James Delahunty
23 Nov 2005 21:33
A day after the North American launch of the first of a new generation of consoles, the Xbox 360, Microsoft has confirmed that some gamers are experiencing nasty problems already. "We have received a few isolated reports of consoles not working as expected," Microsoft spokeswoman Molly O'Donnell told Reuters. A lot of Xbox 360 sites, including 360Updates, were filled with messages about strange crashes and error codes that users were getting. In some cases, the console would crash after less than 20 minutes of use.
While it is expected that problems like this would arise, you have to understand why many of the new owners of this console are frustrated. If you read around online, even just in our Xbox 360 General discussion forum, you will read about how people were disappointed after waiting for hours in the cold to buy one just to find out they weren't going to get one. Now imagine waiting for hours in the cold, queuing for your turn and then finally getting one only to take it home and watch it crash within minutes.
Most of the reports Microsoft is receiving details the console crashing during normal usage, or while using the Xbox live service. However, the company is still delighted with the launch and claims there is only a small fraction of complaints - but did not release any figures. "With any launch of this magnitude, you're bound to see something happening," O'Donnell said.
So what do you do when you experience problems with an Xbox 360? According to O'Donnell, the best thing to do is call 1-800-4MY-XBOX for trouble shooting. If the problem cant be solved, Microsoft will repair of replace the console. Meanwhile, if you have any "horror stories" concerning your first encounter with an Xbox 360, or better yet, any pictures of videos you made of an Xbox doing something it shouldn't, post them on this thread, or create a thread on our Xbox 360 General discussion forum.
Sources:
Reuters
360Updates