seems to be designed so it
        • I wonder about their business strategy, personally: "link the Web and entertainment of all forms in consumers' living rooms". Obviously, the internet holds a lot of potential- online gaming, downloading movies and TV schedules, etc. But do people really want to surf the web, listen to music, watch movies and play games, all through one machine and one interface? It's an interesting idea, but in practice I think you end up with the old "jack of all trades, master of none" problem.

          That, and less is often more

    • Doesn't Microsoft lose money on every X-box sold in the first place?

      More accuratly, Microsoft loses money on every machine made. More if the machien is unsold.
      • Yeah, they'd have to make up for it in volume. From what I understand, the big reason they are being sold "at a loss" is because R&D and other one time costs are figured in. Once they sell enough, the per unit cost goes down enough that they're breaking even.
    • The short answer is yes, it will run many, but not all XB1 games.

      For the long answer, read Microsoft's own compatibility list [xbox.com].
    • Yes and no. If you buy the "core system," which is $299 but sans hard drive, then you can't play Live or Xbox 1 games. If you buy the full system for $399, it includes a removable 20gb hard drive. You can then play a large selection of old games. Microsoft's goal is to eventually port every game, and they probably will in a short time after launch. You'll just have to connect to live to download a patch to sit on your HDD for old games you want to play.
    • does the xbox 2 has the ability to play xbox 1 games?

      Some.

      Only when you buy the expensive version of XBox 360 with the hard drive.

      Not the one you really want to play on it.

    • Re:Interesting that MS keeps on losing (Score:5, Insightful)

      by cyberjessy (444290) on Saturday November 19 2005, @03:52PM (#14072044) Homepage
      Bill must really think videogames are super-important; they keep losing billions, but Microsoft just keeps on going back for more punishment.

      So you think the XBox is about games? Hell no. It is about control of the living room. It plays movies, tranfers music from a PC/Mp3 player, plays them, you can send messages to people and maybe even more. It runs a custom Windows 2000 kernel too, for the Power architecture.

      It seems so odd that they'd use their monopoly on desktop productivity software to try to build a videogame empire: history says that ..... with their natural advantages in productivity software.

      So what do you gauge from this? It means the real intent is to be the centre of our digital lifestyle. They make the hardware and the software. Like Apple. Does it get better than that??

      The device is pretty cheap, compared to a computer yet more powerful than any out there. Someday MS might decide it can also be used to write emails, create Word documents, play games, and anything you might use a computer today. (And who knows, they might already have word running on it!)

      I dare you to disagree!
    • "ou can't build insurmountable walls (like in productivity software) to hold back your competition indefinitely,"
       
      What do you think MS is doing with live? Will all your online friends move to the next best thing with you? How will you find them? They are basically trying to do to consoles what the triumvirate of IM clients does to quick personal communication: strangle.
      • You're right. The XBox division has been turning a profit for 2 years. Unfortunately, net loss is still around $4 billion [com.com] from 2001 to now. My understanding is they didn't even expect to see a net profit for any quarter until later. Given how much an XBox 360 is going to cost and how much it costs to make, it would seem that MS is still going to be dumping hardware in favor of trying to make up for it with game sales. So, I'd expect that hole to get bigger. But yea, they're probably post a net profit

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