Xbox 360

Features after NXE
At CES 2009 Microsoft's Robby Bach announced Xbox Live Primetime. Primetime is the newest channel on Xbox Live that will create scheduled programming at specific time so you can find friends & experience live events. One of the first games to run in Primetime is 1 VS 100. Xbox Live Primetime & 1 VS 100 will be available Spring 2009.

Criticisms

There are a number of criticism that are often leveraged against the Xbox 360, the main one being unreliable hardware quality; however, excessive DVD drive noise and a confusing amount of hardware configurations are also targeted by critics of the system.

'The Red Ring of Death'

The Xbox 360 has gained a reputation for a high failure rate, sometimes rumored to be as high as 30% although Microsoft have denied the failure rate is that high; they have not released an official failure rate. The most common hardware failure is the General Hardware Failure, denoted by the bottom two and upper right quadrant of the Ring of Light flashing red; leading to the failure being dubbed the 'Red Ring of Death'. This failure renders the console unable to boot or 'bricked' and the only official course of action for the consumer being to call Xbox support to ship the console back to Microsoft where it is either repaired or replaced. While there is no official course of action on fixing the Red Ring of Death there are some unofficial solutions to try. The most popular is called the "towel trick" in which you take everything off of your Xbox 360, your hard-drive, A/V cables ect. The only thing you want plugged in is the power supply. Now you wrap it in three (3) large towels (the ones you would use to dry yourself off after a shower) and turn it on. Let it sit running for 20-30 minutes, turn it off, and let it cool off for another 15. Then turn it on and it should work. *Note this is not a permanent solution.*

No official reason has been given by Microsoft as to why this error is so common place, however most speculation points towards insufficient cooling around the GPU leading to a warping of the motherboard. Microsoft has taken steps to solve this problem by adding an additional heat sink to the GPU in later units and units returned from repair. These changes were included in a chipset refresh codenamed 'Falcon' which also includes a 65nm CPU to further reduce heat. An as yet unreleased chipset refresh, codenamed 'Jasper', will introduce a 65nm GPU and is hoped to solve the 'Red Ring of Death' problem.

As well as these hardware revisions Microsoft has increased the Xbox 360 warranty to 3 years, however this is only to cover the 'Red Ring of Death' all other hardware problems are only covered for 1 year; this was reported to have cost Microsoft $1 billion.

DVD Drive Problems

The DVD Drive is often the target of criticism, mostly for the excessive noise produced and an apparent tendency for scratching discs. These issues are less apparent in later models of the 360 as Microsoft have replaced the initial DVD drive with a quieter model from BenQ.

Power Adapter Size

The Xbox 360's power adapter is significantly larger than similar adapters on previous consoles.  Though this criticism was mostly vocal at the beginning of the Xbox 360's retail life, and it is recognized as a minor gripe, Microsoft has not reduced the power adapter's size over the life of the console.

Xbox Live Arcade File Size Restriction

Xbox Live Arcade games had to come in under the 50 MB file size restriction. Many people felt that that 50MB was to small to create games. Over time Microsoft stretched the size to 150MB then 250MB. Now with games coming out like Watchmen: The End is Nigh (1.2GB) and past games like Portal: Still Alive (625MB) & Street Fighter II HD Remix (369MB) it seems like Microsoft has loosened its grip over Xbox Live Arcade file size restrictions.