Microsoft's Biggest Mistake With The 360? Options

[MeKiwi]

Depends on what you mean by "mistake." I am disappointed by the RROD issue, but not surprised... new technology often has it's drawbacks and glitches. I am pissed by their denial of the problem for the last year and a half, but that's standard marketing and I think it was much less of a "mistake" than the opposite would have been. If they had come out and said "Yeah, nearly 1/3 of all 360's out there will die" no one would buy one and they'd have no market share for Sony to try and take back. So, business-wise, neither of those are really "mistakes", in my book.

What I consider to be their biggest mistake isn't listed on the poll, and that is the fact that not every 360 has a HDD, so no developer can count on it to be there. Sure, some developers may take advantage of it if it's present, but realistically most developers will write the code assuming you DON'T have a HDD, thereby making the HDD simply a glorified storage device and bypassing all the caching and other improvements that the HDD gave in the original XBox. This holds especially true given the time crunch the developers already go through... not many will have the luxury of taking the time to write extra code to optimize the use of a HDD.

Just my two cents.

[Kurto2022]

If DivX were supported by either PS3 or Xbox360 the sales would skyrocket. I would have 2 or 3 units

[stezo2k]

RoD is the biggest issue and is bricking many 360s, thankfully mines been fine since day one which is pretty rare for a launch console.

Lack of HD disc/movie file playback would be my 2nd issue as i'd get a better use out of my new HDTV

[slimgrip]

Ignoring the RRoD for so long has to be the single biggest mistake.
Had they acknowledged it from the start & said they were working on finding a resolve they would have saved a lot of face.

Personally both my 360s have been fine. (touch wood)

Slim

[astor_boynton]

The 3RLoD is definitely a problem. But on the other hand PS3 has barely been around long enough to start showing signs of teething problems. I successfully fixed my 360 using LawDawgs method but if it fails again I doubt I will be parting with another $650AUD to replace my 360 with another one that is likely to follow the same fate.

[TreyTable]

Man, choosing just one was too difficult, almost. Some, I don't understand why they're listed, like "No internal High-Def/Capacity Disc" and "Lack of a web browser". C'mon, lack of a web browser? Like that'd be great.. how many people remember how fun that was on the Dreamcast? Also, the 'no internal high capacity disc' ? Is that really a big issue? Yeah, like I'd wan a $600 XBOX 360.. High capacity doesn't magically make for great games.

I think the biggest problem with the XBOX 360 is with the XBOX 360 Core system. Every system should have a Hard Drive.

Or if that's too strict, let developers make games that require at least the 20GB HDD. I mean what is that seven GB for on my 20 GB HDD?

Ignoring the RRoD was bad, but they are working on that... Besides, anybody who doesn't buy a two year warranty on a consumer electronics device that costs more than $300 is asking for trouble.

[0794]

obviously these are personal issues and since i have not had any mechanical failure with my 360, then the lack of media support is hands down my biggest issue with the 360. of course i understand the licensing issues with multiple codec support and do not blame MS at all. but that is the reason that my numerous original xboxes networked throughout my home get way more use than my 360 ever will...at least until H3 is released in September...

[hassan]

how could anyone think that ms biggest mistake was ignoring the problem? the problem should never have happened in the first place. I'm talking about the rrod by the way

This post has been edited by hassan: Jul 16 2007, 12:45 AM

[espionix]

The biggest problem that affects me is the exclusives, i've not encountered any of the listed problems above.

I bought my 360 for GoW, now the PC appears to be getting what looks like a better version/update whatever, you didn't buy a Sega for Sonic, then see it released on the SNES, it just didn't happen.

Im an avid pc gamer, and if you look at games for the 360, and take away all the ones that are also available/will be available its pretty pathetic.

[hangintotheleft]

This is the kind of poll that I'd want to pick more than one answer. They had a lot of mistakes made with the 360, 20 GB isn't even enough for a hard drive when the demos and media were huge in size.

The no-web browser issue was another problem, you couldn't surf the web on a 360!? which was easily compatible a keyboard.

The crap they call Media Playback, you could look at some files, but usually not the ones you want.
I mean, if you've ever downloaded a movie before, even from iTunes, and wanted to play it on you fancy Hi-Def TV, you couldn't because Microshaft only wanted to support their files.

Ignoring the RRoD. what the hell were they thinking? We've all seen the BSoD, and some even during Microsoft conference: http://youtube.com/watch?v=RgriTO8UHvs

I could live with the D-Pad being a little flawed, it didnt' affect me much.

The headset was something else, I went through 3 headsets in 3 months. After that, I decided to stop using them.

After about a year with my HDD it suddenly messed up on me, expectable, but terrible. I figured I'll go out and buy myself a new 20GB xbox 360 HDD for mabye 50 bucks CAN, but I was wrong, to buy a new HDD, it would've cost me $200 CAN! So, that's when i said "F**k this, I'm gonna play games on my computer."

Thank you for reading my rant, I hope you enjoyed it. I for one, feel more relaxed already.

This post has been edited by hangintotheleft: Jul 17 2007, 11:07 AM

[jude]

Their biggest mistake was the HD .

[l_oliveira]

They had the best console design ever made and managed to ruin it by asking board manufacturers to "be as cheap as possible".

Ignoring RRoD at top of my list. It happened and should be fixed to avoid further damage to the product image.
RRoD as second, it should never happened, but happened.
Overpriced HDD and memory cards.

Not on the list, but I also have to mention that their commitment on regional lockdown enforcement for LIVE games is pretty lame. I don't blame them for blocking region download of movie and music contents but blocking the games and demos ? That's total bull sh*t.

Now they have to fix millions of units. Even Moore resigned ... oh well ...

[warlordship]

Since I haven't had a RROD yet (Elite on release day), I am not too saddened by it. My vote has to be media playback, if I had to choose from the list. XBMC is used 90% of the time for my xbox now, and not my emulators or other games.

I'm amazed that the lack of a hard drive as standard is not as much of an issue as it must be. Without the drive, games must be designed with the lack in mind, and as others before me have already mentioned, no drive caching.

Easy fix. I'd be willing to bet that most people have bought only premium systems, or have bought a HDD addon for their core, if they got it. So developers? Just make the game with the drive in mind. Let's put this unpleasant-ness behind us by making core systems VERY unpopular, by requiring a hard drive for your game. Those without drives will either upgrade to play your game, or not play it. If I was developing games, I'd rather try to make HDD's standard than get 10% more sales...

[vengeancegoon]

Voted RoD as mine died this very morning. Launch console, never gave me any grief until the last two weeks. The odd freeze and then today RoD. Boo, I was just about to buy Bomberman.

Sigh, I'm off to buy a PS3 so I can at least play something for the next 6 weeks while I wait for my console.

[fritoeata]

Decisions, decisions...
•The rrod was a definite source of frustration for many(thank God not me! but my power supply tanked after only 3 months...)
•denial by M$ was a HUGE slap in the face!
But...
For me(by a narrow margin),
the biggest pain in the ass to me is the lack of codecs available!! They now support Apple formats, but for heaven's sake! We've got 2 of the 3 most accepted formats unrecognized... Xvid, Divx!
---Frito