[Grey Wolf]

http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/business/technology/13864415.htm

Seems the blame is instead because of poor yield and QA by Infineon.

[WMCoolmon]

:yawn:

Pass teh buck whenever possible.

[Roanoke]

and if the shortage whips up a frenzy that makes it on to national news then hey........

[Deepblue]

For the record, I didn't make this thread.

[Nix]

DB, dont give them any ammunition, geez!

I paid little attention to the whole thing when it came out, but got caught up in the overheating, disc-eating xboxes.  Were they honestly overheating, or was it just first run decks? 

[Deepblue]

It seems that it's mostly standard new console problems. The only console that I can think of that didn't have any problems with the hardware is the GameCube. Nintendo knows how to build something pretty damn near unbreakable.

[Flipside]

It was probably a whole culmination of things to be honest, it's easy to point at one link in a chain and say 'This is where things went wrong', but it's never ever as simple as that.

[Martinus]

If you're talking about the 360 and not the original xbox (which also had cooling issues) then you're probably referring to the PSU overheating issue.

It was a bit of a debacle all around; MS claimed that the PSU which was shown with the demo unit was not indicative of the final design, the final design was to be much smaller. People assumed this would be the case given that the demo PSU was almost a third the size of the console itself.

The PSU was also prone to run really hot. Some users got around this by attaching third party heatsinks or even simply suspending the thing above the floor to better circulate air around it. It all reeks of bad design though.

[Grug]

Having it painted black wouldn't help either.

[Roanoke]

Argos have got an XBox("1") with two controllers, the DVD palying bumf, Halo2 and Forza M/Sport for £100.
I quite fanct that. More than an XBox360.

Hmf. another big dent in my pc budget (just spent £200 on tha' car). Ho hum.

[aldo_14]

http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/business/technology/13864415.htm

Seems the blame is instead because of poor yield and QA by Infineon.

i wouldn't go that far; MS must have been perfectly aware of the risks of using that supplier, part, etc, and they should have simply given it a few months and had a proper launch with a reasonable amount of consoles.  I think they've sold about 900,000 consoles in the US since release (figures from Jan 27); the Gamecube sold 700,000 in 3 days when it was released and, even accounting for the higher price, the 360 would have sold far, far more if they'd taken time to build up a release stockpile and fix their supply & technical issues (not to mention possibly having a few good games ready for the launch lineup; IIRC - excluding a few of the Arcade games - only Call of Duty 2 and PGR3 have got decent all round marks since the console was released).  As it is there are a lot of people probably still waiting on pre-orders, and that's going to surely spread a fair bit of ill will; I can only assume Sonys bleating about a (increasingly unlikely looking) March 2006 PS3 release made MS impatient to get in first.

Still, I'm torn between getting a GC, DS or waiting for the Revolution, myself.  I'm increasingly preferring Nintendos 'let make games' attitude to MS & Sonys 'lets make graphics' one.  Maybe I'm just getting old........

[SadisticSid]

It's still Microsoft's fault for choosing an incapable component supplier and adopting what seemed to a premature, unproven technology. It's all fine taking the credit for your product when it works as well as expected, but you should also take responsibility for when the individual parts go wrong. You don't see Infineon getting credited for CoD2's framerate, for example - so they are absolved IMO of any failing.

[aldo_14]

Not totally absolved, though.  No-one ever gets that luxury, although how much blame Infineon gets depends on how early they had a manufacturing problem and when they disclosed it.

[NGTM-1R]

Well, it devolves to the fact that without Infineon's mistakes, MS's mistakes would be at the minimum lesser, perhaps nonexistant. Microsoft compound the error, but it didn't create it. It was already there.

[Grey Wolf]

I'm actually rather shocked at Infineon's performance here. They're one of the largest providers of RAM, and for them to fail at something this profile is rather unusual.

[BlackDove]

Err, I'm pretty sure the free advertisment for days on end with the "OMG EVERYONE WANTS ONE AND THERE'S NOT ENOUGH IN STOCK" was intentional.

[WMCoolmon]

Bingo.

Conveniently win-win situation, isn't it? Shortages in the number of Xbox360s, resulting in stories of them going for absurd prices on eBay, sounds like there's all kinds of demand.

Then after all the hubub dies down, Microsoft humbly reveals that the shortages were caused by someone else.

[BlackDove]

Exactly.

These people are middlemen. Businessmen. Truly parasites.

[Goober5000]

Bingo.

Conveniently win-win situation, isn't it? Shortages in the number of Xbox360s, resulting in stories of them going for absurd prices on eBay, sounds like there's all kinds of demand.

Then after all the hubub dies down, Microsoft humbly reveals that the shortages were caused by someone else.

Meanwhile they have time to work out any kinks in the design, I'm guessing.