Gaming The Shocking Inside Story of the Epic Defects That Killed Millions of Xbox 360s

[The Helper]

Dean Takahashi, one of the most respected tech journos around, spent years putting together this mind-blowing expose that reveals the truly epic scale of the problems that lead to millions of dead Xbox 360s. It really is one of the most stunning flustercucks in gaming history. According to his account, Microsoft willfully ignored deep, systemic problems in the console's production that reached from chipmakers—initially, only 16 out of every 100 of its IBM-made processors worked—to production lines, where just before launch, an unbelievable 68 percent of consoles made were clunkers.

Here are a couple of the more jaw-dropping excerpts:

Most of the problems pointed to as the cause of the epidemic of Red Rings of Death showed up way before launch, naturally:

In an Aug. 30, 2005 memo, the team reported overheating graphics chip, cracking heat sinks, cosmetic issues with the hard disk drive and the front of the box, under-performing graphics memory chips from Infineon (now Qimonda), a problem with the DVD drive, and other things.

The test machines were not properly debugged, due to an ill-advised cost-cutting initiative that shaved $2 million from $25 million paid to Cimtek, a test machine maker in Canada. The Microsoft team decided not to pay the consulting fee to Cimtek to build, manage and debug the test machines. Sources familiar with the matter said there were only about 500 test machines at the time of launch, a third of the 1,500 needed.

“There were so many problems, you didn’t know what was wrong,” said one source of the machines. “The [test engineers] didn’t have enough time to get up and running.”

The Shocking Inside Story of the Epic Defects That Killed Millions of Xbox 360s

Dean Takahashi, one of the most respected tech journos around, spent years putting together this mind-blowing expose that reveals the truly epic scale of the problems that lead to millions of dead Xbox 360s. It really is one of the most stunning flustercucks in gaming history. According to his...

gizmodo.com

 

[Prometheus]

MegaFuck by M$

 

[EatShrooms]

Yeah, that was pretty shocking.

 

[Snowbizzle]

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Fuck Microsoft.

None of this is even surprising. It's just slightly more greed than we're used to being condensed into one epic fail.

 

[Wiseman_2]

I'm one of the few people (3 as of now) amongst my friends who hasn't suffered a broken console, ever.

Why? Because I have a PS3 of course

 

[Cornface]

Well, 360 got all the good games in my opinion. So I am sticking with that. I haven't got the red ring of death yet, and I had my 360 for soon a year.

 

[BANANAMAN]

i guess you still have 1 more year with it

 

[DDRtists]

I got mine Refurb, and I've not had many problems with it. I put in a 3rd part DVD Drive because they're much better, and sometimes the DVD drive door gets hung up, but other than that I don't have much.