Crashing Xbox Kiosks

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?

Probably overheating

[ttyRazor]

Putting them inside those enclosures probably isn't the best place for heat dissipation. I know if I put my PC in something like that it wouldn't last long.

IMHO an excellent point...

[mystery_bowler]

A good friend of mine once said that if MS's development track record held up, that the X-Box would be a flop. To paraphrase, he said: "People don't expect their console to crash. If it does, they'll return it."

Now I know the PS2 had some backward-compatibility problems, but other than that, has it been rock-solid? I know I've never had so much as a hiccup from my Dreamcast.

Re:Probably overheating

[erpbridge]

Problem is, Microsoft (and for that matter, anyone making a console system or piece of a home entertainment center) needs to keep in mind that it is all too possible that this piece of equipment WILL be put into a space with about a finger's worth of clearance on each side and top, and will possibly also have a couple things stacked on top of it. They need to design them either for quick heat dissipation, or low heat generation.

The kiosk is spacious compared to what some will go through....

New Terrorist??

[typikalteen]

Is crashing the X-Box considered a act of gaming terrorism

Jumping the Gun...

[FortKnox]

Here goes some precious karma

"Out of five stores that have playable demos within a ten mile area, only two have working units," says one Babbage's employee

That article describes 5 stores out of THE ENTIRE COUNTRY that have technical problems.

Think we are jumping the gun? Maybe its under super-scrutiny cause its microsoft, and people are taking advantage.

And the above quote (which will probably get that babbage's employee fired), is most likely an anti-MS/Linux Zealot out for blood against the X-Box. I don't see it very believable.

Lets wait for a few days AFTER they release the X-Box to kill it, k?

Re:Probably overheating

[FatRatBastard]

Not only that, but it will also be banged around. I see failed HD's being a thorn in MS's side. Either they fix 'em as they go bad (and with piss poor ventalation and kiddies manhandling 'em they're going to go bad quicker than normal) and eat a lot of $$$, or they don't fix 'em and piss off a lot of customers.

I believe bugs will be causing the X-Box flop

[Juju]

The people who develop for the X-Box will mainly be PC companies. These companies are new to the console market, when the game need to be ready when it comes out. No "ooops, sorry, here is the patch" are allowed!

Note that this is true for Microsoft as well...
I just think that the X-Box has not got the infrastructure to support this kind of working. PC users are used to Windows crashing and hanging, I am not so sure about console players!I for one, don't believe the X-Box will be the big success every one expects. It might be the fastest on the paper, but I still think the PS2 and Sony are going to eat X-Box and Microsoft alive in the console market!

I believe a gaming console is closer to a TV or VCR than to a PC, so I believe that Microsoft is going to fail in this new market!

Let's see what the situation is in one year!

Re:XBox Green Screen of Death

[MikeyNg]

Cute. Isn't that the screen from the XDK (X-Box Developer's Kit)? Couldn't that error message be from something like a program bug that the programmer made, or a bad copy of a disc or something? Gee, you know, if I were a developer working on a development kit, I think I'd like to see some sort of error message to help me debug it. Call me crazy.

Oh wait, it's Microsoft, right? So surely if they screw up with ANYTHING, it's got to be good news for everyone!

Rampant Problems, non-exclusive games, DOA3

[Amon CMB]

This is the first time a console has been launched in America first for quite some time. Usually the majority of the kinks are worked out when systems ship in Japan first and later in the US. We're experiencing virtual "beta hardware" testing firsthand with Xbox.

Second, there have been tons of reports of Xbox kiosks failing. Not just on GA. I've been reading a lot in the news and on many forums that Xbox kiosk failures are happening very frequently, far more than any PS2 failures. I have yet to hear about a single GameCube failure since it launched in Japan, too.

DOA3 has been reported to be heading to PS2 in the Official Playstation Magazine, along with a lot of Sega games that will merely premier on the Xbox.

Also, to clear something up, DOA3 does not look as good as Tecmo would want everyone to believe. Tecmo has a bad habit of releasing ultra high-res screens captured from developer kits (we're talking near 2000x pixel resolutions). They released beautiful but fake screenshots of DOA2: Hardcore on PS2 with tons of antialiasing. Then when you actually play DOA2 you'll find it's a jagged, shimmering mess. Sad to see that people are falling for the same trick again with DOA3.

Example:
Tecmo provided screenshot of DOA2:HC:

Touched up screen of DOA2 [ign.com]

What DOA2 really looks like:

Real screenshot of DOA2 [ign.com]

As you can see from these screenshots and movies not supplied by the overseers at Tecmo, the game doesn't really look that much different from DOA2.

Movie of DOA3 [ign.com]

Screenshots of DOA3 [gamespot.com]

Not to mention the DOA series' gameplay is very shallow and caters to button mashing, not nearly as deep as Tekken and Virtua Fighter. From the reports it sounds like DOA3 is a carbon copy of DOA2 with prettier graphics. Odd that the DOA series has suddenly become big-game despite lackluster sales on PS2/DC... Maybe because it's on Xbox, because if DOA3 were on PS2 it would be overshadowed by Tekken 4, Virtua Fighter 4 and Soul Calibur 2?

I'd say hold off on an Xbox until they work the kinks out and better games come out for it. The Dreamcast is dead but you can grab one for a very low price. The PS2 is the best platform for gaming now, there are so many good games out and coming out next month that my wallet is going to be screaming for mercy. GameCube looks solid but not quite as solid as the PS2. Wait and see if you are still uncertain.

Re:XBox Green Screen of Death

[Shaheen]

This is not a green screen of death. Heck, imagine running an executable from the commandline of a linux box:

chmod +x textfile.txt
./textfile.txt

You'll get an error that the format was unknown.

This is the same deal. Someone tried to load an xbox executable with a bad format. It was likely that the executable was compiled with a different Xbox Development Kit version than the previously loaded executable.

If the Xbox really did crash, what would happen is that the framebuffer would lock up and you would see the same screen forever.

This image is not an Xbox crashing

Re:Not a Microsoft Problem.

[mlong]

Just a thought, but if you are trying to say that this is not a Microsoft problem, you probably shouldn't say "The Dreamcast crashed." It (in case anyone doesn't remember) was running Win CE [microsoft.com].

I really don't think that this is going to be indicative of the overall performance of the XBox. I just think that Microsoft has a (well deserved) reputation for unstable operatin systems. They build that reputation over 10 years, so you can't expect it to dissapear overnight.

WinCE was an add-on that had to be on the CD a game was on (ie if the developer chose to develop under it) I never had a single game that used WinCE.

Re:Xbox Crash

[ryanvm]

And actually I wasn't that impressed by the graphics. I think my Tbird 1.4 with my Gforce 3 is much better.

I'm sorry, but your video card alone cost between $200 and $350. Exactly what is the point of comparing a $1000 computer with a $299 console?

Say what you will of Microsoft, but $299 for a 700 Mhz PIII with an nVidia chipset is a suhweeet deal.

I'm just interested to see how long it takes the hacker community to turn these things into coolest looking Linux workstations ever.

Re:XBox Green Screen of Death

[Azog]

Someone tried to load an xbox executable with a bad format. It was likely that the executable was compiled with a different Xbox Development Kit version than the previously loaded executable.

Ummm, this is a screen shot of a crashed xbox from a kiosk in a software store.

How the heck do you think an executable compiled on a different Xbox Development Kit would get onto that box? Microsoft almost certainly sent these things out as packages - hardware, software, kiosk, marketing material, the works, all in one big crate to the store, along with detailed information on how to set it up.

Therefore, this image is an Xbox crashing - or at least, the DVD drive is broken - like the error message says - "could not load executable..." - so either the hardware or the software is bad.

Play to the audience

[Anonymous Coward]

So, please tell me:

Why has my Playstation2 never crashed?