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Gates praises Xbox 360 reliability News
PC
Xbox
Xbox 360
News
by
Robert Purchese
Soon to be sort of retired Microsoft chief Bill Gates has called Xbox 360 the most reliable console on the market.
His comments were made at CES to the BBC, which fired reader concerns at him - a remarkable amount apparently concerning Xbox failure rate.
"Well we certainly had to apologise to our users about the number of boxes that had to be replaced. We did that for free, for all those people, and we got a lot of positive feedback about the way we handled it," said Gates.
"We've got incredible reliability on the new work that we've done. Our commitment is that it will be the most reliable videogame box out there. People love the Xbox because of the content, but we've got to make sure the hardware never stands in the way of that."
Bill Gates has been gradually stepping out of the picture at Microsoft and will eventually become a part-time chairman there, although he insists his involvement will still be strong.
He wants to go off and follow his philanthropic pursuits, you see, chiefly his Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which grants funds to things like AIDS prevention, scholarships for under-represented minorities and more.
Quite a good bloke, really. But then we would be more cheery if we were worth a reported USD 56 billion.
Gates also forecast his vision of the future to the BBC, predicting that traditional interfaces like mouse and keyboard would become obsolete in favour of more Star Trek inventions like voice and touch systems.
Naturally this gave him a perfect segueway to blab about Microsoft Surface, the impressive coffee table-like machine with massive touch-screen cleverness that was unveiled last year.
"I'll be brave," pledged Gates. "In five years we'll have many tens of millions of people sitting browsing their photos, browsing their music, organising their lives using this type of touch interface."
Whistle your way to our CES 2008 Gates keynote to see what he had in store for his swan-song performance.
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GamesConnoisseur
10/01/08 @ 16:19
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Basically I m indifference to Bill Gates, he is just a bloke who was in the right place at the right time (or for anti-BG replace the rights with the wrongs). Dunno why all the fuss/agnst/blood pressures some people get off him!
He is moving off the scene gradually, let us get on with our gaming in peace! |
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GamesProgrammer
10/01/08 @ 16:24
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EG with another flame bating headline, in your own article it says "he wants it to be" he doesnt say it is, nothing to see here.
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"we got a lot of positive feedback about the way we handled it"
You also got a fair bit of negative feedback for making toss hardware to start with. "We've got incredible reliability on the new work that we've done. Our commitment is that it will be the most reliable videogame box out there." This seems like a bit of a Troll post on Eurogamer's part unless the quotes they've used do not reflect what he said. He doesn't praise the reliability of the XBOX360 as a whole, he just says the new versions are reliable and glosses over the fact that the old ones were pony. Whether thay are, only time will tell but as it stands his comments, whilst evasive, seem sound enough. It raises the point, however, that as a brand it will never be that reliable as long as old models are in service. I've got an Elite, so if that breaks down I'll know he was telling porkys and I will go round and twat the bloke. |
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Ganon_wants_a_360
10/01/08 @ 16:25
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LOL the most reliable in the market?
I worked at Game for a year, and in that time I saw faulty PS2s every couple of weeks, and only one or two faulty Wiis the whole time I worked there.... (I left soon after the PS3 launch so can't speak for it's reliability) And at least 5 or 6 faulty 360s a week. We were a busy store though, so sold much more than 5-6 a week, but still... |
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cyber_nicco
10/01/08 @ 16:33
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Well, my 8/07 Elite doesn't get warm to the touch - it really is quite reassuring. DVD drive is still loud though, but I don't really notice it. Knock on wood, of course, but I feel quite confident that my 360 will last a reasonably long amount of time...
/edit typo
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most recently on 10/01/08 @ 16:35
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If you read the interview, he never says it's reliable:
"Our commitment is that it will be the most reliable videogame box out there." It isn't now - it will be. As no date is specified he can't be proven wrong. The "positive feedback" quoted is purely about the new replacement programme, and the new replacement programme is better than the old one so it will have positive feedback (people are unlikely to complain that something was better). EG have put a very misleading spin on the entire article. Even the article title is misleading. |
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In fairness folks, read the article. What he ACTUALLY said was "Our commitment is that it will be the most reliable videogame box out there." and then went on to say that the more recent models have been much more reliable. Which is fair enough really.
Of course I'm now on my eighth Xbox 360, but I'm not altogether surprised that I haven't read any Bill Gates interviews saying "Wow, we spectacularly fucked up with Xbox 360 eh?". |
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mossychops001
10/01/08 @ 16:41
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Bye Bye Joe 90! Go and save the world with your mate Bono and G W Bush.
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I'll reserve judgement on the new wave of 360's out there, but I have to say the experience I've had with my 1st generation machine has been p*ss poor. I'm without it at the moment due to the disc drive biting the bullet (5 month's old) and this is my 4th..... or was it 5th? I've had since purchasing it 2 years ago! In fairness I haven't had to shell out for repairs but it still doesn't excuse the poor build quality!!! I've got a Super Nes upstairs that has worked without a hitch for 15 years!!
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"MS finally see what Ninty have been doing for years now. ha, late to the party but not as late as Sony. :)"
What are you talking about??? The article is about the reliability of the 360 (or the lack of it) and you somehow manage to big up Nintendo, congratulate MS and slag off Sony?!?!?! The Wii and PS3 are a fucking damn sight more reliable than the 360 |
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"Our commitment is that it will be the most reliable videogame box out there. " A worthwhile commitment, when are they actually going to start delivering it?
I've been through 5 before I told them to poke it and give me back my money. I was told by a manager in one of HMV's most biggest stores that the 360 was the most unreliable piece of hardware they had EVER sold. They've featured on Watchdog who investigated them. They completely mis-predicted the Christmas 'rush' which evidently killed Live for over a week during Christmas. Their latest revision appears to be just as reliable as all the other versions. It does have the lions share of this HD generation of games. For now. |
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"Read the article folks. The title of the article is very misleading - which seems to be happening more and more at EG."
Hmmm let's see. Title of article ; Gates praises Xbox 360 reliability Quote from article ; "We've got incredible reliability on the new work that we've done. " Where's the conflict? Stop being so fucking pedantic. We all (including Gates) know that the 360 was unreliable. MS reckon they've sorted that now. The latest revs of the hardware seem more stable so he can get away with saying the 360 is reliable.
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Hey Bill, this is a post of one of your customers (not me):
"I found this on the internet earlier, I believe that Microsoft is very disloyal and the way they treat their consumers is very messed up. Read this, tell me what you think. won’t pretend that this is a completely original idea and no one else has ever raised the question of why Xbox Live is a pay service. In fact, I used to be one of the people who argued against them and supported Xbox Live. But, with recent Xbox Live troubles and news, it’s becoming significantly more difficult to do this. Having taken the time to really look at the state of Xbox Live is making me have to start agreeing with the people who I used to argue against. Let’s start with the recent Xbox Live downtime. It is, quite frankly, absolutely unacceptable for a pay service. Until a few days ago, my brother had a two week period where he could not recover his GamerTag from Xbox Live. That’s two weeks of no Xbox Live access whatsoever. He tried deleting the profile of his Xbox and recovering it again, but this didn’t work either. Now he couldn’t even access his game saves or earn any achievements. Although I had my account on my Xbox, that’s not to say everything’s been great. Like the rest of you, I’ve been experiencing a lot of trouble with Xbox Live. Inability to join games, sign in to Xbox Live, load the dashboard blades, sometimes problems bad enough to freeze my 360 entirely until I pulled out the Ethernet cable. Yes, we’re getting a free Xbox Live Arcade game as compensation for nearly 3 weeks of Xbox Live downtime. Woohoo. No details have been given, and as a result I suspect that this free game will be a specific title or list of titles which Microsoft will choose. I feel that at the very least we deserve to be either refunded for a month of Xbox Live or given a free month on top of this. Think about it, if your cell phone service had trouble for a month, dropping calls, refusing to dial numbers, etc., you wouldn’t be satisfied with a free cell phone game. The first step would be a refund for that month and then some sort of compensation for the inconvenience on top of that. Connection troubles aside, there’s other reasons why I feel Xbox Live shouldn’t be a pay service. As of March 1, 2008, Xbox Live Diamond will become an additional $6.95 fee. No thanks. Not only was this service close to worthless, but to charge for something that was supposed to be a benefit of paying for the Xbox Live service is absurd. It was pathetic as a freebie and to think anyone is willing to pay for this is ridiculous. Next up, Xbox Live is full of ads. Even when you first boot up your Xbox 360, you’re greeted with ads on the Xbox Live blade. While this may not seem like a huge issue, how would you feel if your internet service provider, who you pay a fee to, placed ads on the desktop of your computer (which you also paid for)? Gold members should at the very least be given an option to disable these ads. Xbox Live also feels the need to wrap content in restrictive DRM schemes that limit users’ access to the items they’ve purchased. Worst of all, this is done without proper warning of just how restrictive it is. Xbox Live Arcade titles and dashboard themes are unusable when not connected to Xbox Live unless you are on the same Xbox they are purchased on. So, as a reward for being a loyal customer and upgrading to the Halo 3 edition of the Xbox 360, all the content I purchased on my previous content is now unusable when I’m not signed into Live on the account I purchased them from. This means that when Xbox Live is having trouble or when I’m on vacation or anywhere else I don’t have steady high speed internet access, I can’t play the games which I have paid for. Despite the fee for Xbox Live, networking is almost entirely peer to peer reliant. There are no dedicated servers for games, something which has been long available to PC games with no online fee. The average residential high speed internet connection often does not have an upload bandwidth capable of properly supporting large amounts of players. This results in lag and allows for exploits relying on network manipulation, for example the standby cheating which plagued Halo 2. One would think that the fee for Xbox Live would entitle users to extra content to justify the fee. However, Microsoft allows companies to charge often high prices for nearly every single piece of downloadable content for games. This setup for the Xbox Live Marketplace encourages developers to either purposefully withhold content or release games lacking content with the intent of later releasing and charging an additional fee for the rest of the content. Xbox Live’s content setup may even discourage free content. Epic Games founder Tim Sweeney is quoted in a 1Up Podcast as saying that “We've been wanting to give them away for a long time, but actually Microsoft has been pushing back on us for that.” The video game magazine Game Informer supported this in a 2007 issue where they also claimed that Microsoft forces companies to charge for content they wish to distribute. I do not doubt this to be the case, as free content for online PC games has long been the standard. Call of Duty 4 currently has a new downloadable map available for PC users which is absent from the 360 version. So, what exactly is Xbox Live offering its paying customers? A unified friends list? The same feature has been available to PC gamers through free applications such as XFire and Steam. Put simply, the features of Xbox Live simply do not justify its price when considering the free services offered by the competitors and the robust structure of online PC gaming. Although I’m sure many are likely to disagree with me and simply respond with “if you don’t like it, don’t pay,” it’s not quite that simple. Without an online service, my games and the console itself lose much of their playability and worth. I also lose contact with my friends who still use Xbox Live. So unless I’m willing to cut off contact with my friends and make my system no longer worth playing, no longer paying for Xbox Live isn’t really an option. I’d like to hear the thoughts of the rest of the community. I feel that now, in light of the recent Xbox Live downtime, is a good time to start changing Xbox." |
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"and try again ;)"
I don't need to. He said it was shit, they replaced units and implied they've improved the hardware ("We've got incredible reliability on the new work that we've done"). Therefore he is praising the 360 reliability as well as acknowledging there was a problem initially. You fail. Not that you can read this anyway I may as well add some more swearwords you patronising fuckstick.
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thedaveeyres
10/01/08 @ 17:20
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This is MADNESS!!
No, this is MS! *bill gates pushes interviewer into pit* |
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TheWretched
10/01/08 @ 17:35
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It's official now,
Bill Gates III lost his mind. I mean, COME ON. Microsofts gaming division needed to take the dump and lost $1Bil US BECAUSE it was so reliable! This is so ridiculous! |
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Hmm xbox 360 reliability? Lets see there's the xbox live downtime over christmas, there's the stupidly noisy dvd drives, the stupidly noisy cooling fans, the stupid RRoD that could of been fixed last year but you chose instead to extend the warrenty.
Then we get to a pay service that has ads in it, the overpriced DRM restricted content and the lack of dedicated servers. I fail to see why people say the xbox 360 is so good. While the wii doesn't really have online and the ps3 sevice requires work, at least the ps3 one is free and didn't stop working when christmas appeared. |
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Being fair the article opening paragraph is misleading. The more contentious part of his comments I thinks is this bit ...
"We did that for free, for all those people, and we got a lot of positive feedback about the way we handled it," That is bending the truth a bit. I know a lot of people who's boxes have red ringed recently and they have not been giving positive feedback on the way MS handle it. |
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@ All SDF snivelling weasels
Yes, it's bad that Live was down for a few weeks and I agree MS should refund people who don't want the free game. A 12 month account can be purchased for around £35 so two weeks worth would be a refund of about £1.46p (I'm sure the game they will offer will have a higher value than that). So basically, don't you think you're blowing things a bit out of proportion here? Live has suffered a few problems, that doesn't change the fact that it's still the best online service around. Jesus, stop Whining! I'd pay you lot £1.46 just to STFU, haven't you got anything better to do? Oh no, that's right, not too many decent games on the old PS3, is there.... |
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cthulhu_steev
10/01/08 @ 18:10
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*slaps forehead* gah, symbiote and to think I actually defended you.
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IneptPercy
10/01/08 @ 18:14
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Some people who say they have had 5 or more xbox's, I have one question?
What the f**k are you people doing to them? I have a console I got from day one and its still fine with no problems, I can see that all these people who have had problems won't be making it up, but the problem can't be as bad as some people make out. Or are they just on the Sony payroll? |
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Plenty hate the guy. But most can't deny despite Windows flaws, it was what made computers mainstream in the home. He's had his influences and will bow out with many successes, despite his failures.
However, tens of millions using touch interfaces in 5 years? No. Costs wont allow it. I'm betting MS Surface will be a fair few grand when it launches. |
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@Zane
Furthermore, anyone who hates Bill Gates the private citizen is just being stupid. He's done so much for mankind that it's not even funny. If every rich man were as committed to charitable causes as Gates is, the world wouldn't be so fucked up. But regardless, I do think the EG headline was too tabloid. |
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I agree. Whilst the Xbox 360 is not the most reliable piece of kit out there, in just 5 years of Xbox brand being out there on the market, it hasnt done a bad job at all. It may not have the household clout the Playstation brand currently maintains but I have to say that grip Sony has his loosening, even if its the combined efforts of MS and Nintendo, the playing field is much more even now.
Game on. ;) |
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