Firmware Troubles For Old Xbox 360s, Possibly PS3s As Well 196
Several readers have tipped news of firmware updates causing problems for both Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's PlayStation 3. The Xbox issue was caused by a recent update thought to be preparing the platform for a new disc format that gives developers another 1GB or so of space to work with. As it turns out, the real purpose seems to be piracy countermeasures. Microsoft acknowledged the issue and promised that affected users would receive a new 360S console and a free year of Xbox Live to compensate. The PS3 problem was highlighted by reports of overheating consoles while playing L.A. Noire on the recently-released 3.61 firmware. Rockstar Games initially confirmed that the firmware was causing the overheating, but later backtracked. They issued a joint statement with Sony saying that neither the game nor the firmware was the culprit, leaving users wondering what else it could be.
joint statement with Sony (Score:4, Interesting)
Rockstar Games initially confirmed that the firmware was causing the overheating, but later backtracked. They issued a joint statement with Sony
So, Sony talked to them nicely, convinced them with irrefutable logic that neither the game nor the firmware was the problem, and they skipped happily, hand-in-hand to the podium to announce it jointly. Sony would never be so evil as to threaten Rockstar Games with new firmware that prevents all Rockstar Games' games from working at all.
Say what you like about Microsoft... (Score:5, Interesting)
...but this is how you do customer service.
Microsoft acknowledged the issue and promised that affected users would receive a new 360S console and a free year of Xbox Live to compensate.
Acknowledge the problem, fix it (or replace it in this case with a superior model), and give compensation.
No nonsense customer service, and it gives gives them good PR.
Compare that to Sony...
Re:that doesn't make any sense (Score:4, Interesting)
The discs are still dual-layer DVDs, but the new "format" is a different partition scheme that opens up an extra gig of space for game data, at the expense of space that was dedicated for some other purpose. That seems like it should be a pretty minor change, so the rest of the update probably slips in other changes such as DRM.
The theory on why this is requiring a hardware replacement for some users is that this forces a flash of the dvd drive firmware. Some revisions have a dvd drive that is incapable of being flashed, so the firmware may be causing those revisions to be unable to read disks.