11.01.09
Fail, Fail, and Fail for Microsoft Cash Drainer, Xbox 360
Summary: Xbox hardware failures still a real problem; Sky on Xbox Live goes belly-up; Sony gains features and sales at Microsoft’s expense
XBOX has already cost Microsoft billions of dollars in losses, but the company carries on. It insists it must evolve as old business models gradually dry up and perish. Yahoo! has this new piece which almost empirically confirms that failure rates are still a major issue.
My Xbox 360: Dead again
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Instead, I’m sitting here looking at yet another dead Xbox 360, and wondering: Do I bother buying some bubble wrap and a cardboard box to send this thing back? Should I just cough up $200 and start over with a new Xbox? Or should I call it quits and go all-in with my PlayStation 3, which hasn’t skipped a beat since I bought it more than a year ago?
Microsoft had hooked up with Sky (UK broadcasting) and this is what customers received:
“The service has been suspended due to an unforeseen technical issue.” Sky said in a statement. “Sky Player engineers are hard at work to resolve the problem. We expect to have the full service available on Wednesday.”
“Microsoft removes Sky on Xbox Live,” according to another source. How typical.
Microsoft has said that it is “investigating” the technical problems delaying the launch of Sky Player on Xbox Live.
To make matters worse (for Microsoft), PS3 has climbed to first place in the United States, Microsoft’s home ground, and now it gains Netflix support, whereas Microsoft has no reactionary offering.
Xbox is good news to GNU/Linux because it helps Microsoft go broke faster; as long as Microsoft attacks GNU/Linux as it most certainly does [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6], to wish harm to Xbox is not schadenfreude, it’s a simple case of common sense. █
