My Problems With The Xbox 360

The Xbox 360 is a piece of crap, there I said it. I've been thinking it for a while now. I really hadn't played it too much since it came out, but recently I've been looking to Microsoft's "powerful" white system for entertainment and all its fault's are now purely in sight. The console has been plagued by defects that are rumored to have infected up to one-third of the consoles. It's a shoddy system housed in a sleek white exterior to deceive us.

First off, the red rings. I can't say anything about the red rings except that it's a slap in the face. I didn't even have my machine break on me (yet) and I'm sick of them. Microsoft goes and makes a console that can't even stand on its own two legs. Then they admit to their problems, extend the warranty to a year (which Sony and Nintendo already had as a standard) and divert attention to how they will handle the situation. Very Smart but Not very well executed. Yes, they are taking care of customers. They are refunding people who paid for repairs and working to make things right, but solve one problem at a time. It seems like they still don't know how to put together a system that will last more than a few months. I've personally met people who had multiple repairs done on their machines. Some of consoles didn't even work out of the box when Microsoft sent it back to them. So what do the customers do, stop waiting on Microsoft and go buy a new Xbox 360. Somehow Microsoft is able to sell two consoles to the same customer. That's a genius Marketing Strategy. So now how does Microsoft deal with the problem? Up the warranty to an amazing three years!?!?! Yes that's nice, but how about you just get the people a freaking working system. I don't think consumers want to be shipping systems back and forth for a few months/years to get things worked out. As a person who works in retail, I personally find it more frustrating taking back defective 360s than telling people we don't have Wii's.

The next step is to look back and see why all this happened. The cause is Microsoft's rush to get out ahead of Nintendo and Sony. This is probably their smartest move. I believe Microsoft KNEW that they were going to have problems with the 360, but their biggest advantage would be that year head start they had. I guess they figured they could work any problems with the systems out as they went along. I agree. If that was the case, that was the smart decision. If not for the line-up of games and online play the 360 has right now, who knows where they'd be? Probably in the toilet.

Let's move on to pricing. Microsoft made a big deal about the two different versions and how they were trying to cater to the different types of "gamers." The core system is the biggest waste of space. I don't care how you justify it, there's maybe three people in the world who the Core is a better fit for and honestly those people can tough it out and pay a little more for the Premium. I don't know how many people I've seen come in and buy a Core only to come in two weeks later and buy a Hard Drive (which if you calculate is the same price as a Premium, minus the headset and component/ethernet cables). Microsoft did it from the beginning. They got everyone so damn confused. The pricing for the Xbox 360 and anything having to do with it is just so ridiculous. Here I am a year a half later and because of the 10 GBs Microsoft has to use for their own backward compatibility files, I'm trying to get enough money to buy a ridiculously overpriced 120 GB hard drive. I know that Microsoft likes to dangle little things in front of their customers like DVD Mini-remotes and HDMI cables but how much does that actually cost for them. Then they go and charge 100 bucks for a wireless adapter that is the only one that actually freaking works on the Xbox. I know that the PS3 is 600 bucks, but when you figure in the wireless and the Blue-ray and add the cost of the HD-DVD Drive, the PS3 is actually a better deal. Along with the 100 price drop coming this month, I think Microsoft better get their sh*t together and quick.