Epic Fail of the Decade
This prize would have to go to Microsoft. I mean, they released Vista, promising there would be not security issues with it, and within a week of it’s release, they release a security update. AND Vista is one big resource hog. If you look on the back of some Games for Windows, in the system requirements, some actually have a different memory spec for Vista. Example: I’ve seen a bunch that have said 1GB of memory was required for everything else, but if you had Vista, you needed 2GB. why? because Vista’s gonna suck up half your memory.
And then there’s the Xbox 360. The original Xbox was built by Intel and worked and was a pretty cool system. The 360 was built by Microsoft. Why a software developer decided to build hardware, no one knows. But, I sure hope Intel or someone else builds be next Xbox. The 360 gets the Epic Fail of All time, so far. I mean, this system was hyped up and down and then MS purposely under-released it. Well, it’s more like they knew they didn’t have as many systems as they hyped and they also knew every single one of the initial systems weren’t actually complete and all of them suffered from the Red Ring of Death. And most everyone suffered through those issues or swapped the 360 for a PS3. That was until Forza 2 was released. I have never seen a computer reject software as much as Forza 2. Both Microsoft and Turn 10 denied that the sudden slew of RROD crashes had nothing to do with the recently released racer, but, I know for me, my system was working fine until I put FM2 in. In fact, I think everyone who played Forza 2 had the RROD.
This actually forced MS to spend nearly $4 million to extend the warranty on the RROD issue. Before that, MS had spent millions of dollars to fix the RROD issue, and eventually it was “fixed” or rather, they replaced it with a different warning, which means the same thing the RROD did.
These issues were unfortunate, too, ’cause the system itself was a pretty decent system with some great titles. But, with the RROD issues, space issues (MS not only still operated with DVD-ROMs instead of just installing there 15GB a layer HDDVD drive in the system and letting their developers use that, but they also have a system that doesn’t have a Hard Drive, which makes developing games difficult ’cause you don’t want to leave anyone out.), the 360 has suffered needlessly.
However, there are some hints that MS might be partnering with Sony to release a Blu-ray enabled system soon. MS has denied that there would be a 360 with Blu-Ray, but that doesn’t mean that the next Xbox wouldn’t feature Blu-ray. I think it would be interesting to see what developers like Turn10 and Bungie could do with 33.1GB of space.
