Summary: Serious reliability issues affect not only the Xbox 360 but also its games

MICROSOFT'S XBOX is a financial mess. One of its developers was in our IRC channel the other day and he appears to be unaware of it; they are told different and inaccurate stories inside the company, especially regarding profitability.

When one in two consoles is failing (thus requiring a replacement), then it's hardly surprising that Microsoft has lost well over $5 billion in the Xbox business and it still operates at a loss. This helps weaken the company which probably attacks GNU/Linux more than all other companies combined.

It is not just the consoles which are highly defective and error-prone though; scratched CDs are another known issue and amid problems with Bungie comes this report:

Multiple users are reporting having trouble playing Halo 3: ODST on their consoles, with the game either skipping or sometimes not reading at all. The Bungie forums are busy with these reports, but it looks like the majority of players are able to play the game. For some who have the space, installing the game to the hard drive seems to be a common problem-solver.

Microsoft, as usual, downplays the issue. It also turns out, based this new item, that Microsoft charges developers rather than pay them. Why don't these developers turn to Free software instead then? ⬆

"Today many people are switching to free software for purely practical reasons. That is good, as far as it goes, but that isn't all we need to do! Attracting users to free software is not the whole job, just the first step."

--Richard Stallman