XBOX 360 Slim: Dying, scamming and enraging customers already...

[MiracleOfSound]

Having been very kindly given a b-day gift of money towards a 360 Slim by a good friend, I was happy to trade in my old 360 for the sleek, whisper quiet machine.

The good news is it runs nicely - barely audible unless you get right next to it.

The new controllers are sleek and sexy, and feel more responsive.

But people have been having problems...

The most worrying one is here:


We were all happy to hear the RROD was gone, but in fact the wolf is wearing black sheep's clothing. It has, if numerous Youtube videos, Google links and customer complaints are to be believed, been replaced by... drum roll...

The Red Dot Of Death (copyright Micro$oft 2010)

The second problem was one I myself had. The component AV cable does not support HD, and it is cynically designed in such a way that a piece of jutting plastic blocks you from using a HDMI cable at the same time.

Why, you ask?

Well...this means the only way you can hook up your sound system or headphones is by buying a Micro$oft HD adapter.

Also... it does not ship with ANY HD connectors. That's right, you have to buy another cable separately if you want HD gaming. Thankfully Micro$oft have, in their wonderfully generous and altruistic company, boxed these two cables for us in a handy package costing 25 euros.

Also, once again, if you so much as breathe on the machine while playing a game, it will eat your disc for breakfast and give it back to you utterly destroyed.

Add to this the fact that the comically overpriced Kinect appears to be spouting up new issues every day such as not working for people wearing baggy clothes or - shock horror: sitting down! I mean, what kind of gamer likes to sit down, eh? Sheesh!

Don't get me wrong... I love my little XBOX Slim and will play it every day. But Micro$oft have once again demonstrated their utter contempt for their customers. Given the obscene number of problems I had with my old 360 (all of which Micro$oft support were useless with), it felt like salt in an old wound.

So for discussion's sake, have people bought the slim? What do you think of it and have you had any problems?

 

[MagicMouse]

If u want HDMI and components in at the same time take a screwdriver/knife and break the plastic housing in half. It won't hurt your cables and it works for me.

 

[Onyx Oblivion]

Hey...my new PS3 didn't come with an HD cable, either.

 

[MiracleOfSound]

If u want HDMI and components in at the same time take a screwdriver/knife and break the plastic housing in half. It won't hurt your cables and it works for me.

I was considering that but I don't want to void my warranty just yet...

EDIT:

Are you using a Slim or an Elite?

Because the plastic casing is different on the Slim, not sure it's as easy to break off.

 

[maddawg IAJI]

If u want HDMI and components in at the same time take a screwdriver/knife and break the plastic housing in half. It won't hurt your cables and it works for me.

Opening the 360 voids the warrenty to my knowledge. So if anything were to happen to my 360, say it fell over and is now unable to read discs or some other problem that would be increadibly difficult to fix myself, I wouldn't be able to send it off for repairs or return it. In short, I'd be left with an expensive black box.

OT: I didn't care for the 360 slim. I didn't want to waste my money on it when I have a perfectly good and working regular 360 that hasn't failed me in over 3 years and I'll be playing on that or my computer until Microsoft decides to actually release something that interests me.

 

[VanityGirl]

My friend has one and hasn't had any problems. He said he bought an HD cable for it and it works fine.

But, you can never be too sure if people are being honest or not.

 

[Glademaster_v1legacy]

Having been very kindly given a b-day gift of money towards a 360 Slim by a good friend, I was happy to trade in my old 360 for the sleek, whisper quiet machine.

The good news is it runs nicely - barely audible unless you get right next to it.

But people have been having problems...

The most worrying one is here:


We were all happy to hear the RROD was gone, but in fact the wolf is wearing black sheep's clothing. It has, if numerous Youtube videos, Google links and customer complaints are to be believed, been replaced by... drum roll...

The Red Dot Of Death (copyright Micro$oft 2010)

The second problem was one I myself had. The component AV cable does not support HD, and it is cynically designed in such a way that a piece of jutting plastic blocks you from using a HDMI cable at the same time.

Why, you ask?

Well...this means the only way you can hook up your sound system or headphones is by buying a Micro$oft HD adapter.

Also... it does not ship with ANY HD connectors. That's right, you have to buy another cable separately if you want HD gaming. Thankfully Micro$oft have, in their wonderfully generous and altruistic company, boxed these two cables for us in a handy package costing 25 euros.

Also, once again, if you so much as breathe on the machine while playing a game, it will eat your disc for breakfast and give it back to you utterly destroyed.

Add to this the fact that the comically overpriced Kinect appears to be spouting up new issues every day such as not working for people wearing baggy clothes or - shock horror: sitting down! I mean, what kind of gamer likes to sit down, eh? Sheesh!

Don't get me wrong... I love my little XBOX Slim and will play it every day. But Micro$oft have once again demonstrated their utter contempt for their customers. Given the obscene number of problems I had with my old 360 (all of which Micro$oft support were useless with), it felt like salt in an old wound.

So for discussion's sake, have people bought the slim? What do you think of it and have you had any problems?

Why do you bring up the point that moving it breaks the games? Who in their right mind would move a game console or anything for that matter with moving parts inside. You're just asking for trouble. You may as well take out the game itself and get a key and go crazy on that bad boy. Also as a side note people will always have problems and there needs to some indication on the console or system as to what the problem is which is why I liked the red rings of death. Although with Kinect it uses your joints or body fram to map your movement you you can hardly complain about wearingly slightly better fitting clothing. Although the other things are problems.

 

[migo]

I'm not surprised at all. I mean the reduction of the 3 year warranty to 1 year is worrying in itself. The length of the warranty is supposed to represent the quality. MS extended the warranty to 3 years because it was just that bad, but dropping it back to 1 suggests it's back at launch 360 quality levels. Removing the LEDs for the RRoD and replacing them with a single red dot also reeks of just curing the symptom rather than the problem. Also, the original 360 had a problem with scratched discs, and at launch it was obvious that the S made it worse.

In short, Microsoft has managed to deftly undo all the work they did to fix the rep of the 360 with the launch of the new one. I wonder if they discovered that they actually made more money off the faulty 360s than off the newer more reliable ones.

 

[MiracleOfSound]

Why do you bring up the point that moving it breaks the games? Who in their right mind would move a game console or anything for that matter with moving parts inside. You're just asking for trouble. You may as well take out the game itself and get a key and go crazy on that bad boy.

People sometimes move things by accident. It happens. People have kids, pets, narcolepsy, stuff like that y'know?

And beside, I once dropped my Gamecube from a five foot high shelf, it rolled all around the floor and when I looked back, the game was still running perfectly. Consoles can be built to avoid this problem.

 

[MiracleOfSound]

You do know you can just plug it directly into your tv and have your tv run to sound system.

Not if

a) You use Turtle Beaches or stereo connected 'XBOX Compatible' gaming headphones

b) Your TV does not have Audio Out phono jacks

 

[MiracleOfSound]

Now does the red light mean your console has crapped out on you? Or is it what happens when the console shuts itself off because it was going to overheat? I mean if its the later and works fine again an hour later then thats perfectly acceptable. Infact many many electronic devices work that way, with the red light and everything.

In theory it is supposed to mean it has overheated and needs to cool down.

Unfortunately some people have found that the cooldown period needed is... forever.

 

[Glademaster_v1legacy]

Why do you bring up the point that moving it breaks the games? Who in their right mind would move a game console or anything for that matter with moving parts inside. You're just asking for trouble. You may as well take out the game itself and get a key and go crazy on that bad boy.

People sometimes move things by accident. It happens. People have kids, pets, narcolepsy, stuff like that y'know?

And beside, I once dropped my Gamecube from a five foot high shelf, it rolled all around the floor and when I looked back, the game was still running perfectly. Consoles can be built to avoid this problem.

Yes which is why if you have any of these the console should be put in a position when this would not happen. If you were that worried or in danger of it the area the console is in could easily be moddified with would of any solid object to prevent it from moving.

 

[migo]

Now does the red light mean your console has crapped out on you? Or is it what happens when the console shuts itself off because it was going to overheat? I mean if its the later and works fine again an hour later then thats perfectly acceptable. Infact many many electronic devices work that way, with the red light and everything.

In theory it is supposed to mean it has overheated and needs to cool down.

Unfortunately some people have found that the cooldown period needed is... forever.

And since MS tells you to just wait for it to cooldown, they don't need to fix it.

 

[Danzaivar]

HDMI carries sound just fine. Why do you need to plug in the extra thing as well? Isn't your sound system hooked straight up to your Telly?

The Red of Death is just stupid tho. You woulda thought after all these years they would fix the damned design flaw!

 

[KeyMaster45]

Hey...my new PS3 didn't come with an HD cable, either.

Yeah but the difference with that is that you don't have to go out and buy a "Sony Certified" HDMI cable. Oddly enough despite having nothing in my house that uses HDMI when I bought my PS3 we happened to find a pristine unopened one from Best Buy just...lying around.

This only solidifies my argument for technology gnomes.

 

[wooty]

My mates 360-s lasted a full........... *da da da daaaaaaaaaa* 12 days before it decided to brick, he's not impressed either so he went back to the Elite

 

[John Tacos]

I'm not surprised at all. I mean the reduction of the 3 year warranty to 1 year is worrying in itself. The length of the warranty is supposed to represent the quality. MS extended the warranty to 3 years because it was just that bad, but dropping it back to 1 suggests it's back at launch 360 quality levels. Removing the LEDs for the RRoD and replacing them with a single red dot also reeks of just curing the symptom rather than the problem. Also, the original 360 had a problem with scratched discs, and at launch it was obvious that the S made it worse.

In short, Microsoft has managed to deftly undo all the work they did to fix the rep of the 360 with the launch of the new one. I wonder if they discovered that they actually made more money off the faulty 360s than off the newer more reliable ones.

I've gone through 4 Xbox 360's since it's been released, and they all have RROD. I know the feeling quite well of having to send it in right when a boss new game comes out, and I can definitely feel the pain for the Red Dotter's. However, I've never scratched a single disc on any Xbox I've ever owned, nor my friend's. If you take care to remove the disc before moving the Xbox, or just make sure not to bump the Xbox, it wont scratch.

 

[MiracleOfSound]

Yes which is why if you have any of these the console should be put in a position when this would not happen. If you were that worried or in danger of it the area the console is in could easily be moddified with would of any solid object to prevent it from moving.

I'm sorry but I still think it is unnaceptable for this problem to exist in this day and age.

If every electronic device we owned was built to this standard, people would walk around thier houses like Irish dancers, afraid to move thier arms.