Xbone grinding discs? Grindgate? + Green Screen of Death

[RJ 17]

Still yet further proof of why buying a new console once it's released is a bad idea. There's always going to be all sorts of issues that need to be worked out. Stuff like this is why I don't intend to pick up a new console until next summer, if not later.

Never had an issue with a day one purchase. Nor has anyone I have ever met. These are very small cases, don't make it seem like this is incredibly common.

Nah, I think I will make it seem like this is incredibly common. It's more fun that way. Especially when you consider all the issues the 360 had right out of the gate with the RRoD and such, something which was very common and happened to pretty much everyone I knew that had a 360 in the early days.

 

[GoaThief]

There is no such thing as a failed console launch. Period. Ever. They get built before a single console is sold.

Of course there is, if it doesn't sell for one. That is a failed launch.

Consoles would not get made if projected early adopter/sales were zero or very small. I am not sure why you're struggling with this.

I find your comment about the "amount of videos and the like that have sprung up" to be highly questionable when you (an admitted PS4 early adaptor) created an entire topic just to post some of those videos.

Sorry, where else was I supposed to post them? One thing that would be suspect is making a thread like this with no evidence whatsoever. Not like I could link to a website either as none had run with it prior to me making this thread.

is this just you trying to create a little extra justification for your launch purchase last week?

Conspiracy everywhere! You're so far off base here. I don't own a PS4 yet. I have no plans to purchase an Xbone until a Kinect free SKU and reflective price drop is announced. I would buy one in quick order if that were to happen, although I may get one anyway some years down the line when price drops anyway so I can justify the expensive paperweight that comes with the Xbone. I have owned the OG Xbox and 360 from very early on in their respective life cycles and had roughly decade old Gold live accounts. I have repeatedly hoped the Xbone would do well and these problems are minimal. The suggestion of yours is pretty ludicrous and flies in the face of reason and evidence.

Enough about me now, you seem to want to know a lot and it's not really relevant to the topic. I don't know why you feel you have to comment on my purchasing habits nor why you are so insistent on bashing new consoles and those that buy them. It's getting a bit tiresome. Happy to discuss the topic but otherwise you won't be getting any further responses from me.

 

[shrekfan246]

There is no such thing as a failed console launch. Period. Ever. They get built before a single console is sold. High or low sales on day one do nothing to effect that. Further down the road, when it comes time to produce additional consoles to match market demand is when those numbers matter.

Except if they have low early sales, then they won't be able to ship as many additional consoles further down the road...

They're sold to recoup the cost of production. If a console doesn't sell, the company producing it loses money. Ergo, "failed launch". The phrase doesn't mean "The company crashes and burns into the ground the day after their console is released because no units were moved", it means "The console was a financial failure for the company that created it". A very ambiguous measurement, to be sure, especially when certain video game publishers start to consider game sales of 3+ million to be "failures", but I think you're taking the "failed console launch" terminology a tad too literally. It doesn't have to sell literally zero units to be considered a failure, because whether something is a "success" or "failure" is generally measured by commercial earnings.

OT: It'll be interesting to see what the failure rates are for the Xbox One, and how they compare to the PS4.

You'd think it wouldn't be that costly to put a halfway decent disk drive into your home console these days, though.

 

[FrozenLaughs]

Hmmm you implied pretty strongly that it was your choice to pick up a launch console, the way you worded your defense of the practice seemed to imply you picked one up. My bad.

So since everyone seems to beleive that a "failed launch" is possible, can you reference a few so I can browse actual long term numbers of sales? I want to read up on this fauxnomenon. Typing "failed launch" into Google results in a clusterf*ck.

 

[Roxas1359]

Hmmm you implied pretty strongly that it was your choice to pick up a launch console, the way you worded your defense of the practice seemed to imply you picked one up. My bad.

So since everyone seems to beleive that a "failed launch" is possible, can you reference a few so I can browse actual long term numbers of sales? I want to read up on this fauxnomenon. Typing "failed launch" into Google results in a clusterf*ck.

I suggest starting with some of the more well known ones, in this case the Sega Saturn, 3DO, Atari Jaguar, Virtual Boy, and Nokia N-Gage. For peripherials that would basically transform the console entirely I recommend checking out stuff on the Nintendo 64 DD, the 32X, and Sega CD.
Those are considered launch failures.

 

[FrozenLaughs]

Hmm interesting reads. We have to go back 10-15 to reference any of them, but interesting.

Sega Saturn was only considered a launch failure in North America, and is primarily linked to Sega's surprise launch fiasco that released the system earlier than they had announced, and severely limiting the available launch title. A gamble that didn't pay off.

The 3DO launched at $700 in *1993* and management refused to lower the price. Another gamble that didn't pay off.

Atari Jaguar had no support from the upper management at Atari, resulting in high prices and little software support. We all know Atari never had a good run of *anything*. Another gamble.

NGage and Gizmodo definitely fit the bill tho, but coming from companies with zero experience it's not surprising. We're starting to see the same thing today with the Ouya. (granted the kickstarter funders got what they paid for so... Not technically a fail?)

Virtual boy definitely was an all around failure.

I don't think it's fair to lump peripherals into the debate, as none of the systems they were designed for were failures themselves. It's the same debate calling the kinect a failure.

So in reality what we have for launch failures are in fact systems that had terrible lifespans overall. Terrible management support, and terrible software support. Nothing in the last 3 generations has suffered these problems. Everything today is hardware malfunction. Most of the people today crying "launch failure" on the internet were barely alive the last time there was in fact a mainstream failure.

Very interesting numbers. I had no idea some of those systems sold so poorly over their lifespans.

 

[Church185]

Hmm interesting reads. We have to go back 10-15 to reference any of them, but interesting.

Sega Saturn was only considered a launch failure in North America, and is primarily linked to Sega's surprise launch fiasco that released the system earlier than they had announced, and severely limiting the available launch title. A gamble that didn't pay off.

The 3DO launched at $700 in *1993* and management refused to lower the price. Another gamble that didn't pay off.

Atari Jaguar had no support from the upper management at Atari, resulting in high prices and little software support. We all know Atari never had a good run of *anything*. Another gamble.

NGage and Gizmodo definitely fit the bill tho, but coming from companies with zero experience it's not surprising. We're starting to see the same thing today with the Ouya. (granted the kickstarter funders got what they paid for so... Not technically a fail?)

Virtual boy definitely was an all around failure.

I don't think it's fair to lump peripherals into the debate, as none of the systems they were designed for were failures themselves. It's the same debate calling the kinect a failure.

So in reality what we have for launch failures are in fact systems that had terrible lifespans overall. Terrible management support, and terrible software support. Nothing in the last 3 generations has suffered these problems. Everything today is hardware malfunction. Most of the people today crying "launch failure" on the internet were barely alive the last time there was in fact a mainstream failure.

Very interesting numbers. I had no idea some of those systems sold so poorly over their lifespans.

Go look up the Sega Dreamcast. That launch was so bad it put Sega out of the console market. The system was great, I had one, but financially it was a failure. The only reason it lasted as long as it did was because a handful of people ran out and bought them at launch. Crazy Taxi and Sonic Adventure were the best.

 

[Hazy992]

Could just be isolated incidents like the PS4, so I'll reserve my judgement for now.

I went to an event today where you could play on X1's and there must have been at least 50 consoles there. None of them seemed to have had any issues.

 

[KarmaTheAlligator]

Could just be isolated incidents like the PS4, so I'll reserve my judgement for now.

I went to an event today where you could play on X1's and there must have been at least 50 consoles there. None of them seemed to have had any issues.

Well, unless they unboxed the consoles right there and then, it stands to reason they tested them first so they wouldn't have faulty hardware for the event. Pity the issue wasn't known before, you could have asked the people who organised the event if they had any problems.

 

[wooty]

Its a slight risk you take with launches all the time, sometimes you get lucky.

I know I bought a launch 360.....and then 2 more after that over the course of a year......
Though my PS3 is still going strong after buying it on launch day. Six years and its still operating nicely, give or take a couple of crashes over the last year or so, but still no problems.

All the luck of the draw really.

 

[Arnoxthe1]

Grindgate? Really? That's the best name they could come up with? Wow, we got some real imaginative folks here.

Anyway, I'm sure this is just like the PS4 in that there's actually a very small number of actual broken consoles.

 

[DrOswald]

It is too early to say how bad this is. It is possible that there is a fault in the design, or it is possible that one of the factories the Xbone is created is having problems, or even that the people who are reporting this error are morons who dropped the console or something. Maybe the UPS dude dropped the box on the way to the door. Give it a week to a month and we will see how big a problem this actually is.

p.s. Having listened to a few more of the videos, to me is sounds like the laser rail is stuck. That can happen for a couple reasons, but it usually involves the machine being dropped or otherwise receiving a shock.

 

[faefrost]

Given how easy it is to post stuff on the Internet, I'd take any launch day reports as at best anecdotal and overblown. More critical will be seeing real numbers a few weeks in. But honestly what will it matter. I have friends that have gone through 4 or 5 XB360's due to RROD and quality issues. Yet they still go back to fork over for another. We trained MS in particular and all console makers in general that we are morons, and product quality does not matter.

 

[Soundwave]

When will people learn to stop buying things! I've been playing with the same rock for decades, and it's just as nice as the day I found it in my shoe.

 

[TheIceQueen]

Why do we have to keep naming things after Watergate? I don't even see how this is a scandal, let alone why it deserves the suffix of -gate.

 

[Jazoni89]

Hmm interesting reads. We have to go back 10-15 to reference any of them, but interesting.

Sega Saturn was only considered a launch failure in North America, and is primarily linked to Sega's surprise launch fiasco that released the system earlier than they had announced, and severely limiting the available launch title. A gamble that didn't pay off.

The 3DO launched at $700 in *1993* and management refused to lower the price. Another gamble that didn't pay off.

Atari Jaguar had no support from the upper management at Atari, resulting in high prices and little software support. We all know Atari never had a good run of *anything*. Another gamble.

NGage and Gizmodo definitely fit the bill tho, but coming from companies with zero experience it's not surprising. We're starting to see the same thing today with the Ouya. (granted the kickstarter funders got what they paid for so... Not technically a fail?)

Virtual boy definitely was an all around failure.

I don't think it's fair to lump peripherals into the debate, as none of the systems they were designed for were failures themselves. It's the same debate calling the kinect a failure.

So in reality what we have for launch failures are in fact systems that had terrible lifespans overall. Terrible management support, and terrible software support. Nothing in the last 3 generations has suffered these problems. Everything today is hardware malfunction. Most of the people today crying "launch failure" on the internet were barely alive the last time there was in fact a mainstream failure.

Very interesting numbers. I had no idea some of those systems sold so poorly over their lifespans.

Go look up the Sega Dreamcast. That launch was so bad it put Sega out of the console market. The system was great, I had one, but financially it was a failure. The only reason it lasted as long as it did was because a handful of people ran out and bought them at launch. Crazy Taxi and Sonic Adventure were the best.

Completely not true at all...

Of it's short two year lifespan, the Dreamcast's launch was probably the most profitable Sega had been for a long time since then. With it being the most successful launch of any console up to that point, with serious hardware shortages, and brisk sales. The Launch lineup was also probably the best there has even been on a console before and since. What with HOTD 2, Power Stone, Marvel VS Capcom, RE Code Veronica, Sonic Adventure, Jet Set Radio, and Crazy Taxi being must haves for the console.

It was only when the PS2 launched was Sega in trouble, and their passed mistakes of putting too much money on failed products like the 32X crept up on them like a bad rash.

 

[search_rip]

This guy is on his second faulty console in 16 hours

0_0 second console in 16 hours ?!?! Or this is a massive problem for the Xbone or that dude is one of the unluckist people on earth, wich ever is more plausible...

 

[Private Custard]

0_0 second console in 16 hours ?!?! Or this is a massive problem for the Xbone or that dude is one of the unluckist people on earth, wich ever is more plausible...

Judging purely by the last generation, I don't reckon he's that unlucky.

My fifth 360 died a couple of years ago, and then died again a few weeks ago after I'd fixed it. Funnily enough, it was my first RRoD, with the rest being defective DVD drives. Everyone I know personally has had at least two failures.

I had two go on me in 45 minutes one day!

Microsoft proved they could build something tough with the original XBox (mine's still soldiering on). They blew all that trust with the huge fuck-up that was the 360. They'll have to do a lot to shake that rep.

 

[Evonisia]

Could be an isolated incident (much like the PS4 and the Wii U), or I'm just very lucky to not have my Dead Rising 3 make that sound.