Reality check on Xbox 360

By Daniel Terdiman
Staff Writer, CNET News.com

Published: November 29, 2005, 12:53 PM PST

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In the days following last week's debut of Microsoft's Xbox 360, video game fan sites and the mainstream press seemed to be in a race to outdo each other with reports of problems with the new consoles.

Quite a few postings, such as those appearing on game sites like Xbox-Scene, relate the experiences of some angry Xbox 360 owners whose new machines have already overheated or crashed.

But the good news for consumers--at least so far--is that the glitches appear to be isolated. Though it's still too early to quantify the problems or say for certain how widespread they are, most of the die-hard gamers who were able to get an Xbox 360 aren't complaining about their much-coveted new consoles, according to gaming experts and research analysts.

"I have 12 friends in (my) area who...purchased Xbox 360 units on launch day," said Michael Pica, a staff member at Xbox-Scene. "I had a number of them over to my house Sunday for some Xbox 360 LAN (Local Area Network) gaming. We talked about the reports of faulty Xbox 360s and all of them claimed to have experienced no problems at all."

News.context

What's new:
Following the much-anticipated launch of Microsoft's Xbox 360, some complaints about glitches have begun circulating online.

Bottom line:
Analysts say it shouldn't come as a shock to see problems in a product that's on its first run out of the factory. But the good news for consumers is that so far the glitches appear to be isolated.

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No matter how many problems have actually cropped up with the new console, any glitches are big news after months of buildup to the Nov. 22 launch. Microsoft has billed the new Xbox as the best video game experience ever and hung a hefty $399 price tag on the "premium" Xbox 360 model that most gamers have bought--all building expectations of a flawless experience.

Microsoft admits that some of the consoles have had performance failures of one kind or another, but the company said complaints so far have not been overwhelming.

"The vast majority of folks" are not having problems with their Xbox 360s, said Molly O'Donnell, a spokeswoman for Microsoft's Xbox group. "We have received some isolated reports of consoles not working, and we're doing everything we can to take care of them."

O'Donnell told CNET News.com that consumers who experience problems with their consoles should first visit the Xbox troubleshooting page. If the suggestions on the Web site don't solve the problem, she said, gamers can call 1-800-4MY-XBOX and receive an overnight box in which to return their console. If customers move quickly, she said, they should have their Xboxes repaired or replaced and returned within a week.

Still, some analysts say the glitches can't be that much of a shock in a product on its first run out of the factory.

"Clearly, Microsoft has been constrained in the number of products it has been able to get into the channel," said Ross Rubin, director of industry analysis at The NPD Group, "and so perhaps they've been pretty aggressive in terms of getting supply out, and it's quite common during an initial run of products to run into some quality-control issues."

"It's quite common during an initial run of products to run into some quality-control issues."

--Ross Rubin, director of industry analysis, The NPD Group

Similarly, reports of malfunctions with the newly released consoles have not surprised David Cole, an analyst at DFC Intelligence.

"It doesn't sound like it's that big a problem," Cole said. "One thing you always say about these new machines is that the first units (have issues). The manufacturing process, when you're just getting started--there's all these little bugs."

When Sony's PlayStation 2 first hit stores, he said, it had bugs, largely with DVD playback.

Rubin said that despite the widespread nature of stories about issues with the Xbox, there's no way to know how frequent the problems actually are.

"It's difficult because not only are there so few units out in the marketplace right now," he said, "but most of the reporting has been anecdotal."

But to an Xbox 360 user like Derrick Bodden, the bugs are hardly an anecdote. His particular glitch came in the form of "artifacts" that appeared on his screen days after he first got his new Xbox.

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As the console debuts, devotees line up in the rain and in the desert.

"I think the unit was only running for about an hour and a half when I started getting blue trianglelike artifacts. Then the unit froze," Bodden said. "After letting (it) cool down for a couple hours, I turned it back on. On the boot-up animation, it was (flickering) these gray boxlike things...When I would go to play a game again, it would do the same blue triangle thing, (then) freeze."

One Xbox 360 user, posting as ZNB on the blog Knowledgeultra, went so far as to title a posting, "Gotta Love my Lemon 360."

In the post, ZNB wrote: "After playing my Xbox 360 a bunch over the Thanksgiving holiday, I have realized one thing. It likes to freeze. When I pop in my ('Perfect Dark Zero') game, it wants to freeze up at random times. What started out as freezing once or twice turned into freezing every two minutes."

And other Xbox users have reported problems with the advanced remote control included in the premium edition of the console.

Pica, the Xbox-Scene staffer, said most of the Xbox problems reported on his site boil down to three categories.