Today I have had all I can take of Microsoft's incompetence. Their general attitude towards consumers is both offensive and patronising. How long will they continue to take people for a ride and expect them to put up with it?
3 weeks ago I sent off my Xbox for repairs after it fell to the Red Ring of Death, at less than a year old. Now let's look at that for a start, the Xbox's infamous build quality. The Xbox 360 was released to the masses on 22nd November 2005, approaching 2 and a half years ago. From the start people complained of problems, freezing consoles and the infamous red ring of death. At first Microsoft flat out denied the problem, and charged angry owners $150 for their Xbox's to be repaired, a proposterous figure for repairs to what can only be described as wares of unmerchantable quality. Amid floods of continuing breaks, freezes and faulty components Xbox slowly begins to admit the problem, slowly being the key word. It takes untill July 2007, a year and half post-launch, for Xbox to extend a 3 year warranty to all consoles. A year and a half for them to admit fully to the problem with their flagship piece of hardware? That alone is utterly ridiculous, if this was a car or a DVD player there would have been a total recall on all units within a month if not a couple of weeks and the problem would then be fixed, permanently. Microsoft on the other hand, with its monopolising hold on the market at this point (following a disappointing Playstation 3 launch line-up) takes a year and a half to offer a warranty, prior to petulant denial of an obvious and widespread problem. How can this possibly be called fair trade and acceptable standards and treatment of consumers? For a year and a half Microsoft dragged out their pitiful excuses and charged consumers for repairs on faulty goods, with no offer of refunds or comepensation thereafter. Surely that is an act of complete and utter fraud?
2 and a half years later, consoles are still breaking down fresh off the shelves and xbox appear to be nowhere near to fixing the problem permanently, yet continue to sell consoles that will break within a small fraction of their alotted warranty. It leads to the question, "Well, are they doing anything to fix the problem at all?" It takes 3 weeks for a console to be repaired and sent back to a consumer, and these faulty consoles are getting recycled between people. Band-aid quality repairs are administered to the console which is then likely sent on to someone else entirely. These are faulty systems that Micorsoft know full well are likely to break again and again, so why on earth are they being allowed to give them to consumers? Due to these problems most people end up buying a new console altogether within a year of the original purchase. I don't really think anymore needs to be said, Microsoft are bleeding consumers for their money by deliberatley selling people crap, and not only is it crap it's goods that they know full well to be crap, they show apathy and an unabashed lack of sympathy for the people they are ripping off. Now we could say balls to this everyone buy a PS3, but Microsoft now has the hold of 3rd party publishers and many cross platform titles are released on the Xbox first as it is the primary development console for many companies, and as a further result many games e.g. the Rainbow Six Vegas series, play markedly better on the Xbox as a result.
Now the reason I have begun this rant is because I recieved my Xbox 360 back from repairs, which were in themselves a nightmare to set up with a foreign call centre somewhere in the depths of Indonesia/Middle East, with people clearly unfamiliar with problems likely to occur to high end electronics. 3 days after recieving my xbox, it is broken again, freezing after 5-10 minutes play on any game I care to try, having been left for hours to cooldown, the problem persisted. I just could not believe it, having waited 3 weeks for my console to be repaired it is sent back with a problem I had never had before I sent the console to Microsoft. This is an absolute travesty, and frankly disgusting but I am certainly not the only one this has happened to and it is not unlike Microsoft to do so. Just look at Window's Vista, the only operating system that window's will allow to use Direct X 10 alone is clear bribery for people to purchase the system, that in itself is so rife with faults and stupid design I really couldn't list them all but as an example Vista broke a £1700 pound computer tower I purchased within 2 days. DX10 is not Vista only because XP is uncapable of using the software, far from it, people have adjusted many games such as Crysis and World Conflict to allow access to the graphical settings in games that have DX10 only options using DX9 systems to good results. DX10 is Vista only because Microsoft wanted to dangle a carrot to consumers to upgrade to their faulty operating system, and that is all. Why do they do it? Because they can, because Microsoft have the monopoly on PC operating systems and the average consumer is haplessly unaware of alternatives, they can pump out the most mindlessly incompetent piece of bilge and consumers are forced to use it because retailers offer no feesable alternatives. The situation has become Microsoft or nothing for gamers, with the faint glimmer of hope as Mac builds momentum with their compatability movement, and as such Microsoft can get away with murder.
Is it time to say enough is enough and flat out refuse to be ripped off by these beaurocratic fat cats that are destroying this beloved video games industry, which as it has become more and more profitable, has become less and less about the gamers themselves.
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