Foam hinders Halo 3 disc scratching down under
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MS foam home Not all gamers buying Halo 3 Limited Edition packs received a scratched disc. Copies sent out to Australia apparently contained a cunningly hi-tech device to stop the disc from being damaged.â¦
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Less than a week before its release, the wildly anticipated crime game has itself been stolen and republished on the internet. Less than a week after a pirated version of Halo 2 began appearing on the Web, another
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Hot money hole Microsoft is taking a $1bn hit to fix Xbox 360s, conceding residual hardware faults in its games console are causing users frustration and an "unacceptable number of repairs."â¦
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LOS ANGELES - A video game fan upset over a failed disc drive in his Xbox video game console has sued Microsoft Corp. on behalf of all Xbox owners across the United States.
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Microsoft's hardware-challenged Xbox has another problem on its hands.
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Tycho:  There's a new Alternate Reality Game spinning up for Halo 3, God Damn them - God Damn them to hell.  I know perfectly well that I am being subjugated by a sophisticated marketing effort, that the best one can accomplish in these games is to get a real good look at the teeth before the mouth closes around you.  I type this even as the rabbit holes stand open in two other windows.  I don't presume to speak for the entire species, but there is something about secrets that does bit the mind.
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Just days after Microsoft Corp. took a more than US$1 billion earnings charge to fix hardware problems in Xbox 360 consoles, a class-action suit says that the consoles also damage game discs.
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A class action suit in Florida claims that Xbox 360s can scratch game discs, making them unusable.
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Microsoft Corp  is offering to replace damaged discs of its just-launched "Halo 3" game for the Xbox amid reports that special limited-edition packaging is scratching them.
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Tycho:  Gamespot is saying there's a reproducible crash in the new Tiger Woods for the 360, and that the Gamernet functionality doesn't work there either.  PS3 version sounds clean.    Next year, can you guys make sure you put your crash bugs into the demo, too?  It would really help the consumer make an educated decision.    It's so weird; we had problems with the last one, but it never occurred to us that the next one could be worse.  That is to say, I expect inertia.  I don't expect it to break before I even get the Goddamned thing home.      (CW)TB
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By Lou Kesten Associated Press  Here's the problem with setting a video game in outer space: There's nothing to do out there. It's a vacuum. No one can hear you scream.  So most science-fiction games don't actually spend much time there.
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Game added to Disc Replacement list Halo 3 has only been out for a few hours in the UK, but there's already a problem. The Limited Edition box-set has been added to Microsoft's Disc Replacement Program (DRP) list because of possible scratches to the disc's surface.â¦
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Two California residents have filed a lawsuit against Microsoft over claims that its Xbox 360 game console scratches video game discs. It's the second such suit in recent weeks.
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One of the selling points of the Wii gaming console is its motion-sensitive controller. But there are reports of the controller breaking, causing it to fly out of the hands of users.
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Tycho:  Sony hasn't been entirely clear regarding what their 1.92 update for the Playstation 3 actually does, suggesting that it "focuses on some PS3 compatibility and playability issues for select titles," but our own experience with the update has been conclusive.  In the Internet's dark places, aggrieved Lair fans are suggesting that this update improves the game's motion controls, and that each media outlet must rescind their previous scores.  I'm fairly certain this is magical thinking - neither Sony or Factor 5 will say with any specificity, and now that both our PS3s are updated it would be impossible to test.  Typically we don't take the traditional holidays off, nor do we take off non-traditional holidays, such at the Feast of St. Motherfucker - a holy day that I've only just now invented.  Gabe's father was around, though, and golf seemed like a good time investment.  Reading greens and choosing clubs for other people is about as far as I get, so for me the social aspects of the game are paramount.  Standing under the awning at the driving range, it's hard not to see where EA's Tiger series could improve.      This year's lobby system is much improved over last year's, but I'm not sure why the lobby itself couldn't be a driving range.  This is how virtually any actual round of golf starts, with every person hitting the bucket they bought and lamenting their performance.  A few of their minigames would work just fine in this context - don't create a custom game to play them, build all of the basic play into a casual, central experience.  From here, modes, courses, and wagers are established.  When new people pull in, carts can be heard.  Links for the 360 wasn't as complete as Tiger, but it had four player modes first - and it had a means to play Speed Golf that Tiger should loot from its fallen enemy.  Essentially, you play the round as normal.  Everyone else plays the round as normal simultaneously, and shots are keyed to a certain color so that the arc of each person's shot is visible to all other players.  They need to steal this - throw the name of each player on there, use the face, whatever.  This needs to be how it works.  You can play an entire course in a quarter of the time.  The RPG metaphor really worked the first few times I bought the product, but it's really lost its currency with me.  There's a point - and it may be with the '08 version of the product - where the number of courses are such that I don't actually want to pay sixty dollars again just to lose all of my character progression every year.  Gabriel's suggestion is to approach it more like a fighting game, which is to say like Mario Golf - with discrete golfer archetypes that have a suite of skills.  I'm wondering if Guild Wars doesn't have the answer - full priced expansions every year, with a perpetually tracked online experience where your prior purchase actually increases the value of the next.  Let all play - online and off - be a part of the core experience, let all play hone your ability.  Don't wall off online play into some purgatory as it is now, untracked, outside of the normal scheme of advancement.    With these thoughts in my head, excited by the sun-dappled future we had envisioned. we sat down to play a round online the next night.  After determining that one of us couldn't play at all or it would crash the game for everyone - a weird kind of crash where you can't play, but you're able to talk to one another about the crash - we were able to play eight holes, at which point it crashed before a victor could be determined.  They've only just made online Photo Game Face available for Tiger, for the first time since launch, but they had to deactivate online features for two other titles to do it.  So, no.  I don't have high hopes.
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(InfoWorld) - Just days afterÂ Microsoft took an earnings charge ofÂ more than $1 billionÂ to fix hardware problems in Xbox 360 consoles, a class-action suit says that the consoles also damage game discs. Filed on Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, the suit claims that Xbox 360s scratch game discs, making them unusable. Thousands of people have been affected by and have complained to Microsoft about the problem, the suit claims. While Microsoft hasn't yet evaluated the suit, it says it hasn't heard a significant number of complaints. "Out of the millions of Xbox consoles in use, Microsoft has not received any widespread reports of Xbox 360s scratching discs," said Jack Evans, a Microsoft spokesman, in a statement. The problem isn't limited to the United States, the suit says. It describes a television program that aired in the Netherlands earlier this year detailing complaints by Xbox 360 users and including results of lab tests that resulted in disc scratching by some of the consoles. Microsoft offers a worldwide disc replacement program for games that it authors. A user can send a damaged disc back to Microsoft plus $20 and receive a replacement. Microsoft also will examine and repair consoles that consumers believe may have scratched discs, the company said. The suit details the experience of Jorge Brouwer, the plaintiff in the case. He said that his two games stopped working on his new Xbox 360. When he called customer support and mentioned that he noticed scratches on the discs, customer support advised him to buy replacement discs. He also said that customer support wouldn't acknowledge that the console might be to blame. The suit asks for damagesÂ of more thanÂ $5 million and the repair of Xbox 360s that cause the scratching and replacement of damaged discs. The filing follows an announcement on Thursday that Microsoft would repair or replace Xbox 360s that suffer a certain type of hardware failure. Users have been complaining about the failure, which is indicated by three flashing red lights on the console. Microsoft has not offered details on the type of hardware failure. The company has yet to record a profit for its Xbox business but said that, despite the $1 billion charge, it expects to be profitable in 2008. Microsoft sells the consoles at a loss, hoping to earn profit from games sales.
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Gamers love Sony Corp.'s   new PlayStation 3 for its graphic capabilities and firepower,  but the advanced Blu-ray DVD drive is annoying some by raising  the cost, slowing production and forcing them to buy into a  format they've not yet aligned with.