Microsoft
I certainly didn't see this coming (thanks Gamespot):...Peter Moore, corporate vice president of the entertainment and devices division of Microsoft's interactive entertainment business, is quitting.
Electronic Arts has confirmed to GameSpot that Peter Moore has been tapped to become the new president of EA Sports. The move will put Moore in charge of one of the top third-party publisher's four divisions, which were established in a recent company-wide reorganization.
That certainly doesn't sound like a promotion.
I don't think it's unfair to make the assumption that Moore was forced out, but here's an interesting question: was he forced out because he was too slow to respond to the 360 reliability issues, or was he forced out because he pushed through the warranty extension to three years for the red ring of death?
Moore's departure comes as Microsoft continues to be hounded by reliability issues and questions. EB Games Australia recalled every unit they had in stock (see here), which, while it apparently wasn't related to the design issues that have allegedly been fixed, is still incredibly embarrassing. Also, the mainstream press is still hammering Microsoft about reliability, so it appears that the warranty extension has done little to make the bad press go away. As an example, here's an MSNBC article (thanks Sirius) and an excerpts:
Charles Rittlinger, of Wichita, Kan., bought his Xbox 360 last November. He waited a full year to buy his machine, and knew all about the hardware-failure problem, well-documented on the Internet by frustrated gamers.
When his own machine failed, Rittlinger discovered that reports of the Xbox 360 failure rate stretched well beyond the vocal hardcore gaming corners of the blogosphere. When he took his faulty Xbox 360 to UPS to return to Microsoft, he says the person at the counter had processed many similar returns.
Even the driver that returned the repaired Xbox 360 to Rittlinger's house was in on the joke, saying "Xbox calling," when he delivered the replacement unit. Luckily, the new unit is functioning just fine.
Since the Xbox 360 is such a complicated machine, there is no discernable method for consumers to spot a potential problem. Though the consoles coming off production lines now may be problem-free, what about the tens of thousands of units currently in retail circulation? Even if the new warranty will cover the red ring failure for up to three years, who wants to view their $400 Xbox 360 Premium as a ticking time bomb?
"Ticking time bomb." They say there's no such thing as bad publicity, but that sure sounds bad to me.
N'Gai Croal had a provocative column last week where he opened up a new can of worms: what about a total recall?
Did Microsoft's zeal to have the Xbox 360 both launch first and turn a profit--after the first Xbox launched second and lost billions of dollars--cause it to cut corners in a headlong rush to market, resulting in the current debacle? What, precisely, are the factors causing Xbox 360s to fail? What is the failure rate? How many devices have been returned thus far over the flashing three red lights? Was Microsoft aware of the magnitude of this problem before it launched the Xbox 360 Elite?
In the absence of full and forthright answers to these questions--answers that are critical to restoring consumer confidence in the Xbox 360--it is our firm belief that Microsoft should strongly consider a product recall, or at the very least, offer to replace those machines whose batch numbers indicate that they were manufactured before the design flaws were corrected.
Given that the failure rate for the 360 may well be north of 20%, that's not an empty idea. Has there even been a consumer electronics device that has had failure rates this high? Ever?
So could you do it? That's very hard to answer. In theory, you could clear and replenish retail stock first, then start a rolling recall of all units in the field. In the meantime, you'd replace existing units that failed in the field with the new design.
Yes, that would guarantee that people would be bricking their units to get the replacement, but so what? They're getting replaced anyway.
With approximately 10 million units as the installed base, and another 1+ million units in inventory worldwide, that's at least 11 million units to replace--and you have to keep selling the new box at the same time.
It would take a year, at least, just to manufacture the needed units, let alone do the replacement.
The cost? Staggering. One billion dollars looks very cheap in comparison.
It should should give you some idea of how serious this reliability problem is that I believe Microsoft may well have given this idea serious consideration. That they were willing to extend warranties to three years for their major failure issue also might be a clue as to how desperately they want to avoid a recall.
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