Over at 8-bit Joystick, Jake posted an interview with an unidentified source “from inside Redmond” with a litany of complaints about the XBox 360 launch. (Actually, as the source later noted, he left Microsoft before the XBox 360 launched.)
The source’s biggest complaint: the XBox 360 was launched too fast with not enough quality control. Some number of the first batch of 360s that were shipped — around 30%, according to Jake’s source — were defective and had to be replaced. Why? Lots of reasons, but the primary one was that the XBox 360 could easily overheat, damaging the unit.
Digg, Slashdot, and all the other usual suspects have been having a field day with Jake’s post. (Good on Jake. He can use the traffic.)
What I don’t quite get is why any of this is taking anyone by surprise. Yes, the first run of 360s notoriously had a high failure rate, about 30 percent depending on who you ask. It was widely discussed in the gamer press last May. Microsoft tacitly admitted the problem when they spent over a billion dollars extending the 360’s warranty. If you’ve got a failed 360, Microsoft will replace it.
Yes, Microsoft hurried the 360 out the door. (Remember how long it took to see 360s in the stores? Microsoft had severe supply chain problems on launch; they hadn’t had time to build enough units in advance to keep up with the demand.) Why rush it? Simple: conventional wisdom said that the main reason PlayStation 2 did so much better than the original Xbox was that Sony got the PlayStation 2 out the door first. When it came time to ship the 360, Microsoft wanted to be first to market.
If they had it all to do over again, I suspect the execs would make the exact same decisions. Xbox 360 currently has double the market share of the Playstation 3, and a lot of that is because the 360 had a big, big head start.
Of course Microsoft should have built a more robust system. Still. Fellow gamers, let’s be honest with ourselves: we knew the 360 didn’t like heat. That’s why the manual said PREVENT THE CONSOLE FROM OVERHEATING in big bold letters on page 2 and the over-warm power supply was separate from the case. How many of us took that new 360 and shoved it into that tiny, airless, little slot between the TV cabinet and the subwoofer? Yeah, Microsoft needed to build a more robust system, but let’s be realistic here. We’re not all the innocent victims of bad product design.
So: lots of sound and fury, but somebody still needs to explain to me what’s new here.
(Full disclosure: I worked for Microsoft in 2005 when the XBox 360 shipped, but I worked in a completely different part of the company. I’ve since left their employ. This is all opinion; my involvement and knowledge of the XBox team was zero. I waited in line to buy my 360 with everyone else.)