Xbox red ring of death

On July 2007, Microsoft said that it was taking a $1 billion plus charge against earnings to extend the warranty of all the Xbox consoles because of an “unacceptable number of repairs”. Microsoft said that this was caused by the design flaws in the video game machine.

During a conference call with the financial analysts and reporters; Robbie Bach, the head of Microsoft’s entertainment division and CFO Chris Liddell announced the warranty change and told about the financial impact on the company.

Robbie Bach turned to the matter on hand and said, “But there’s one area of the business where we are not doing good enough”. He added, “Over the past couple of months, the number of repairs for the Xbox 360 consoles has been unacceptable to us”.

Under the new warranty, any Xbox 360 that shows the three flashing red lights, the error signal for “general hardware failure” also called as “red ring of death” by some users, will be repaired free of charge for up to three years from its date of purchase with the shipping included, said Bach.

To pay for the anticipated repairs of the consoles and fix the ones that are still on production in the inventory, Microsoft said it could take a $1.05 billion to $1.15 billion charge against earnings for the quarter ending June 2007. Chris Liddell said that the charge would equally split between the repairs of sold Xbox systems and to fix that are still in stock.

“This will have no impact on outlook for fiscal year 2008” said Liddell. “We are on track of profitability for both the Xbox and the entertainment group overall”, he said.

Microsoft wouldn’t specify the exact causes of the hardware failure but they said that there are several factors that could trigger the error and they said that, “It is not related to any safety issues”.

Bach said, “Microsoft takes full responsibility for the problem. Our suppliers have done good work and we will continue to work with them. Think of it as a Microsoft design challenge”. 

REFERENCES:

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9026340/Xbox_360_red_ring_of_death_costs_Microsoft_more_than_1B?taxonomyId=15&pageNumber=2 (accessed on 20/05/2013)

http://www.lookatbowen.com/2010/05/xbox-360-red-ring-of-death-a-free-fix (accessed on 20/05/2013)

Xbox live and kinect

To keep gamers interested, Microsoft introduced live gaming which continued on to Xbox 360. On Xbox live, people can meet other players and even play with other and the Xbox live has now turned into like a big gamers village in which gamers play from around the world and you can even send messages to your own friends and play matches with them.

Another thing that Microsoft introduced to keep its customer happy and interested was the announcement and release of the Xbox Kinect. Kinect is a motion sensing input device released by Microsoft for the 360 game consoles and window’s PC. It is based on a webcam style add-on on the Xbox 360 console which enables users to interact with the 360 without using the controller. This project was aimed to broadening the 360 audience beyond its typical gaming base. An Xbox Kinect version for windows was released on the 1 February 2012. The Xbox Kinect was competing with the Wii remote plus from Nintendo and the Playstation move from Playstation.

The Kinect also has a voice recognition system by which you can control your console by using voice commands. The voice recognition is used by saying the word Xbox. By saying that a microphone appears at the bottom of the screen, then you can say any word or phrase that appears on the screen to get it done without using the controller. For example by saying “Xbox open tray” will open the disc tray.

The Kinect claimed the Guinness world record for being the “fastest selling consumer electronics device”.  After its launch, the Kinect has sold over 8 million units worldwide in its first 60 days of launch.  Since its launch, Microsoft has sold 24 million units of Kinect by January 2012.

The machine learning work on the human motion capture within the Xbox Kinect won the 2011 MacRobert Award for engineering innovation. Kinect also won the T3’s gadget of the year award for 2011 and also the gaming gadget of the year prize. 

REFERENCES:

http://support.xbox.com/en-GB/xbox-360/kinect/control-your-xbox-360-with-your-voice (accessed on 20/05/2013)

https://shop.pkr.com/product/KINECT01/Xbox_Kinect_Sensor.html (accessed on 20/05/2013)

List of Xbox 360 retail configurations

When the original Xbox 360 was released, it was available in only two retail configurations: the Xbox 20 GB pro and the Xbox 360 core. The Xbox 360’s included a media remote to increase promotion of the console. But since the launch of Xbox 360, many other 360 consoles have been released with different appearances and features. The “Xbox 360 core” was replaced by the “Xbox 360 arcade” in October 2007. Another version of the “Xbox 360 pro” was released on august 2008 with additional 60 GB hard disk.

All the current Xbox 360 consoles are re-designed on the original 360 console hardware and this was announced on the June 14, 2010 during a press briefing. The next day, there were pictures of a new model of Xbox 360 with a new motherboard and was slimmer than the original Xbox 360 and included a 250 GB hard drive with integrated Wi-Fi functionality.

Another console sold later that year in august was the Xbox 360 S 4 GB console that replaced the Xbox arcade. This model had an on-board storage and the Xbox product director confirmed that it does have a drive bay which Microsoft has “the opportunity to use in the future”.

Another thing Microsoft use was the release of special editions on Xbox 360’s which coincide with the release of major products and the special editions are often the custom coloured models of Xbox 360 and these editions are limited.

Some of the famous Xbox 360 editions were the announcement of Halo 3 special edition. It contains a halo 3 theme on the console, wired console, wireless controllers and other than the unique Spartan green theme, it included feature downloads and exclusive dashboard themes. For the promotion of Simpson movie, a yellow coloured special edition of Xbox 360 was released and another console was the resident evil 5 special edition.

Other consoles were the super elite special editions with two wireless controllers, a wired headset, 250 GB hard drive and they included the versions like call of duty: modern warfare two, final fantasy XIII and tom Clancy’s splinter cell: conviction and star wars Xbox which even beeps like R2-D2 when you turn it on.
Different Xbox consoles can be best described by this picture:

With the addition of customised consoles, Microsoft now also have introduced special edition controllers like the camouflage controller to promote different games.

REFERENCES:

http://www.oxm.co.uk/51638/microsoft-reveals-special-edition-camouflage-xbox-360-controller/ (accessed on 20/05/2013)
http://mashable.com/2013/05/20/xbox-through-the-ages/ (accessed on 24/05/2013)

The Xbox 360

After the original Xbox console, Microsoft needed some new technology to keep entertaining its customer so they introduced a new console, the Xbox 360 which was setup with high definition graphics and sound system for its customers to enjoy. Live entertainment was also provided and at the launch of Xbox 360, games were played at all hours so it felt like one big LAN party.

The official launch date of Xbox 360 was 12 May 2005 on MTV and when it was available for purchase, it was sold everywhere except Japan. There were two different type of Xbox 360, the Arcade and the Elite; both with different demographics. And since the launch of the console, over 39 million consoles were sold worldwide.

Since Microsoft started the production of the console only a few months before the launch of the console so there weren’t many consoles to be shipped initially. There were many disappointed customers and by the end of 2005, 1.5 million consoles were shipped out worldwide and made available.Microsoft wanted steady sales over the Xbox predecessor while taking into consideration steady global sales and they said they will sell over 28.8 million consoles over the span of next four and half years.

As Xbox 360 was released a year before its competition so it had a years jump over its competitors and it promised to have 10 million consoles available for sale by the time its competitors were out on market. Since its launch, the Xbox 360 was the market leader until the release of the Nintendo Wii in 2007 and Xbox 360 lost the lead but with the release of the Halo 3 in October 2007, Xbox 360 quickly took the lead again by selling almost 30,000 more consoles than the Wii.

Xbox 360 has a wide variety of titles which appeal to different kind of gamers with eye-catching graphics and different storyline that immerse the gamers into the story and different difficulty levels that will make the gamer interested in the games and wanting them to play more.

With the release of the original Xbox in 2000, when the new Xbox 360 came out after 5 years, most people had their doubt in the console but once it was launched and they had a chance to try it out, they were won over. 

REFERENCES:

http://ezinearticles.com/?History-of-the-Xbox-360&id=4169217 (accessed on 20/05/2013)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/xbox (accessed on 20/05/2013)
http://www.topnews.in/usa/npd-xbox-360-sales-were-more-faster-original-xbox-2398 (accessed on 24/08/2013)

Xbox: A brief history part 2

Since the launch of the Xbox console, Microsoft started working on it to keep it up to date so it can keep up with its competitors such as Playstation, Sega and Nintendo etc.

To keep Xbox on race with its rivals, Microsoft had to strike deals with all the big publishers in the game to get publicity from all publishers and they wanted to get as many support as they can and get as many publishers on board as possible. By the end of 2000, they struck major deals with all the big hitters in the gaming industry like Activision, Konami, THQ, EIDOS and Capcom. By the end of 2000, Microsoft Xbox still didn’t strike any deals with EA and Sega. The announcement from other publishers gave Microsoft Xbox a big boost of momentum and Xbox strike fear into the hearts of its enemies. Microsoft was trying to muscle in the territory of Sega and Nintendo but they both ignored that.

Sega’s dreamcast was facing competition from Nintendo, Playstation and Xbox and its market was going down so it decided to strike a deal with Microsoft Xbox. The collaboration was looking good for Microsoft Xbox as that will give Xbox a huge boost because of the attachment of Japanese market when it was going to launch in Europe.

Sega was offering assets of Dreamcast to Xbox which could create a path for dreamcast customers to migrate to Xbox but dreamcast wanted an internet connection for dreamcast titles. Microsoft didn’t want that so the negotiations fell apart and Sega’s dreamcast didn’t keep up with the competition and it died.

Bill gates said: "We want Xbox to be the platform of choice for the best and most creative game developers in the world".

Catching the biggest fish in the industry meant everything to Microsoft and it tried everything to strike a deal with EA. EA refusing Xbox proposals was not looking good for Xbox. But Microsoft finally struck a deal with EA and EA decided to publish at least 10 games a year on the console. Without EA backing Xbox up, they console might not have grown as fast as they game the console titles like Madden, NFL and FIFA etc.

By the launch of Xbox, publishers working on Xbox games started making exclusive Xbox games like “NBA inside drive 2002” and “RalliSport challenge” from Microsoft game studios, “WRECKLESS: the yakuza missions” from Activision, “WWF raw” from THQ and “007: agent under fire” from EA.

REFERENCES:

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/131066/hardware/the-complete-history-of-xbox/ (accessed at 18/05/2013)

http://www.techradar.com/news/gaming/consoles/ten-years-of-xbox-a-brief-history-1040866#null  (accessed at 18/05/2013)

http://tech.uk.msn.com/features/history-of-the-xbox#image=1 (date accessed: 18/05/2013) 

Xbox: A brief history part 1

In 2001, the gaming consoles were dominated by the mighty Playstation 2, Nintendo’s game cube and the Dreamcast that was getting Sega in top place. But that same year, the gaming consoles were going to change for years to come as Microsoft was going to introduce the Microsoft Xbox.

At the time of its launch in 21 November 2001, few believe in its success and its competition with playstation although it had previous experience in PC gaming. But Xbox had a few tricks up its sleeves.  At first Microsoft had to make its move which it did by the acquisition of game developers, Bungie through which they releases the game title halo: combat evolved and this title is still associated with Xbox even after 12 years of Xbox success. There were certain ups and down for Xbox but they made it through every moment.

The other thing that Microsoft did was the introduction of Xbox live which was only used by PC before but now it was bought to the gaming console world as well. Microsoft made a commitment to put Xbox live for the competition of online gaming supremacy. At that time Microsoft had 27 publishers working for them to create online games for Xbox and even bigger news was that there were more Microsoft employees working on the Xbox live service than there were for the engineering of the Xbox console itself.

Robert J Bach, the president of entertainment and devices division at Microsoft said: “online gaming console will play a significant role in the future of video games. Gamers will be able to compete with one another online, play games that evolve over the course of months and download new levels, weapons and characters”.

Bach also added: “Xbox is clearly positioned to lead the way in the online gaming revolution”.

This online feature of Xbox will keep the games fresh for the players and there will always be new downloadable features of the game. Other things that Xbox included were:

·         A hard disk drive to store new features of the games and new levels and characters of the game.

·         For fast action broadband connectivity, an Ethernet port.

·         Xbox gaming controllers contained slots for voice communicators that were used for real time voice communications.

REFERENCES:

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/press/2002/jan02/01-08successfullaunchpr.aspx (date accessed: 18/05/2013) 
 http://www.mummy-tips.com/2011/04/we-are-xbox-family-ambassadors.html#.UZ9iH6zvoj8 (date accessed: 18/05/2013)
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Xbox+Launch+One+of+Most+Successful+in+Video+Game+History%3B+Xbox+to...-a081463330 (date accessed: 18/05/2013)