Madness? This.. Is.. Sparta!! And Xbox 360...

By Will Barker

The Xbox 360 has some great games, but reports of hardware failure continue

"Aaaargh!! Beset by the red ring of doom..." This LED combination can cause severe stress, anxiety, and withdrawal symptoms

Here's a story that all Xbox 360 owners will warm to: a bloke in Florida is claiming that his Xbox 360 scratches his game discs and as such has decided to get litigious on Microsoft's ass. 

Yep, he's suing Microsoft for cashola, millions of dollars in fact, arguing that the consoles are "negligently designed and manufactured".

From my experience with two Xbox 360 consoles, disc scratching has not been an issue, though the "negligently designed and manufactured" phrase does tend to ring true with my experiences. 

The Games Channel has already been through one Xbox, which died after what is sometimes called "general hardware failure". How does this happen? Microsoft either doesn't know, or won't explain.

The red light of death turns appears (aka 'red ring of death') and blammo - no more Dead or Alive, no more Lost Planet. The console dies and you go crazy, smashing windows, destroying furniture and then binge eating. 

For me it was back to the Sega Megadrive/Genesis and Gunstar Heroes to sooth the savage beast...

Microsoft has consistently been criticised by the media and the public for designing a console that regularly overheats (in summer we often have to ensure a fan is pointed at the console to keep it stable), scratches discs, and catastrophically fails for no other reason than the system is plagued with inherent bugs.

When our Xbox 360 stopped working, we decided that to call Microsoft would be like extracting blood from a stone, and because we purchased it from Target we simply took it back with the receipt and changed it for another brand-new one.

Logic would suggest that the hundreds of millions of dollars Microsoft spends on repairing and replacing faulty hardware could have been mollified by designing something a little more robust. But hey, the words 'corporation' and 'logic' rarely co-exist in the same sentence.

So, this Jorge Brouwer fellow in Florida is suing Microsoft for... let me see... US$5 million dollars, and is seeking class-action status. In other words, Brouwer is seriously pissed off! The lawsuit claims that Microsoft has received tons of complaints about the disc-scratching issue, but charges US$20 to replace discs. 

Microsoft released a statement saying "Out of the millions of Xbox consoles in use, Microsoft has not received any widespread reports of Xbox 360s scratching discs." 

Moreover, a spokesman for the company would not put a numeric figure on what constituted"widespread". Hmmm...

Based on the number of media articles, forum posts, and first-hand information concerning the Xbox 360, it is clear that the console is not flawless. It breaks. And at the moment Microsoft is sticking to its policy of fixing or replacing busted consoles rather than trying to engineer a solution into the console at the level of manufacture. 

As the Florida lawsuit indicates, gamers have had enough, and it'll be interesting to see what eventuates.

Theories

General Hardware Failure: Not long before Jorge Brouwer filed the lawsuit against Microsoft, on July 5th 2007 to be exact, the Seattle-based company extended the Xbox 360 console's warranty to 3 years, and to cover "general hardware failure". The cause of "general hardware failure"? No one really knows for sure, but I reckon it's a combination of Area 51, global warming, the Blue tooth frequency, and vampire bats.

Some reports suggest that the hard disk is the culprit, which can vibrate and work itself loose(ish) which further exacerbates the vibration problem and can crash the console. Sometimes putting something heavy on top of the Xbox 360 can reduce the vibration, as can removing the HDD and then ensuring it is firmly secured in place. If you don't have a hard disk and you're Xbox dies, well, you're up shit creek without a paddle.

Other sources claim the motherboard is the culprit, and that the cooling system is not good enough to keep the system at optimal operating temperatures. Microsoft has a support page for Xbox 360 faults here, and not long after its 2005 launch cited a console failure rate of between 3% and 5%. Since this figure was released shortly after the console's launch, Microsoft has not yet revised that figure.

Disc Scratching: Microsoft has begun placing a sticker on new Xbox 360 consoles that warns users not to move the console between vertical and horizontal positions while a disc is being read/played. This suggests that Microsoft is aware of a problem, possibly this problem. 

There are also unconfirmed reports that a Dutch TV show tested a number of Xbox 360 consoles and found that one out of every nine consoles scratched game discs after five hours of operation. What we can confirm is that there was a different Dutch TV show that featured a man who tried a different narcotic each week, describing the effects and emotions he felt. Ah, the Dutch!