A game that is marketed as being compatable with a certain console, only to find out that the console needs an upgrade before it can be played? Sounds like a class action lawsuit to me.
Who burns the discs for publication? I’d blame them - if a CDR doesn’t work in my old 8x drive, well, it’s old. I can accept that. But if a company decided to make commodity hardware including said drive, I agree that you shouldn’t be told you’re SOL just 'cause the newer models incorporate newer drives.
If the newest way of pressing millions of discs doesn’t work in Rev A technology, they shouldn’t be using it.
Incidentally, I just sent the following e-mail to customer support over at Activision:
Christ, I hated working as a telephone support technician for a well known computer supplier. Suddenly, I was the CEO of the company when people had problems and wanted to bitch. Suddenly, this poor schlob (me, making $8.50 an hour) had the ability to make company policy changes, hire more people to answer the phones, realign the planets, etc. It’s a thankless job where the employee, making barely enough to live on, has to put up with being constantly bitched at by management, who seem to be surprisingly adept at ignoring reality, and customers, who are sometimes rightfully aggravated but seem to think that yelling at some low level sap will do more than just make that poor sap consider downing a couple bottles of Tylenol.
…a console with error messages?
…a console with error messages?
…a console with error messages?
…
…
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XXXXXXXXXXXX404 DOES NOT COMPUTE404XXXXXXXXXXX…
Master Wang-Ka they could just do it the way Sony does and drop you back to the memory management screen. Or the way the NES does it and make the power button flash. Or the way my cell phone does and just stop responding to everything until I unplug the battery.
All consoles will have glitches here and there. The XBox actually SAYS that it glitched, instead of causing weird graphic anomolies or just freezing.
As a note, they aren’t saying you need to upgrade your XBox. They’re saying that your XBox has one of the first generation DVD-Rom drives, which have been found to be less than reliable. Same thing happened with the PS2. I’m on my 3rd ps2 due to crappy drives, most of my friends are on their 3rd or 4th ones also. It’s not limited to Microsoft or Activision.
Yes, they do. The infamous “Disc Read Error” that pops out of nowhere and may render most of your gaming collection unplayable, forcing you to have the PS2 repaired or getting a new system all together. It’s quite common in the first few versions of the PS2.
fwiw, i’ve found that the “Disc Read Error” problem with the PS2 usually has more to do with the laser lens being dirty. By taking the case off (which, incidentally voids any sort of warranty you might have) and taking out part of the drive mechanism, you can get to the lens and clean it with Isopropyl alcohol and a “technical swab” (basically a q-tip made of foam instead of cotton, so it doesn’t leave particles behind).
So far i’ve resurrected 3 PS2’s this way, which is how i scored my free one (it was an “if you can fix it, you can have it” scenario).
Funny, I have a launch-day PS2 and have yet to have that problem. Maybe it’s not getting as much use as some.
If all you’re doing with it is playing games, you might never notice the problem. I believe it happens more often if you use the PS2 to watch DVDs – With a game, it can read data into RAM and then turn the laser off for a good chunk of gameplay time, but playing a DVD involves continuous operation of the laser for an hour or two.
The first time i heard about it I was told that watching DVD’s shortened the lifetime of the laser for just that reason. While this is true, strictly speaking, the more pertinent problem is that the continuous operation causes dust to collect more quickly than during game operation.
Actually, my PS2 has gotten a lot more use as a DVD player than as a video game console. Perhaps it’s that it’s not been used much since I went to college, as I either had no time to play it or it got left at home.
Yeah, but you have a sample size of one. Will all PS2s get DREs after a couple of years? No. Will some? Yes. Is the percentage of those that do higher than the percentage of other consoles that get errors? That’s really the imporant question, but unfortunately I can’t answer it.
Of course, 1 person who gets DREs is usually more vocal than 100 people who have PS2s that work just fine. I rarely see people posting topics just to say that their PS2 is just fine. Does that mean that there are no PS2s out there that work just fine? Of course not.
I don’t even want to know how you found this out.
No, shush. I mean it.
pan
A different message board when the game came out. It didn’t affect me because I already had a PS2, but we did have an old PS, so I just had to try it out. I have no idea how the first person figured it out.