The HD-DVD Promotion Group has shelved its CES conference plans following Warner’s decision to drop HD-DVD support in favor of exclusive Blu-ray distribution.
"Based on the timing of the Warner Home Video announcement today, we have decided to postpone our CES 2008 press conference,” read a statement from the organization.
"We are currently discussing the potential impact of this announcement with the other HD-DVD partner companies and evaluating next steps. We believe the consumer continues to benefit from HD-DVD's commitment to quality and affordability – a bar that is critical for the mainstream success of any format."
Warner previously announced that its new focus on exclusive Blu-ray distribution "… will further the potential for mass market success and ultimately benefit retailers, producers, and most importantly, consumers," reports MCV.
"The window of opportunity for high-definition DVD could be missed if format confusion continues to linger,” chairman and CEO Barry Meyer reasoned.
Microsoft now faces a lawsuit over recent problems with its Xbox Live online gaming service.
Three Texas residents filed a lawsuit Friday on behalf of themselves and others who have had trouble connecting to Xbox Live in recent weeks.
The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Houston, claims Microsoft's outages represent a breach of contract and negligent misrepresentation for which the software maker is liable. The suit doesn't claim specific damages, but notes the amount is in excess of $5 million.
In the suit, the plaintiffs allege that Microsoft should have known strong holiday sales would tax its servers. "Microsoft knew the increase in subscriptions would increase game-play on its servers, yet failed to provide adequate access and service to Xbox Live and its subscribers."
Microsoft has apologized for the outage and said it would allow Xbox live subscribers to download a free game.
A Microsoft representative was not immediately available for comment.
In line with policy, Microsoft has declined to comment on rumors of a motion-sensing Xbox 360 controller add-on.
Microsoft has contracted an outside firm that will be producing a first-party motion-control peripheral by the end of next year, according to a news post this week at XboxFamily.com.
The young website said that motion control experts at Saratoga, Calif.-based Gyration are currently working on a prototype for a motion-sensing add-on for existing Xbox 360 controllers. XboxFamily.com did not name the source of the information.
A Microsoft rep offered Next-Gen the expected response, “Microsoft does not comment on rumors or speculation. And I have nothing further to share.”
Gyration is the same company that pitched motion-sensing controller prototypes to Nintendo back in 2001. Nintendo didn’t go with Gyration’s design, but Gyration does hold multiple motion-sensing and remote control patents.
As far as motion-sensing capabilities are concerned, the Xbox 360 is the odd man out. The Sixaxis and Wii Remote offer the feature to varying effect. Microsoft’s Bill Gates has in the past downplayed the PlayStation 3 and Wii’s motion controllers.
"There's room for innovation here, but moving that controller around — it's something that's not mainstream for most games," he told MTV News back in May 2006. “…There's a lot to be learned about these controllers."
Here's my nightmare scenario: I convince my mom to fork over a big chunk of her paycheck on the shiny new Xbox 360 I want. Christmas morning, I unwrap it, set it up and bask in the glow of HD video, savoring that "new console box smell". A few hours into my first game I feel a crazy amount of heat radiating from the machine. It gets warmer and warmer until the green circle on the front of the console fades into the sickening red of hardware failure. Instead of a game box I now have a worthless brick.
Am I paranoid, or should I really be worried about this scenario I've heard so much about?
Here are the results of my research.
Microsoft's Xbox 360 has weathered an incessant battery of bad PR due to its high failure rate. Their initial policy was to ignore the problem (always a bad move!). Gizmodo reports that retailers estimate Xbox 360 failure rates could be as high as thirty percent. Private surveys from game fansites find even higher failure rates climbing as high as sixty percent! As customer dissatisfaction reached embarrassing levels, Microsoft finally admitted in July that there was indeed a widespread problem with their machine.
Here's the short-list of the major problems that can kill your machine:
But nothing captures the scale of the problem like reading about the personal horror stories out there. For instance:
One Xbox devotee went through a whopping seven consoles before finally giving up.
A single UK repair center has been flooded with thousands of faulty Xbox 360's every day.
This guy had to deal with dozens of unhelpful outsourced tech support reps.
This poor game journalist waited six weeks for his refurbbed Xbox.
One poor sap's Xbox actually exploded, and this was one of eleven that he burned through. Eleven!
A condolences card for someone who lost their XBox to the Ring of Death
Gamestop has now stopped offering extended warrantees on all Xbox 360 consoles. This is a telling sign. After all, if a game retail giant doesn't trust the Xbox's quality, why should I? This vote of no-confidence alone is enough to scare me away.
But wait, Microsoft is no stranger to poor product performance (Blue Screen of Death anyone?) and has extended the Xbox 360's warranty to a full 3 years. Microsoft has also beefed up its service policy. If you experience problems with your Xbox, you will most likely get it repaired or replaced within a short period of time. Then again, you'll probably get a refurbbed unit that is almost as likely to conk out.
Microsoft still refuses to inform the public as to the root causes of these varying malfunctions. In mass failures like these, honesty is always the best policy. Consumers are right to be wary of such high failure rates, especially when their causes remain shrouded in speculation. What's the deal, Microsoft? When rumors are flying around that more than half of Xbox's are bricks, don't you think that's a good time for full disclosure?
Contrast this behavior with Nintendo's handling of the Wii Remote strap issue. They immediately warned consumers of the flaw and subsequently changed production to provide for thicker straps and sent out free new and improved straps to all users. If that weren't enough, they released a slip cover to provide better "grip and cushioning". That's customer service. Nintendo didn't have to wait for lawsuits or even grumbling in the blogosphere. "We screwed up, here's what went wrong, and here's how we're going to fix it."
Microsoft is now manufacturing all Xbox 360s with an updated "Falcon" chip. Yet, even these new and improved models are suffering from a similar ring of death, this time with Christmas cheer. Just in time for the holidays! A buddy of mine told me recently that every single Xbox 360 owner he knew had experienced technical problems of some sort with his/her console. "The red ring of death is the Xbox's puberty," he said. "They all have to go through it."
Such high failure rates, coupled with Microsoft's consistent inability to address the issue head-on make them the Firestone of videogames. Those who would prefer to avoid the hassle are better off waiting until Microsoft releases an updated version of the hardware (that actually fixes the problem) or simply buy a Wii instead.
PS: In the middle of writing this post, my friend told me that his Xbox had bitten the dust. He was almost in tears.
Microsoft's popular Xbox 360 game console can create a strong and strange signal on wireless LANs, according to IT staff at Morrisville State College.
It's not clear whether the signal disrupts the college's WLAN access points or students' wireless notebooks. There is some anecdotal evidence, however, that it at least affects other radios in the same 2.4GHz band.
Morrisville IT staff typically use Bluetooth headsets, which run in the 2.4GHz band, with their cell phones when they troubleshoot problems on the spacious campus. "We had problems syncing our headsets to our phone where this signal was strong," says Matt Barber, the college's network administrator. A phone user had to physically touch the headset to the cell phone to make the initial connection, he says.
There may be effects on the WLAN that the equipment itself, from Meru Networks, is circumventing, according to Barber. Part of Meru's WLAN architecture employs software that gives the access points more control over wireless-client transmission behavior than does the software of some of Meru's rivals. An access point near a radiating Xbox may be compensating for interference by in effect guiding a wireless laptop to send and receive when open spectrum is available, essentially dodging around the Xbox signal.
Working with Meru, the small IT staff is planning to test soon the effect of multiple Xbox consoles in a dorm with a large number of active notebook clients.
Network World has asked Microsoft to comment on the Xbox signal phenomenon, but the company was not able to reply before this story was posted. We'll update this report as soon Microsoft provides information.
The latest version of the Xbox, the Xbox 360 Elite, went on sale earlier this year with a 120G-byte hard disk and a high-definition video interface.
Morrisville is a small college in rural New York state, taking its name from a nearby town. In summer 2007, the college deployed a campuswide 802.11a/b/g WLAN based on equipment from Meru.. The plan was to replace those access points with Meru's new, two-radio devices that added support for Draft 2 of 802.11n, the IEEE standard that boosts throughput from 22M to 25Mbps to at least 150M to180Mbps. That replacement was just completed, creating the first large-scale deployment.
During the fall, Morrisville IT staff, working with Meru engineers and IBM, the network integrator, detected an unusual signal in the 2.4GHz band. "We wanted to look at the [radio frequency] environment in our dorms," Barber says. "We always thought we'd run into some strange stuff [there] in the 2.4 range."
The signal was discovered using Cognio Spectrum Expert, from Cognio (recently bought by Cisco). Spectrum Expert is RF-analysis software packaged with a WLAN adapter card that slots into any laptop PC. (See our April 2007 Clear Choice Test of four WLAN protocol analyzers.) Among other capabilities, Spectrum Expert identifies sources of radio energy in the 2.4GHz and 5GHz WLAN bands, and identifies the cause, such as a brand of access point or a microwave oven.
"The signal really stood out," Barber says. "In some places it was so strong we thought it might be affecting the air [that is, the radio environment] around it."
The Cognio software, however, was baffled by this new signal: "Unknown emitter" was the classification. The signal shows up in the Cognio display as a kind of green-blizzard effect, covering a large swath of the 2.4 band, Barber says. That means the signal "is jumping all over the spectrum band," he says. In contrast, a nearby Meru access point shows up in the same scan as a strong, stable yellow-red glow, almost like a sun. The green blizzard is shot through with red dashes, which show, Barber says, that the signal at moments nearly rivals the access point in strength.
The mystery signal baffled the IT staff and Meru until Barber had a brainstorm: He brought in his own Xbox 360 and plugged it in, and turned on the Cognio spectrum analyzer. Presto: The same signal appeared.
Barber says the signal seems be created by the console's embedded 2.4GHz radio, which is used to communicate with the handheld wireless controller -- the gizmo with the buttons that manipulate a game running on the console. The Xbox also takes an optional Wi-Fi adapter, in the form of an USB dongle, to connect to a WLAN access point.
Barber says his "best guess" at this point is that the embedded radio, not the USB adapter, causes the signal. The signal is created even if the Xbox console is shut off: Just plugging its AC adapter into an electrical outlet seems to trigger the radio to look for -- and keep looking for -- a companion wireless controller. "It's even worse when you have multiple Xboxes in an area," Barber says.
At one point, IT staff wrapped the console in a static discharge bag, the material used, for example, to wrap and protect consumer electronics gear from static damage during shipment. The same properties make it act like radio "blanket" to muffle a transmission. Sure enough, the Cognio software showed a significant drop in the Xbox signal's strength.
The next step is more systematic testing. "We want to get several consoles together with a bunch of WLAN clients, to create a busy [RF] environment, and do some measurements," Barber says. "Are we seeing frames being dropped in the air, or people getting disconnected?"
Answering that question may be a bit more urgent, with Christmas looming, and the likelihood of still more brand-new Xboxs and other wireless entertainment products turning up in January when students return.
When many of the year’s biggest games involve shooting people in the face, it should be no surprise that violence in games was again a common theme in videogame politics in 2007.
Contrary to popular belief, however, there are many popular titles that don’t involve bullets in bedlam. But you’re not going to hear politicians rally against the carpel tunnel you’ve developed from Guitar Hero. That kind of stuff doesn’t win votes.
And in an industry where blood and guts in games frequently splash headlines, former Entertainment Software Association boss Doug Lowenstein was well-aware of the challenges the industry would face after he left his post for new opportunities earlier this year.
"Damn it, get up there and defend [your work]," he implored in what would be his farewell speech at the Las Vegas DICE Summit in February. "… If you want to be controversial, fine, … that’s great. But damn it, don’t duck and cover when the shit hits the fan.”
Manhunt 2
And the shit did hit the fan in June, when Rockstar and Take-Two’s Manhunt 2 was granted an "AO" by the Entertainment Software Rating Board due to the game’s violent content. It proved to be one of the first big, public challenges for the newly-appointed management at Take-Two, and a microcosm for the struggle between the entire games industry and legislators. Manhunt 2 was edited, re-rated under an “M,” released in October, was hacked into, in turn releasing said violent content in the PSP version, and politicians, much like ambulance chasers, were all over it like stink on Donkey Kong.
In effect, Manhunt 2 acted as a catalyst for much of the videogame-related political headlines throughout the year.
In August, California Sen. Leland Yee demanded that the ESRB make the ratings process more transparent following the ESRB’s re-rating of the game, just a few months after the Federal Trade Commission lauded the ESRB for the strides made in keeping mature games out of minors’ hands. In November, the cross-party quartet of US Senators including Hillary Clinton, Joe Lieberman, Evan Bayh and Sam Brownback made a similar demand, calling for a “thorough review” of the ESRB in the wake of Manhunt 2’s release.
And after all that, the game launched to ho-hum sales and lukewarm reviews—a truly anticlimactic event upon which so much time, money and energy had been spent. But it still served, and continues to serve, as yet another lesson to an industry whose audience is now old enough to think for themselves.
Terminator: Survivors confirmed for Xbox Series, PS5 & PC via Steam Play as a survivor in the aftermath of Judgment Day in Terminator: Survivors, a new open-world survival game by NACON (@Nacon). Build the resistance and defy the machines in Terminator: Survivors, com..
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"We are currently discussing the potential impact of this announcement with the other HD-DVD partner companies and evaluating next steps. We believe the consumer continues to benefit from HD-DVD's commitment to quality and affordability – a bar that is critical for the mainstream success of any format."
The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Houston, claims Microsoft's outages represent a breach of contract and negligent misrepresentation for which the software maker is liable. The suit doesn't claim specific damages, but notes the amount is in excess of $5 million.
The young website said that motion control experts at Saratoga, Calif.-based Gyration are currently working on a prototype for a motion-sensing add-on for existing Xbox 360 controllers. XboxFamily.com did not name the source of the information.
Morrisville IT staff typically use Bluetooth headsets, which run in the 2.4GHz band, with their cell phones when they troubleshoot problems on the spacious campus. "We had problems syncing our headsets to our phone where this signal was strong," says Matt Barber, the college's network administrator. A phone user had to physically touch the headset to the cell phone to make the initial connection, he says.
