Microsoft Sued Over Alleged Xbox 360 Defects 724
richdun writes "Reuters is reporting that a Chicago man who was lucky enough to purchase an Xbox 360 has filed suit against Microsoft over the overheating and crashing some users have experienced. The man is seeking unspecified damages, litigation expenses, and replacement or recall of all Xbox 360s. While more suits or a class-action is probably on the way, others have sought less litigious solutions."
It was only a matter of time. (Score:3, Insightful)
Responsibility (Score:5, Insightful)
Why not just return the thing? (Score:5, Insightful)
while I am not a fan of our "sue-happy" society... (Score:5, Insightful)
In addition, I don't like the way it was posted... "a Chicago man who was lucky enough to purchase an Xbox 360"... OH PLEASE!!!! "lucky enough" You make out to be some amazing thing... It's JUST a GAME BOX!!! Hello!!!
WoW!! When playing games is THAT important life must be truly sad.
Re:BSOD (Score:1, Insightful)
NOT FUNNY!
Software Beta, Hardware Beta (Score:5, Insightful)
Am I seeing a commercial trend where hardware companies are increasing confident to roll out their products even if they are not thoroughly tested, simply because these companies know they have enough fanboys to buy anything they sell?
It's also interesting to see that these hardware companies are also software companies, who are regularly rolling out "beta" software to the public.
Class Action (Score:5, Insightful)
The Manual (Score:5, Insightful)
Is it a design defect if you're specifically told what the 'problem' is and how to avoid it?
FYI I'm not talking about chainsaws that can accidentally cut your face off, more like a car owners manual that says "keep your radiator topped off or else your engine will overheat." Or in this case, don't put your Xbox in certain places, or it will overheat.
Re:Why not just return the thing? (Score:4, Insightful)
MS Should Just Recall (Score:5, Insightful)
People who sue over this stuff are worse than companies that unknowingly release a faulty product. There are better resolutions than calling a lawyer, like returning the system, waiting on a recall, or hacking it up with a string.
This is getting ridiculous (Score:5, Insightful)
This is absolutely insane.
Good for him... (Score:1, Insightful)
To build such hype and such "demand" and then release a rushed faulty product should be punished. People need to stop this before everything is "beta" quality and we are all testers. What will become even worse is this Dec. 25th and the following days, I believe there will be many more unhappy folks once little Suzy and Tommy unwrap their shiny new Xbox 360 and it fails to operate or crashes continually or destroys their games... which is another thing: If you have a Xbox 360 and it destroy's your game by leaving the "360" degree circle of death scratch, MS's great response is that they will send you a free copy of PDZ. Umm, my copy of PGR3 is scratched... have a free PDZ! Not quite stellar customer support.
The 360 and PS3 amount to basically a giant pissing match between Sony and MS... the problem is that they forgot what the real aim of a console is: Easy, Fun, Enjoyment. Not Ghz, RAM, Polygons FTW.
Re:Responsibility (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Responsibility (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why not just return the thing? (Score:5, Insightful)
If I purchases an XBox 360 and it wasn't working, I'd be pissed...and I'd call Microsoft and demand a replacement. If they rejected that, I'd put a stop order on the credit card payment or I'd just return it to the store. Is this guy sueing for emotional damanges or something pathetic like that?
Ridiculous (Score:3, Insightful)
Not to mention that the first generation of anything often has problems. This certainly isn't unique to Microsoft. This is what happens when consumers crap themselves over something new and have to be the first ones to get it. They get screwed waiting in long lines, paying more than they should and having a potentially defective unit on top of all that.
Anyone with a little sense would wait a few months until those initial problems were addressed and then waltz into any store and choose from one of the dozens of unclaimed units sitting there on the shelves.
Not that I'd ever waste money on an Xbox360, or a PS3 or a Revolution for that matter. They should all stop screwing around and just start developing for the PC directly, because thats what those consoles are turning into anyway.
I suppose someone always has to be an early adopter, and they're the ones who are going to encounter the problems first, and it's because of them that these problems are discovered. However, if you can't get rid of the ants in your pants then you'd better learn to deal with the consequences. Too bad you cant sue someone for stupidity.
Re:Why not just return the thing? (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe those kids are spoiled and should be brought up not to whine and cry because they don't always get what they want.
If you think making the loser pay is a good idea.. (Score:5, Insightful)
The RIAA takes you to court, pays outrageous legal fees (which they can afford), files for extensions, appeals and whatever until you run out of money and can no longer defend yourself.
Then you lose.
Now you have your legal fees, plus theirs!
Do you still think making the loser pay all legal fees is a good idea?
Well, no... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Fire (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm going to give up modding the parent +1 insightful in order to post this here, so please do so for me if you can.
The Parent is correct; If you get something hot enough on today's carpeting or by a wall a fire *will* start. And most gamers/computer people I know have stacks of paper - gaming catalogs, cheat code listings, whatever - by there gaming systems anyway so that only increases the danger.
The fact is Microsoft made a really bad mistake out of either gross incompetence or extreme criminal negligence, and instead of being something as benign to the real word as a BSOD that simply needs a reboot to fix, the over heating of the Xbox360 can and will burn your house down if it gets out of hand. Hell it could not just be your house, it could be your city block or your entire town because you do not even need to be an owner of a XBox360 to have a over heated unit start the fire that will end up destroying everythng you own or burn your family alive. Any of the great fires of Boston or Chicago are the perfect example of this.
I am personally glad he is asking for a full recall of every single unit based on these facts, they are unsafe and all should be destroyed, with the company that made them taking the loss for bad design. And I would feel this way even if I owned the company that built them, or if it was Apple or Sun or any of a million other companies. Its not about Microsoft bashing, its about safety and a company needing to take responsibility for a crappy product that was badly made enough to be dangerous to peoples lives and property.
Re:Why not just return the thing? (Score:5, Insightful)
It would take severe bodily harm resulting from normal, advertised use of the product to get me to sue.
Like, if, the XBox 360 randomly rockets forward out of the entertainment center at my head. Or if the controllers spiked your hands, or emitted powerful electric shocks. Something, you know, that's actually serious.
This isn't the way to do it though (Score:3, Insightful)
Lawsuits should only be for cases where a failure developes out of warantee that is systemic, and the manufacturer refuses to fix the problem. For example a bunch of Canon cameras receantly had failures due to bad CCDs. They were out of warantee, but it was a defect in all of them, thus they were fixing them for free. Had they not, that would have been an appropriate situation for a lawsuit.
This is just a money grab, nothing more. A videogame console is not a necessity of any kind, and even if you bought it opening day you are still well within the return period. Just take it back, and tell them why.
And (Score:5, Insightful)
Talk about a lot of fuss over an entertainment device.
Re:Fire (Score:5, Insightful)
Fiznarp
As much as I hate Microsoft (Score:5, Insightful)
I think there are too many lawyers in the world.
others have sought less litigious solutions. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Responsibility (Score:5, Insightful)
This is exactly what we see in software. Company's have little incentive to get it right the first time because they can just "release a patch". The result is that it becomes the norm for things to not work right when released.
If you want companies to make sure things work when released, you need to make it significantly more expensive to release something broken so that the free market rewards companies that take the time to make it work before releasing.
Re:Fire (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:If you think making the loser pay is a good ide (Score:3, Insightful)
In the case above, the RIAA could bring suit, but the person *being sued* would not be liable for any legal expenses but their own (unless they agree otherwise in the settlement) - RIAA would be on the hook for it.
If I take an action and that action is injurious to others AND "stupid" (whatever that means) then I should be responsible. But if I take no action - if someone else sues me over something "stupid" - then I shouldn't be responsible as I didn't initiate anything.
Granted, all of this hinges on what's "stupid" - on the surface, many lawsuits sound phenomenally stupid - hell, you can spin anything to make it sound stupid - Roe v. Wade, Miranda, whatever, pick any piece of landmark adjudication and if you give it a
Anyway - my thought is that this particular lawsuit is pretty silly for several reasons:
1) Microsoft is actually trying to address the problem. Why sue someone when they're already taking what actions they can to fix a problem?
2) It's a game console. What "damages" could there possibly have been? I have not heard a single report of houses burning down or any kind of *real* damage from this. Loss of play time is not, in my opinion, a damage.
3) Forced recalls - why, exactly? Many people *aren't* having problems. The ones who *aren't* having problems have no need to send their units in (and probably just wouldn't comply with a recall). People who *are* having problems will be getting their units replaced. What, exactly, would a recall do that isn't already being done? Shame them or something?
It just doesn't make *any* sense to me. If MS were to have said "Hey, fuck you - caveat emptor and all that shit" then yeah, sue em. But they sound like they're being pretty reasonable about how they're handling the problem, so again, what's the point? Lawsuits are there to force actions when the appropriate action isn't being taken, which is not the case here. (Or doesn't seem to be)
Re:Responsibility (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Responsibility (Score:5, Insightful)
"Oops, sorry, it was an accident. Here, I'll cut you another one."
Or when I return a rented movie late:
"Ooops. sorry, it was an accident. Here's you movie, no harm, foul?"
Or when I miss a credit card payment:
"Oops, sorry, it was an accident. Here's the money. You won't fine me or anything, will you?"
Man, I only wish I could slap companies with fines every time they screw me out of some time and inconvenience. Of course in the real world it only works the other way 'round.
Hardware Defects (Score:3, Insightful)
I've had to deal with the microsoft hardware department a couple times myself for my mouse (plus a few times for work but I'll keep the corporate support seperate). Because of the way the cable was fed into the mouse it had a nasty habit of breaking the wires and causing the mouse to behave irratically. Both times I called them they sent me a brand new mouse, free of charge, and never asked for the old one back. The last times I even got one of the newer styles and haven't had a problem since. I've never had a hassle from them and never once thought about a lawsuit. From the sounds of it, their XBox support is about the same.
Anyone aware of the XBox or PS history should know that by buying the systems on the release date they are just asking for trouble. Best to wait for revision 2 or 3 to come around. Thats being said, I haven't heard the same about Nintendo and depending on price I will probably buy a Revolution as soon as it's out, but I also wouldn't be too upset if something like this happened then.
When you buy leading edge tech, you've essentially signed up to be unpaid testers. A lot of problems can only be discovered when you move from a few hundred test machines in controlled environments to thousands of machines out in the wild.
Re:When in doubt... (Score:3, Insightful)
>what its claimed to do, without known hazardous side effects. The Xbox360 may fail this due to the overheating.
Except the Xbox also ships with SOFTWARE, with the software there is a EULA that says there is no warranty or fitness of any kind given!
Re:Fire (Score:5, Insightful)
Come on...sure it sucks to get your xbox home and find out it's broken, but really all you have to do is take it back to the store (that is if you don't trust Microsoft to fix it, which they are doing).
Try taking a bridge back to the store.
Re:Responsibility (Score:5, Insightful)
-everphilski-
Re:Responsibility (Score:5, Insightful)
The kind that hates Microsoft for the usual semi-hypocritcal idealogical reasons (but really want to play the games) and are not-very-secretly delighted that an MS product has a problem. It's a chance to publicly whine about MS, paint them as somehow evil for not making a carpet-proof power supply, and to enter the lawsuit lottery. He's not expecting to actually win a lawsuit, he's just hoping for a settlement that will net him a few thousand bucks for being the squeeky wheel. Why he didn't just ask for his money back used to be beyond me, but juries of no-job-having-hate-The-Man idiots have been demonstrating again and again that (no matter how ill-conceived), any suit against a large company is a likely cash cow.
All of the poisonous anti-corporate/business rhetoric actually gets to some people and they begin to think that companies actually owe them something just for existing, and owe them a lot more if they are in any way inconvenienced. This is a cultural problem, made worse by a media-based celebration of victimhood and misfortune-as-fortune. The prevailing sense of entitlement is truly astonishing, and this is just another sorry example.
Of course, it also says a lot about the loser gamer involved that he had so much of his personal happiness tied up in whether or not he could run is XBox's power supply on the carpeting. Of course, that's BS - he's just reaching for cash.
Stop global whining before it's too late.
Re:This is one thing I don't like about this count (Score:2, Insightful)
Anyone who claims that lawsuit was stupid doesn't know what the lawsuit was about.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Bullshit (Score:3, Insightful)
-everphilski-
Re:The Manual (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Fire (Score:4, Insightful)
If a company pushes out a faulty product, they should be legally obligated to correct the problem. We seem to have very high standards for say auto manufactors whenever there exists a problem. Why shouldn't a company who is pushing a electric consumer product be under the same scrutinty.
Bottom line, were are be bombarded with crap. Dell and there "bad" capacitors, Apples scratching nano screens, Sony's PSP and now Microsoft's overheating XBox 3-POS-0 powersupplies
Interesting enough the later three were suppose to be "big releases". And if these four "small underfunded" companies can not put quality products, who can?
I say sue them all. Teach them that pushing crap is not going to be had and if they continue to do it, they will have to continue to replace it.
Re:The Manual (Score:3, Insightful)
Or in this case, don't put your Xbox in certain places, or it will overheat.
Wow, so we're not allowed to put our consoles on the floor in front of the television, or in the entertainment center?
That's pretty fucking awful product design.
Re:The Manual (Score:3, Insightful)
It *is* a flaw in a piece of consumer entertainment electronics to not be able to do this. The product was poorly designed, and that's the problem here. If I bought a new device for my TV, and *then* found out that the design prevents me from using it the same as all my other devices, I would be quite upset. While I wouldn't sue, I *would* return it and not risk a similar experience with another of that vendor's products.
This has absolutely nothing to do with "the law" and everything to do with common usage. If you put a new car on the market, and neglect to tell people that you have to use this special gasoline that you can only get from the dealer, and if you don't, your car might catch fire, but you print this in the manual, you will very likely be sued in a class-action suit. This is because *your* version of the product works differently than every other product of that type, and requires special consideration, but you did not disclose this up front. These sorts of suits happen quite often. Hell, in the case of the car, you would likely be found liable criminally for that design, and there would very likely be heavy fines and a complete recall involved.
The issue is made much worse, since MS basically hid the flaw from customers until after they'd purchased the product. At least you can return an XBox once you find out the design is poor.
Another example of requiring this sort of disclosure up front is drug advertising. If you're marketing a new drug that alleviates allergies, for example, you have to disclose the side effects up front. People do not expect to take a drug and have it give them a heart attack. If you tell them that it could do that in a passage tucked inside of a manual, you open yourself up to lawsuits. You can't expect that most of your customers will read the manual.
I would prefer it to simply be good business practice and that's that. However, everyone has the *right* to sue anyone they want for whatever reason they want.
Re:Fire (Score:5, Insightful)
Many of these cases have to do with user issues. Nano's are small enough to put in the same pocket as your keys, do you're scratching them more often - you didn't do this as much with your bigger iPods. XBox 360's are working fine in the vast, vast majority of cases. There maybe be a few faulty units, but for the most part it is well known that these power supplies are hot and can not be placed on thick carpet. I'm all for the improvement of quality overall, and to an extent I share your sentiment that we need demand higher quality as consumers. On the other hand there are tolerances for faulty units and these tolerances are fairly low. They seem to affect so many people because you don't have 900,000 artciles on how the XBox worked, you only have one or two about a few people who are having problems. Without some tolerance for lower quality we would be paying through the nose for these products. Maybe the bar needs to be raised a little, but I personally do not want to be paying $1200 for a military grade Nano.
Re:Fire (Score:3, Insightful)
You have no idea if this is a hazard or not. If the powersupply is the cause of the problem, they should be recalled regardless.
The fact that this is so widespread makes it obvious that they really rushed these out and didn't test them properly.
Yep...this is also why I'm not first in line electing to be a beta tester for the machine. Just about all of these systems have problems when released. The original xbox had a recall on the power adapter, the playstation overheats and warps, the PSP had a problem with faulty screens on launch.
Also, you can't just take it back to the store and get a new one, as there aren't any new ones to get.
I never said get a new one. I said return it to the store. That is, it's relatively easy to get a good degree of satisfaction, and then you wait until they get all the kinks worked out before you get another. If you want to keep it, Microsoft is fixing them...get it fixed. Either way, in the grand scheme of things it's not a big deal. It's a broken toy.
Comparing the xbox to a bridge collapsing or an airliner losing its wings is ridiculous, and that's really my original point.
Re:Self inflicted? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Responsibility (Score:3, Insightful)
Statistics and Liars (Score:2, Insightful)
Because the majority of units sold were bought to be resold on Ebay and haven't been played yet.
The masses? (Score:4, Insightful)
The XBox360 itself does run very hot. Mine I keep in an open AV cabinet with plenty of ventilation and I keep the PSU in a cool area as well. The XBox360 itself is pretty much a super-charged PC in a space 1/10th a standard PC's size. So of course it's going to run hot, and people should take the proper measures.
The design of the XBox360 was one that had to meet a few goals.
1) Had to look cool
2) Had to be smaller or as small as original XBox
3) Had to have adequate cooling WHILE not producing excessive noise from fans and other cooling elements
So Microsoft had to compromise on #3. They had to have the fans run quiet enough so people wouldn't yell, "OMG, ITS TOO LOUD!".. yet have them run fast enough where people wouldn't yell "OMG, MY XBOX IS OVERHEATING NO MATTER WHAT!"
With any manufactured device, there are going to be failures, be it mechanical failure or failure due to the manufacturing process. I'm sure if someone wrote CNN every time one of their Hard Drives died, or every time they got a bad pixel on an LCD, you'd see many other CONSUMER ALERTS for MASS HARDWARE FAILURE, but you don't. Because we've all been using computers long enough to know that with anything, sometimes you just get a bum device and have to get a new one.
Why is the XBox360 different from other computer devices? Well, as I see it, two reasons:
Reason #1 -- It's Microsoft, easy target for hate from some people.
Reason #2 -- There's nothing we can do. The reason Intel doesn't get sued because their CPU's run too hot, is because as consumers we can crack open our case and swap out the cooling with a solution that better fits our needs. Unfortunately, we cannot do this with the XBox360 because there are no alternatives to the cooling and it would void your warranty.
What are we to do?
Well, personally, I haven't had a single issue with the Xbox360 that was worth even getting on the phone over. It has locked up twice, but this isn't the first time in my 24 years that a console game as locked up on me. I recall RC Pro-AM locking up on level 98 and almost having a stroke.
For those of you having issues, explore every option in making sure it's in the proper environment before immediately pointing to hardware defect. If this still doesn't work, just call Microsoft and open up an RMA. Their process takes no more than 4 days before you'll have a new Xbox360 in your hot little hands.
Re:Self inflicted? (Score:3, Insightful)
This is just the "spend spend spend" society hard at work. "Xbox360" comes out! OMG HAVE TO HAVE IT!!!111 I bought an original X-Box at the beginning of this summer. I've gotten my money's worth of entertainment and then some. The thing is how old? I'm careful with how I spend my money, and I'm patient about purchasing something. The end result is that I'm satisified with the product and I usually get my money's worth. This hype drivel is pushing people to buy as quick as they can and corporations to release the product as quick as they can. MORE MORE MORE!!! Once the hype goes away, the product stabilizes, the price goes down... and Joe Schmoes like me get one and have a good time with it. Sheesh. You kids and your toys.
Re:Why not just return the thing? (Score:3, Insightful)
Now imagine waiting in line for a produce that you shouldn't have to wait in line for (think of McDonalds only making 10 Big Macs at each location every day, first come first served) and then think about that product not working. Not only can you not return it to the store for replacement (they are all sold out and will be for the next month), but the manufacturer cannot even replace the devices (don't know this for sure, but I wouldn't be suprised if MS doesn't have enough units in stock to replace all the faulty ones). So now you are stuck with a broken product and no way of fixing the situation because the manufacturer intentionally screwed you over (limit roll out, artifical inflation of value, etc). You would be pretty damn mad, just like everyone else in your position.
I haven't RTFA, but this guy is probably suing out of anger (I would be angry, I can tell you that), and probably from the promptings of a lawyer who can see a quick cash settlement or a possible class action lawsuit with an even bigger payout for him/his firm.
Will an Engineer speak up? (Score:2, Insightful)
Now about the PSU. yes it shouldn't overheat, but as it is becoming obvious there are various suppliers and other distributors of this psu. Wouldn't it be reasonable to suspect that the design was fine in testing but a batch of bad parts is the cause and not the design itself! You geeks kill me. As soon as something crashes you criticize it because it doesn't run linux or some OSS software. Then you go on a tirade about the design being flawed and if you were the engineer you would have considered such things. As an engineer i have seen products fail hundreds of times not because the design is flawed, but because some part distributor supplied a bad batch of parts. In a power supply it just takes one diode or a bad inductor or even a faulty cap, and then you get motorboating and unstable voltages, and guess what happens when that occurs. Yes you guessed it lots of HEAT! And that assumes if the device even powers on.
Now this doesn't absolve Microsoft from responsibility. They still need to replace the faulty units / or power supplies. However, this doesn't warrant a lawsuit. Especially when the manual warns you to place in a ventilated area. I am sick and tired of companies getting sued because end users are not reading the frickin manual!
Re:Fire (Score:3, Insightful)
Car engines are slightly different, relying on massively complex automated QA systems. What you must also take into account is the fact that car engines are specifically designed to have bits explode.
This is a games console. Hand-assembled, batch production, assembly line. If you have a bad component for an aircraft it won't pass QA, if you have a bad component for an engine it won't pass QA, if you have a bad microchip on a small part of a power controller which only shows the fault after running for at least 47 minutes at above 37.8°C then it won't be picked up because it's irrelevant. Recall the batch if a few of them show similar problems, otherwise just replace the unit.
Re:Responsibility (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Failing Units (Score:2, Insightful)
Where are your statistics to prove the previous poster is wrong? To chastise the poster about not having any facts, then not providing any of your own is pretty lame. To then imply in your post that the problem with the 360 is that it "can get hot enough to start a fire", when noone, not even the guy in the article, has had such a thing happen, is even worse.
I don't care what your opinion of Microsoft as a company is...they have been replacing any defective devices. They say there haven't been many of those, and even if we all think they are evil and lying their asses off, the fact that a chunk sold from a certain region of the US haven't had any issues shows that this isn't as nearly a big deal as certain media outlets wish it were. This at most is an issue of a certain batch of power supplies having problems. I'd be curious to see a map of where the complaints are coming from now, and see if its isolated to a certain shipment.
It isn't just you; there's a ton of people out there who want to see MS burn, but this isn't the incident that will bring them down. By replacing defective devices as soon as they are reported, MS is showing a willingness to help those who ended up with busted 360's. Kind of hard to push a lawsuit against the company, when the first question any lawyer would ask is, "Well, did you call and get a new, working power supply?" When the guy replies, "Uh..no. I just wanted to sue them instead and make a bundle of cash," the judge is gonna bang that gavel, and say "Case closed!" And Microsoft wins another one.
While I think the suit itself is dumb (Score:3, Insightful)
The major issues with the X-box 360 seem to be:
1) The power supply can overheat. It seems most often this is due to poor placement of the power supply. Still, no mention is made anywhere about this problem. So what happens when your average Joe Shmoe consumer or kid gets their Xbox 360 and runs into this problem or sets their carpet on fire because they aren't told in the packaging of a design flaw?
2) Some Xbox 360's just outright have crashing problems not related to the power supply. This seems to be more the case of first batch of a new generation hardware defects. These happen all the time and can't be helped. And when you ahve a low supply like the 360 has, these tend to be more glaring than they really are. This is just an issue of replacing the system for a non-defective one. It stinks, but it happens.
3) Moving the 360 from a horizontal to vertical position, or vice versa, while a disc is spinning will result in serious disc scratching. Now, we're all tech guys so this is sort of no-duh to us. I mean all our PC's and similar hardware all are mostly the same way for that style of drive loading. That said, again it is a case of your average Joe probably won't realize this. I mean the unit is advertised as being equally useful in both a vertical and horizontal position. Sooner or later some dude is going to either accidentally knock the xbox into horizontal position, or move his 360 while in a game and ruin a game disc. Accidents happen, but Microsoft, again, has not advertised that this can even happen. So design choice, flaw, or what have you, it's still their problem.
Again, I think the suit is dumb and either some guy is going after cash or he or someone who paid him has an anti-microsoft agenda. But that doesn't change the fact that the issues are there and MS at the very least needs to make a more concerted effort to at least tell it's consumers what isn't recommended to do to avoid these things happen. That's just common sense business ethics right there.
Re:Oh please (Score:2, Insightful)
Getting litigous is the only way to make sure Microsoft does not take advantage of consumers by selling products which do not perform as advertised. With their market share and their financial resources they ought to be able to make a functioning product. Not an overpriced POS paperweight.
The four hundred dollars for an xbox 360 is a whole lot of money and a whole lot of work for the average customer. They should get their money's worth, it's only fair.
Hardware is a different game. (Score:1, Insightful)
So what is the next step for Microsoft? I think they have 3 options:
I think they will opt for #3.
Re:Fire (Score:4, Insightful)
I've seen stuff like this happen before when bringing products to market. In a nutshell you design something; do environmental testing, build prototypes, seed prototypes to developers; select some manufacturers; do a small manufacturing run; seed final hardware to developers / testers, etc.
However, if you don't watch your manufacturer(s) like a hawk, they might screw you. Perhaps they deviate from your spec at the last minute; perhaps they get in a pinch and decide to replace "good component A" with "shitty component B;" etc.
And the potential for f'k ups like these only increase once you start outsourcing your manufacturing to people halfway around the globe. Communication becomes an issue, and specs are commonly not adhered to as planned.
Microsoft has been fairly open about the development of this console. Prototypes have been out and about for quite sometime and they've been holding prerelease press events with finalized hardware. If this overheating problem was a major design flaw, it would've popped up already.
I bet if we were to crack open a "bad" power supply and a "good" power supply we'd see some different components.
Re:Fire (Score:3, Insightful)
There maybe be a few faulty units, but for the most part it is well known that these power supplies are hot and can not be placed on thick carpet.
Well known to whom? The many parents out there whose kids wanted video games for Christmas? A household use power supply shouldn't get that hot, especially considering that a plush carpet is otherwise a great place to play games and the floor is a likely place for a power brick. How many pennies did they save on the heatsink and housing?
Apparently there's no warning about heat from the brick anywhere in the packaging.
Re:Responsibility (Score:3, Insightful)
So, if you instead bought a brand new, high-tech entertainment appliance from the little one-man shop down the street (you know, where he hand-makes video game hardware from minerals that he mines and refines himself, and for which he writed all the software), and it was defective... what would you do? Perhaps, take it back and ask for your money back? Of course, the little video game shopkeeper would be happy to help out. Unless of course he died the night before... oh well.
So, how about if he takes on a partner to help him out? I know, that's evil, evil, evil. Because in order to make sure that their growing enterprise can interact with the bank they use to cash your check, and the vendors they use to help them with supplies, and to make sure that their operation can survive without them personally, and keep paying their employees (and their debts), etc... they incorporate. Good ideas and businesses often reach past the interests, attention, or even lifespan of those that start them.
they are above the law
What nonsense. Really, you should read the news at least once a year, perhaps. Even if you just do it long enough to follow up on the corporate executives that lose everything and go to jail for being fraudulant... or to understand that many companies can't make products (or sometimes, even stop making products) without fantastic government involvement. You might even want to check up on how well AT&T is doing, running all of the country's telecommunications... oh, wait. It's BS to compare a corporate entity (or a church, or a university, or a Boy Scout troop, or a non-profit eco-activist organization) to an individual because it's not an individual. It's a chartered organization subject to all sorts of laws, and sure as hell not above them.
We just want what we paid for and we expect it to work like they told us.
Or what? You'll just return your Xbox to Best Buy for a refund? Fine, because you can. What do you do when the produce you buy from the little farmer's market around the corner is defective? Do you try to put together a class action suit that will only make a bunch of lawyers rich? How about you just don't buy stuff from companies you don't like, and intelligently pursuade others to do the same (hint: better if you don't start out by actually lying about things, but more on that later).
lawsuits are the only tools we have left
Again: just don't give them your money. You know, just like people stopped giving money to AT&T's hardware people because they didn't like much like their products and business practices, and now Lucent is a pale shadow of its former self, with virtually no influence in the market... and better companies have lured away its customers. Vote with your wallet - you have choices.
no human being feels as much of a sense of entitlement as a corporation does
Never actually worked for or with a larger company, have you? The struggle to compete with other companies to make better, cheaper, or different products is instense. Every day is a fight to make sure that they don't lose customers, and instead find more. Just what do you think a corporation is? Right now, I'm working in a company of about 300 people. There's no sense of entitlement, not among the management, the investors, or us worker bees. Every meeting, every customer interaction, every hunk of software we write or web site we operate - all of it is a scramble to make sure we are offering something better than what our competition delivers. Do we set up offices where the locations make the most sense (in terms of space costs, tax rates, etc)? Yes. Just like everyone does, business or personal.
Re:Will an Engineer speak up? (Score:2, Insightful)
Did you actually think about this? (Score:3, Insightful)
Didn't you just lose money fixing the problem that could have been avoided in the first place?
Hardware repairs are not so cheap as a simple software patch that can be posted online and downloaded
You don't even consider the damage to a company's reputation which, though Microsoft is disdained amongst geeks, most consumer's expect quality from.