http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3160818
Second, the PS3 will be $499 in about a week.1up.com wrote: Microsoft made many gamers happy this morning by deciding to universally enhance the Xbox 360 warranty program. Though the warranty has changed in the past, today is the most far reaching shift. The new three year warranty policy applies to all machines, whether they were purchased today or at launch, and covers all costs associated with fixing the red ring issue that has plagued a great number of machines.
This is very clearly a big step for Microsoft in coming to terms with issues that reared their heads within the first few weeks of launch and have simply refused to go away. 1UP spoke with Peter Moore this afternoon about what this means for the Xbox platform going forward. Does this cover issues like disc scratching and dirty disc errors? Does Microsoft wish it had addressed this problem sooner? Why does Moore call this "tough day" at Microsoft for many people?
Read on and find out.
1UP: Not too long ago, in an interview with Mike Antonucci, you famously responded to question about the breaking 360s with "Ya know, things break." Do you regret saying that now?
Well, no, things do break, don't they? I think we just proved that. [audible pause] Hmm. I regret the way people took it, but my focus was, if you read the whole thing, people take that comment without context of that entire one and a half hour interview, but the focus is on customer service and stuff does break and we're clearly trying to rights some of the wrongs we've caused some of our consumers here over the past few months. Yeah, things break and we need to do a better job of fixing it, doing it quickly and not charging people for it.
1UP: Not too much later, Dean did another interview with Todd Holmdahl, your corporate VP of Gaming and Xbox Products Group. The quote everyone focused on there was gamers complaining are considered a "vocal minority." But, if they're a vocal minority, how does that result in such a far reaching change in warranty policy?
Well, it still is a minority of customers and clearly they're very vocal and they should be, because we haven't done right by them. Todd was right, it is a minority. The great majority of people are having a great time with their Xbox 360s -- you know that. We don't have 10 million broken Xbox 360s, but we haven't done a good job, in recent months in particular, of taking care of the people that have taken care of us, Patrick. We've made a pretty bold step today -- as you said, "ouch" -- that has some pretty far reaching consequences financially, but as a company think is the right thing to do, and we're going to take care of you whether you bought on one launch day or yesterday and protect you against those problems that are indicated by the three red rings on the console. I hope people focus on us doing the right thing, rather than whatever nefarious [tricks] they think we had up our sleeve.
1UP: The response has been positive so far. The response is that we're glad it happened, but why did it take so long?
It took so long because it's not an easy thing to do. It's a large financial hit, you make sure you do things right the first time and the only time and we don't come back two months later and do changes and take bigger financial hits and say we've got a different problem we never figured out -- things of that nature. So, you collect data. It's global, we're in 38, 40 countries selling this thing -- not just the US -- and we need to make sure we have global policies. We need to roll it out to all our customer service call centers around the globe, [and make sure] repair and refurbished centers are gonna be ready to accept whatever comes in. You can't do it overnight, Patrick, and hope people realize it's a large step we're taking, but with the consumers well being at the forefront of that decision.
1UP: What has it been about the last couple of months that's preempted this change?
It's the data, it's the ability to finally collect data to pinpoint where the problems are coming from. I don't know if you listened to Robbie's call, the financial call, he points out that a lot of these problems are problems that occur after field testing and field use. We've only been in market since November 2005 -- that's 18 months or so -- the ability for us to get a real handle on it, you want to make sure you only do this once, make sure you've captured all of the issues, make sure you've made all the right financial reserves to be able to take care of everybody on a global basis and it takes a little time. It's not something we thought about on Monday.
1UP: But this isn't the first time Microsoft has changed the warranty policy. What's different this time?
This is just focusing on what we now have the data to do and make sure we're taking care of people. You never say never, but the ability is for us to look at the data we have captured and put a cost number against it and our goal is to take care of you.
1UP: Was there a tipping point? In the last couple of weeks in particular, there's that Micro Mart company, that I realize isn't an official Microsoft repair center, but is this a response to that? Even 1UP ran our story about a guy...
Right.
1UP: ...who was treated very well, but the point of the story was that it was still 11 [broken 360s]. On its face, it seems like a response to all that chatter.
No, no, this is data. Believe me, this is not something we figured we needed to do this week or last week. This is something a lot of people have been working on it, a lot of people have been examining the data and it's very important you do this properly and you capture all the costs. Because some poor guy, and I, of course, read the story and felt very bad, had multiple consoles go out, but that wasn't the tipping point that made us do this. This is the collection of numerous points of data on a global basis and bringing all that together and making sure we did the right thing.
1UP: In your open letter, you said that "certain improvements" have been made to the console. Can you elaborate on that?
Not really, I'm not the technical guy. As has always happened in our business, you're constantly improving your console as you learn things about what goes right and what goes wrong in the field. In our case, over 10 million now in people's hands, you get data, you get feedback, and you're constantly improving both to increase its reliability and bring costs out of the console, so eventually you can pass down some cost savings to the consumer. I'm not the technical guy and I can't comment on that.
1UP: If the improvements have been made, does that mean the new ones being rolled out...this is typically affecting launch machines, does that mean the new consoles on shelves have these changes?
I can't speak in the 40 countries in what could be hundreds of thousands of retailers, whether they...
1UP: Let's talk about just the US, then.
Sure, don't know. Here's what you should worry about: if you get one today and you have a problem tonight or you have a problem two and a half years from now, we're gonna take care of you. I can't speak of every console on the United States' shelves.
1UP: But, eventually, by year end?
The eventuality is that every day, as we're making consoles, we're learning more about them, we're improving it, as I'm sure Sony and Nintendo are doing.
1UP: The cynical response to this is, does this insinuate Microsoft expects the systems to fail, so they're covering themselves?
No, no. I mean, you have to cover yourself, we're not expecting things to fail, but, again, from a financial point of view, you have to look at scenarios and say we need to make sure we're taking care of customers should things happen and that has a cost to it. We're trying to do the right thing. Cynics will try and poke holes in this, I understand that, that's their prerogative. It's a tough day here in Redmond for a lot of people, and people should be aware of that, but it's been tougher for a lot of people who've had problems with the box and we need to take care of them.
1UP: Tough in what way? Financially, or needing to "man up" to take care of this problem?
No, tough from a moral point of view, tough financially, of course. We've got a lot of very passionate people up here, you know many of them, Patrick, people who work on this thing. It's not easy to reads the headlines. I take that very seriously, but at the same time, the feedback I'm getting from my open letter is that I'm glad we're doing the right thing for people, as difficult as it is to read about this stuff.
We don't have 10 million broken Xbox 360s, but we haven't done a good job of taking care of the people that have taken care of us
1UP: For the longest time, as media outlets have been chasing this story, it's felt like the idea was being dismissed or danced around and now it's responding well because people are happy something's being said.
Right. And that's fine. And I want to apologize for anybody, no matter where they are in the world, that has had this problem and we haven't done right by them. We're gonna do right by them.
1UP: I want to be specific. This only covers the red ring issue.
That's correct.
1UP: Personally, last week, the issue I ran into was my machine stopped playing some discs, but will play some others. This won't be covered under that, correct?
It's the red ring, which is a general hardware failure. You've got a one-year warranty, depending on when you got your box...
1UP: Mine was a launch one.
This is focused on a specific issue that we feel we haven't done a great job working with the consumer and that's what the focus is, yes.
1UP: The people who already purchased an extended warranty, what does this mean for them?
I don't know about that. A lot of the extended warranties are retailer-oriented, so our point of view is that if you bought a box, you have a three year warranty effective today. We need to be able to take care of people who have paid us for repairs that have been out of warranty against this problem, so we're going to busily start sending checks out to those people again.
1UP: Now that these are being fixed in the original machines, are we going to see a tweaked box? There's a lot of talk of switching to a 65nm chip. Is this indicative of a change?
We'll fix problems, we'll improve the box. Clearly, we don't intend this to be a go-forward for the entire life cycle situation, we're constantly improving the box both from a quality point of view and a cost point of view, and that's important at both levels, and obviously we expect our quality to improve. In the short term, we have done a good job with a set of consumers that have the three flashing red light program and we're doing that immediately.
1UP: Do you anticipate this affecting the gaming division achieving profitability in the next fiscal year?
No. We're very focused on delivering profitability in fiscal 08 and we will deliver profitability.
1UP: Were retailers notified beforehand about this policy change?
For the great majority of people, because of the FCC requirements of not giving people heads up because of insider trading rules, the great majority of folks...now, of course, we have called all our retailers and all of our 3rd party partners this afternoon, we've had a roll out of how we've imparted this information for people we care about. The fact that I'm speaking to you, I've spoken with a number of people and will continue to speak to people throughout the afternoon, answering their questions. The impact on those folks, I don't know, but they're simply going to have to be understand what needs to be done like the rest of us here.
http://kotaku.com/gaming/truth/retailer ... 275456.php
Feel free to discuss how these two revelations have forever changed your lives.Kotaku wrote: Following up on the report that the PLAYSTATION 3 would see a $100 price cut taking place the week after E3 2007, GameDaily has confirmed with "a merchandising manager at one of the world's biggest retailers" that the 60 GB version of the PS3 will indeed drop to $499, starting on July 12, one day after Sony's E3 press conference. GameDaily also reports that the new price is indeed indicative a retail-wide price drop, not a Circuit City specific sale, as a handful of speculators have posited.
What was the old price of PS3? And what's the current 360 price?
Who knew slackers could work so hard? D:
