Consumerist.com Writes: Reader Kevin's XBOX 360 suffered the usual Red Ring of Death, so he sent it in to be repaired. He got back a different XBOX 360 with a different serial number. That would be no big deal, except Kevin has purchased a bunch of content through XBOX Live... content that is no longer fully functional due to Microsoft's broken DRM.
Here's a quick summary:
November 2007: Kevin's XBOX 360 is replaced, causing his content to lose full functionality. He calls Microsoft.
Microsoft keeps Kevin on the phone for an hour trying different methods of restoring functionality to his content. Nothing works. They say they will call him back in two weeks. They do not call him back, so he calls them. Microsoft makes him repeat the steps he tried the first time he called. They tell him they will call him back in two weeks. This cycle repeats twice more before Kevin gets a call from Frank at XBOX escalations. It's now the second week of January. Kevin periodically speaks to Frank. Frank has no answers for him.
February 7, 2008: Frank tells Kevin that there's nothing more he can do and, when Kevin asks when he can expect a resolution, Frank says "hopefully sometime in 2008."
This could be fun as they make great tables. Go big or go extinct. Prime your senses for a neural handshake and step into the cockpit of a Jaeger. It is on you to cancel the apocalypse when Pacific Rim Pinball comes to Pinball FX on May 16.
Microsoft just posted the third quarter of its 2024 fiscal financial results. The software maker made $61.9 billion in revenue and a net income of $21.9 billion during Q3. Revenue is up 17 percent, and net income has increased by 20 percent.
Xbox content + services up 62% while hardware down 31%... seems about right with the way they tout you don't need the hardware to play. People can play on their phones or smart tv or other means. I don't hardly play on my consoles directly since getting devices like the logitech g-cloud and ps portal. Which is to also say I have been playing more digital than physical because of these devices.
Too expensive hardware when others offer the same or more for less? Good work, Green Team.
"Despite some early successes for Xbox games on rival platforms, Xbox hardware is down by a massive 31 percent this quarter."
"Without Activision Blizzard, Microsoft’s overall gaming revenue would have actually declined this quarter."
"Xbox content and services would have only been up a single percent without Activision Blizzard..."
"It looks like next quarter is going to be a similar story for gaming at Microsoft, too."
That is crazy... so A/B/K is carrying the whole Xbox gaming.
Oh and Microsoft will be fine. Windows, Office and Cloud are growing with each pc purchase.
As of right now, there are no monopolies in the games industry, and for the sake of the medium as a whole, they never should either.
And yet the biggest tech companies in America are essentially that. They buy up all the small comps only to kill them off and steal what they have, and if they can't buy em they bleed them to death.
They buy IPs not talent. That's why these buyouts never work and the IPs die. Right now it's too expensive to develop games - but I expect that to shift maybe as AI tools can make it easier. The best games have been indie games for awhile as big developers fuck their ips to death with "games as a service" -
I thought the general rule of thumb for 360 owners were to simply go out and buy another system every time theirs broke. I have seen them all post here time and time again doing just that. So just go and re-buy your downloads again. Problem solved.
or,
You could INVEST in a system that is NOT fundamentally FLAWED which in turn flaws every other facet of the system. Short answer, go buy a PS3 and enjoy gaming.
He should write to Bill Gates.
damn. ill be sending mine in for repair as soon as the box they send arrives. i hope they dont pull this sh!t on me.
Sheesh.. this is even worse that most of us thought. I thought they could just refund you points, and you could repurchase. But I guess then some would misuse the system and just send the console back to get the same points back and just buy something else, send it back, get refunded, buy something else etc etc.
Difficult one to fix if the DRM depends on code in the XB360 itself. Removing dependency on the console itself would mean the content can get swapped - for example - I buy ten items, you buy ten items, and after a month we just swap hard disks and we both get double the value.
Now they are linked to the actual console - but with the RRoD you don't get the same console - hence the keys won't work.
This problem is a biggie - as MS has a simple painful choice. Give you points, and risk you doing the same thing and getting free replacement over a period of three years, getting new content every time. Or breaking the DRM. Both options suck. For them anyway. Just shows you - get things ready before you start selling it.
File a complaint with the BBB. That seems to get Microsofts attention