I sigh, truly I do, when I think about Microsoft and its awful, awful production values this generation. It seems that doing things on the cheap and as rushed as possible is the order of the day, which might work in the short term, but is infuriating gamers. With the release of Halo 3, more people than ever are surely being introduced to the world of the Xbox 360 -- and with it, are beginning to suffer the consequences of shoddy production. Not only do Halo 3 players have to fear their console red ringing on them, they now have the threat of unreadable discs looming over their heads.
Both Bungie's forums and the Xbox.com forums are saturated with posts complaining about disc read errors and freezing glitches with their copies of Halo 3. There are complaints about both the Legendary and standard editions and these are brand new, good condition copies by all accounts. Either the game is truly defective, or people's Xbox 360s are just having one mass suicide, though many of the affected claim other games are working fine. Either way, this is not what the biggest launch of the year needs. Not at all.
It's quite pathetic, in fact, that with so much attention on the 360 thanks to Halo, something like this should happen. I wonder what all those new customers will think when their consoles keep crashing out on them. After the anger over the badly designed packaging for the Collector's Edition, these stupid, easily avoidable problems are becoming a farce.
[Tip from the Donutty one]
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21 comments + 95764 views
*sigh* it seems that microsoft dont just want to beat sony at making games, they also want to beat sony at screwing over customers...
But hey, my brothers halo 3 + 360 was fine for the 3 days he brought it round to my house. He did get the pointlessly expensive version though, so at least the discs had proper cases.
and this is why I still ponder whether or not to get a 360.
Do they simply not have a QA department at MS anymore?
not bad packaging for legendary....legendary is fine...collector's edition is the fucked one...2/3 is a good ratio...lol jk
Zero problems with mine, went through the campaign already. Played for 6 hours straight, and no locks or read errors.
The 360 is it's own worst enemy...
rbrooks, ah, must've had a brainfart. Thanks for setting me right.
I got some jumpies when i first popped it in.
The 1-Up unboxing video has me all excited to get a copy now. The packaging sure looks nice, but I don't want to be the lucky winner of a non-readable disk.
Didn't this exact same hysteria come about during the Gears of War launch? My money is on that it's the same defect rate as other games, but since there's a lot more people buying it, there's a lot more people that get effected.
It not that big of the deal geez and not as bad as making out to be
and as far as the 360 itself most of the faulty systems were flushed out the market way before halo came out and the elite and the halo 3 xbox have the falcon chip in them so there should be no problem
Oh and Jim you haven't heard the worst of it. Apparently Halo 3 is in fact rendered in upscaled 640p and not the true 720p Bungie and Microsoft advertised.
Evidence:
http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.p...&postcount=276
Problems I've had with the game:
Achievements not unlocking, getting stuck on terrain, MP servers randomly crashing, screenshots/clips not uploading, medals not being awarded and just insane lag sometimes on matchmaking matches (I lagged out for roughly 10 minutes yesterday.......).
Ooops posted a malformed link heres the proper one:
http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1070774&postcount=276
My only complaint with it is with the collectors edition. I purchased mine and the game disc was scratched to fuck. I got a replacement but it was annoying that a bit of tape and foam, could have stopped the disc from having a party in the metal tin case.
No other problems though
Yeah thats pretty lame that Halo 3 isn't even in any real HD resolution. Although, I think the problems people are having are most likely from playing their consoles for hours straight rather than some defect with the disc.
My housemate picked up a copy of Halo 3 so I figured I would co-op with him. There must have been 2-3 occasions where we had a disc read error and had to reset. Luckily though when it happened it was just as the game was loading the next mission, so the autosave kept us up to date. Needless to say though the disc was brand new without a scratch in sight, well apart from the scratching of our heads.
you know what's weird is, i had never had a bit of trouble with my 360 until i updated it on last sunday and then it crapped out. that update was mandatory and everyone who wanted to play halo online when it was free had to get that update. still i agree with subnet 6 the whole red ring issue is related to overheating, how many people on that list were planning on hard-coring through campaign in one sitting on co-op? i did, but i went and bought a new elite, which i was planning on doing anyway the media they have now on live is too unreal,( i have loved mtv's "the state" since i was like 15 and i have never even found good copies of it on torrents plus i have a lcd with 4 hdmi plugs and nothing in any of them and that pisses me off) i don't know what i will do with my old box when i get it back from repair though...
oh and i though halo 3 was lackluster at best, the first was and still is the best, just like the fuckin' matrix movies
I smell bullshit. I have the limited edition WITH Scratches
No problems at all.
Well, that disproves everything.
This post smacks of sensationalism during launch week. We get it: the scratched discs are a problem, and MS is solving it with free replacements. Should it have happened in the first place? Nope.
Disc read errors / random lockups / red-ringing occurs with every 360 title, whether developed/published by MGS or not. Bear in mind that the 360 is Microsoft's second entrant into the console space. Even Sony hasn't gotten this right and they're on their 4th piece of hardware.
Provided they're doing right by gamers with quick replacements of faulty software/hardware, I'm inclined to give them a pass.
STFUAJPG!!!
LOL karma is one bad mamajama.
@Ralph: Well, at least you've learned to accept issues as opposed to expecting the best. Granted, not everything will be flawless, but on this mass a scale how could they overlooked all these issues?
Oversensationalized? Maybe a little bit
But still, it is pathetic that Microsoft's QA dept. is this shoddy.
Does anyone realise how many copies of that game were printed in the first shipment? It had to be at least 2 million copies, probably more. If out of 2 million copies only a few hundred aren't working, that doesn't mean dick. It just so happens that Halo fans are very....vocal. These things happen with every game, it's simply more pronounced with Halo because it's such a huge, high profile release.
@Ralph
Please shut up you MS fanboy. Saying "Bear in mind that the 360 is Microsoft's second entrant into the console space." does not mean it is permitted in ANY WAY to make defect products.
If you'd buy a car and it is only the second edition of that model and then oops it breaks. Would you brush it off because it's only their second time building it? HELL NO! So please stop posting stupid comments on these boards.
Oh and btw, Sony doesn't have major problems with PS3 as of now.
Oversensationalized? A word you have to read four times to believe it?
That does suck, for all the people who waited in line and saved up they should have at least caught this before release...tsk tsk.
@Ralph
Are you serious when you compares MS to Sony via system build? 360 failure rate was like 35% last I heard and Sony's was like 1-2%.
Sony's systems have been up there with Nintendos in my opinion build wise. I still have all my original psx, ps2, psp, ps3 and they all run perfectly with no issues (well haven't touched the psx for a while but last time I played she was good).
Sony's problems lies solely with PR and marketing in my eyes as the don't deliver the promises. My bro was on his 3rd 360 then he sold is as he got tired of it all, bear in mind that MS has been making computer hardware/software for years.
All Destructiod does is bash Halo3...try being unbiased huh? You guys are the pathetic ones because you call yourself a news site.
I've been noticing random freeze-ups on Live despite not buying into the Halos, what some people may be experiencing is Live servers buckling under the extreme load than actual game defects.
Uhm, hey gottlieb, it's not biased reporting if they are reporting the truth. I'm a huge fan of Microsoft (I have a 360 and a ton of games, just not Halo 3) but it's stuff like this that SHOULD be brought to the attention of the consumer. It would be just as biased if Destructoid heard this news bit and chose NOT to report it, thereby siding with Microsoft and Bungie and Halo 3 in acting as if this shit (and it IS shit) doesn't happen.
Destructoid has a right as a NEWS outlet to report news. So STFU and go back to finishing the hype. Stupid ass fanboy.
@gottlieb
If you don't like the site, STFU and GTFO.
I've never said one negative thing against Halo myself.
You must be confusing clog's with your "news"
The forum posts so far sure make it look like it's the disc. I've had a ton of read errors myself with other games, but Halo ran fine. It's definitely not the code or hdd corruption or anything, but it also doesn't seem to be linked to general 360 hardware crapness.
Maybe time for the ole routine inspection at the pressing plants?
Okay, so on one side, Destructoid gets accused of being MS fanboys. On the other, we're being accused of biasy AGAINST MS. This just furthers my theory that most gamers only see what they want to see and ignore anything contrary to what they want to moan about.
Also, I didn't bash Halo 3 at all in that story. I didn't insult Bungie or the game. So grow up.
@gottlieb, they don't call themselves a news site. It's a blog.
You tell em Jim. The idea of this being anything short of a fair article is rediculous. Anything over 0.5% failure rate on anything electronical, in most circumstances, would justify a recall.
On a more personal level; until something goes wrong with your console or disk you probably think everyone else is hyping things up. I felt like that until my xbox scratched my guitar hero disk to shit and made it un-playable with no option of getting it replaced by microsoft. Then the next month I got major graphical failures and had to send it off to the xbox hospital. Gay as.
Oh and Halo 3 keeps booting me off it's servers, even off of xbox live and my online matchmaking isn;t updating properly. No word of a lie; it seems to only update on matches where I'm getting battered! Someone in Microsoft is fucking with me I swear!
Anyway, his isn't my blog, I'll shut up now... :)
I saw this coming from a mile away. And if you think that's bad, just give it another month. Just think about all the kids and how much time they will spend playing the game.
Their Halo is like my DOA. I play those games for hundreds of hours--several hours each day. And look at me. I'm on my 6th console. It's been at the repair center for over a month, too.
Now imagine this happening to hundreds of thousands of people. Halo 3 could kill the 360's image, and I really hope it does. It will teach MS a lesson.
HAHA...ok guys sure. Sterling brings up red-rings again, which has died down in the press because of the new 360's(smaller chips & bigger heatsinks) that are out that are red-ringing less.
I have seen no positive news on Halo3 out of this site, which is probably a tactic, because when every site is positive, the sites that are negative get the click throughs.
Of the 97 friends i have on xbox live, 36 were on last night and of those 36, 34 were playing Halo3...seems like people are playing it and loving it...you be the judge and don't take Sterling's spin seriously.
You're all idoits...Microsoft upgraded everyone to Xbox Live GOLD...the free preview ended this morning so 4 million people will go back down to xbox live silver...that is the reason things were slow, simple as that. Get the facts before you start whining...
Yeah I wrote about this yesterday after I saw it on Bungie's forums. It's happening to a lot of people, but their issues are different. It's mainly MP maps and campaign missions that set it off though. I'm guessing they'll patch it right?
LOL! Sterling's right on the button this time. No need to brand everything from cars to sanitary pads if they can't get the basics right.
I'm going to pick up Halo 3 after work and I wont be "OH NOES TEH HALOS" if the disc is screwed. I expect these things from Microsoft at this point, but I have a few die hard halo friends coming over to play it tonight, and they might burn my house down if Master Chief gets errors. Think of the children, Microsoft. Also, drugs.
This is exactly why I went with the Wii and not the 360. Ever since the launch of the 360 I've read nothing but complaints about the "red ring of death" and other problems. Now watching the failure of a launch that Halo 3 has been I don't think I will ever plop down my 400 bones to pick one up. Is the new chip REALLY going to make the 360 that much more stable? Is the three year warranty truly enough to put your faith in to?
It seems that Microsoft just wants to take the cheap and easy way out with this generation. I don't want to waste money on cheap and easy, well, if I'm in the right spot with the right lady sure, but not with my gaming console.
Man I'm trippin over Halo too. When I start it up The game loads so loud that ,in fact, is the loudest loading game I've ever heard in my life! And After It loads it has that grinding 'gggrrrrrr' siud but it isn't getting scaratched up or nothing. I can barely hear the game when i have my tv low at night because it's so loud. I bought into the hype and now.... I'll pay the price. Also does anyone know how I can upload audio somehow via a website? I could do vid but sound isn't the same.
So out of the 1.5-2 million copies of Halo sold thus far only a very vocal minority seem to be having issues. Basically it works like this: the more copies you sell, the more exposure you get, the more likely you will experience some sort of problem/backlash. This is to be expected of almost everything. Microsoft has been more than honest and fair with it's customers when it comes to rectifying the problem in my opinion.
Billy are you serious? Halo 3's launch has been a failure in no way at all. Fans are pleased with the game, it has sold for millions of dollars, and they managed to fit it all on one DVD. Halo 3 is Microsoft biggest gaming success in the making. Sure it's got problems and not everybody likes it (I'm one of those casual multi-player only Halo guys) but it's still a great product.
@Jim
Destructoid is everything at the same time!! =D
@gottlieb
Are you saying that Xbox live isn't designed to be used fully by all it's members? And how is your friends list relevant at any point?
PS:Is the "falcon" even out yet?
To Xeroxme: I am serious, yea they sold a shit ton of copies but to say it was a smooth launch would be a lie. They put a shotty product at the consumers expense. We are all so goddamn jaded by Microsoft's shitty work as of late that we will sit there and take it and not blink an eye. To say that only a small percentage of people are experiencing a problem is not a good enough excuse or answer for such a poorly made product. If two copies out of 2 million failed, sure. But this is not the case, not by far.
gottlieb: You've never seen anything positive on Halo 3, have you? Did you read our 8.5 review? Did you read the several times I've praised Halo 3 as more than a videogame launch and something very important to the industry? Have you? Evidently not.
I would suggest, as friendly advice, that you learn to research your statements before you make them. I am aware that you clearly love Halo 3 and am deeply sorry for offending you with my story. However, please be more truthful in your criticism of this site as it will make your posts more credible and easier to take seriously.
Thank you.
My Collector's Ed. was perfectly fine. But admittedly, I did open the box to take a look before I left Best Buy.
I can't imagine how furious I would have been if I had gotten it home and it didn't work- it was the last limited edition copy in the store.
@ Chronicus- I think you just have one of the noisy DVD drives, man. Halo doesn't run any louder or softer than anything I've played recently.
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