Crashing Xbox Kiosks 662
quannump writes "Gaming Age has an article up about some stores, including Toys R Us and Babbages, Xbox kiosk crashing at various places across the country. "Out of five stores that have playable demos within a ten mile area, only two have working units," says one Babbage's employee." It's funny because it's Microsoft. Get it? It's... oh never mind. Is DOA3 still planned as x-box only?
Re:Xbox Crash (Score:3, Informative)
The rest of the disc was just "non-interactive", and I try not to judge game footage based upon console FMV -- there is always significant degredation of the image quality. Still, it didn't impress me terribly, didn't look like anything I'd want to play.
Heat is the likely culprit (Score:5, Informative)
Microsoft is putting in a hot running CPU that was never designed for embedded systems use and twice the memory of the PS2. Sure, that makes it more powerful in a way, but it also may be over the line in terms of what you can do inside of a sealed consumer box. Remember, "more powerful" has never been the mantra of embedded systems engineers, but "cool running" and "rock solid reliable" are.
Crashes at the Microsoft Store (Score:3, Informative)
Over at the Sony Playstation store, everything works all the time. (Most of the PS2 games suck, but that's a separate problem.)
The XBox runs a cut-down version of Win2K, which supports one multi-threaded application at a time, running in kernel mode. It may have been a mistake, to use the architecture of a desktop OS without the protection.
Not a Microsoft Problem. (Score:4, Informative)
Of course, anyone who had an old NES should remember that many of the system's games were very crash prone. I cannot begin to describe how many time I saw Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles crash, to the point that I knew what areas to walk away from when parts of the screen would become distorted...
Re:Its down to the hardware. (Score:3, Informative)
The big difference is that it's the only one using a stripped-down version of a PC operating system. Oh, and it has a hard drive.
The main thing that makes PCs so vulnerable to crashes is the huge variation in hardware. XBox doesn't have this problem as all XBoxes (at the moment) are all the same.
Other consoles use cooler chipsets (Score:2, Informative)
Re:XBox Green Screen of Death (Score:2, Informative)
Re:So, um... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Websense Error (Score:3, Informative)
There's an Xbox that's broken and it isn't in any living room in America yet. The Xbox demo unit at a nearby Toys R Us store could not give consumers a taste of the new Microsoft console because of severe loading problems. The Xbox unit had no disc inside and displayed a menu screen to access the hard drive and CD player. But customers who tried to navigate through menus could do little else but wait while the machine tried to load the next menu. The audio that accompanied the menu screen transition skipped severely as well. After a three minute wait, the Xbox reached the next screen but continued to have load problems. Multiple resets also failed to resolve the problem. Soon after, a screen appeared that said the Xbox needed customer service repair. The screen provided a list of customer service phone numbers to contact.
Several Toys R Us employees did not know what went wrong with the Xbox demo unit that now carried a "Out of Order" sign. The store received their unit on Tuesday. The in-store demo units are believed to be actual finalized hardware that consumers will see at launch.
GA has received several reports on problems with in-store Xbox units.
An Xbox unit in the Germantown, MD Target store is reported to have "freezing" problems that requires employees to open the kiosk every 75 minutes to reset the console.
An Xbox unit in Software Etc. store in Souix Falls, SD was reported to skip, freeze, and have audio problems.
An Xbox unit at a Babbages store in Mobile, AL was reported to have similar problems.
A Babbages employee at the Dearborn, MI store reports that their Xbox unit does not function.
"Out of five stores that have playable demos within a ten mile area, only two have working units," says the employee.
Microsoft recently delayed the Xbox launch and will ship an unspecified number of units on November 15th. It's unclear whether load problems were a source for delay. A Microsoft representative was contacted for the story but did not reply at press time.
We'll have more as it develops, here at GA.
-- Marcus Lai
Playstation 2 first editions were buggy as hell (Score:4, Informative)
As someone already mentioned, comparing a kiosk that runs the early version of the console 24/7 in a poorly ventilated environment is different from comparing the final consumer product being used in regular conditions. As for Playstation II's not crashing, you must have a very short memory. I seem to remember headlines like PS2 glitches likely to drag down Sony's earnings [cnet.com], Sony finds glitches in three PS2 games [cnet.com] and more when they first came out and look how successful PS2 is now.
I say, the jury is out until the holiday season is over before we can tell if X-Box will be a success or failure.
Re:Xbox Crash (Score:1, Informative)
Target Employee (Score:3, Informative)
Re:IMHO an excellent point... (Score:2, Informative)
I've seen 3 Dreamcasts fail because of bad CD drives. On one, the motor died, on the others, it was the actual CD logic board. The software was more solid though.
Really, as we get more and more moving parts into consoles, they're going to become less reliable. That's just how it works. I bought a well-worn SNES on eBay a few years ago and it had over a year-long uptime. Same with my N64. However, my PS2 and Dreamcasts, with CD drives and fans, have been noticably less reliable. When you see hard disks come into the fray, expect this to increase significantly.
Re:IMHO an excellent point... (Score:5, Informative)
I rented one of the buggy TTTs a few weeks ago. I could barely play an entire game without it locking up.
The recent Gauntlet title, Dark Legacy, has also locked up my machine on a few occaisons.
J
DOA3? (Score:2, Informative)