I surely don’t mean what the title says, but Microsoft’s woes do seem to keep on mounting especially with its excessive failure rate of the 360. It all began with the Red Ring of Death and now in certain cases the disc drive also seems to blow up. OH!!! Dear Bill, what have thou created? A machine or a Monster that plagues the soul. The knight who fought valiantly to save Sera from the dreaded locust lies on the ground collecting dust, for the prophets have activated the ring that causes dismay to many who shall not be able to finish the fight in the coming months.
However this whole ring of death may actually be a boon in disguise for Microsoft, countries with severe piracy problems like India have actually found this as an effective solution to push forward original consoles in the region, which seems to be under the heavy influence of the pirates sailing on the black sea.
I had been hearing about all sorts of stuff form a couple of guys who frequented the grey market and decided to check these so called rumors out. They claimed that most of the pirates in the grey market had stopped selling the hacked version of the Xbox 360. This was true all right, when I walked into one of the most popular electronic shop in the market and asked for a 360, the owner quickly snapped back by telling me that the hacked versions were out of stock. He was only selling the official versions (Premium and Core) with a proper receipt.
I was kind of taken aback with his curt reply and the information. The Xbox 360 was not exactly facing any shortages in production like the Wii. I decided to probe a little further into the story and went outside to meet another chap who had been working at the place for quite some time and boy he did have a wonderful tale to tell.
It seems there was some problem with a lot of Xbox 360’s that had been arriving in the market for the last month or so. Most of them came back with the same problem and could not be repaired. All of the customers had the same thing to say, except for this 10 year old guy, who accidentally broke his 360 while imitating a popular WWE star. The rest of the bunch claimed that the 360 refused to boot up after a prolonged playing session. They came back the next day and created a huge racket in the shop. This had started affecting their business quite a bit and hence they had stopped selling original Xbox 360’s hence forth. I started getting the hint and decided to probe a bit further.
I then paid a visit to this technician I knew in the market. This guy was an expert who modified most of the consoles in the market; he offered me a cup of tea as I narrated this phenomenon to him. Quietly sipping on the cup he told me that there was this thing about the “Ring of Death” in the 360s (BINGO!! Kudos to little ol’ me), when this system freeze had started to occur earlier, the stores blamed it on the customers, but slowly things started to get worse. Once a customer had actually got the cops along with him, as he had entered into a major argument with the owner (this guy had bought the Xbox 360 a couple of hours ago).The rate of failure started to rise, if this guy is to be believed once, about 75% of the systems proved to be faulty.
All the major stores in the market had then planned not to sell a hacked 360. They opted to sell the official ones with a proper transaction receipt at the original market price ($565). This has resulted in loss of business, for both the owner as well this guy who now makes his living by modifying Wiis and hacking PSPs. He also claimed that the Wii had been at the top of the list as the market had been pushing the console as a “family entertainment system”.
On my way back I visited one last shop to find out a little bit more. This owner was frank by telling me not to buy any 360’s for sometime, because even the original non hacked ones had high failure rates. He was stuck with 5 non working 360’s and his old time customers had abandoned him for this very reason.
Microsoft had failed in creating something as solid as the original Xbox. He went on his woeful tale by telling me that nobody wished to pick up a PS3 because of this problem, they thought it was the merchants plot to extract more money outta them, hence most consumers had been wary about the next-gen consoles. This chap also vouched for the popularity of the Wii even amongst female gamers, he had been selling quite a number of systems, ever since the ring had invaded their peace of mind.
This whole incident some how reminds me of Newton’s third law “Ever action has an equal and opposite reaction”, Microsoft may not be in a bad position after all especially if it is searching for unsaturated markets in Asian and Latin America.
–Neelesh Mukherjee