http://www.8bitjoystick.com/index.php (Read http://vgchartz.com/forum/thread.php?id=14941 if you have no idea what this is about.)
My source inside the Xbox team posted a response on my Seattle PI reader blog to some of the questions asked in comments.
This whole story started as follow up to another comment made by my source on a story on the Red Ring of Death warranty extension on the Microsoft news blog run by the Seattle PI's Todd Bishop. I wrote a response and invited the commentator to an interview if they could prove that they worked at Microsoft on the Xbox. A few months later my source came across my blog post and they responded. I was able to verify who they were and that they were a major player in the design of the Xbox and Xbox 360 and were a very credible source. They spent a long time working on the Xbox team and probably knew more about the inner workings of the Xbox 360 than Bill Gates.
I went with this story because I do think that it's news worthy and it shed some light and confirmed some major theories about the Xbox 360 hardware problems. I still love playing games and watching movies Xbox 360, I just hope that it outlives my original NES that eventually succumbed to faulty cartridge connectors. But looking at the facts out there about problems I am not sure that it is going to do that.
I know that the truth about rushed designs and over heated motherboards is not as sexy as some of the wilder theories out there. Sorry that it's not Zombie Elvis and UFO's killing Xboxes in the middle of the night. I also have a creeping theory in the back of my mind is that one of the reasons why Microsoft keeps the Xbox 360 Core/Arcade SKU on the market is for a cheaper Xbox 360 for gamers that don't want to take their chances on getting a repair job and want a new Xbox to play the games that they already spent their money on.
I am still going to continue to play Dead Rising despite the fact that it pushes the hardware possibly to the point of failure. (As an unrelated side note I think the timing belt broke on my car and I had to have it towed tonight. My car had an RROD and is in the repair shop)
As a side note to other bloggers out there, I learned a lesson on my previous post about publishing an article before you do decent job proof reading.
For the nickname "toddhol" that they used I think they meant Todd Holmdahl, Microsoft's corporate vice president of Gaming and Xbox Products Group.
Here is their response:
Hi everyone. I understand the questions you all have. I hope you understand that it's a bit overwhelming to try and answer everything in real time. After tonight, I'm going to ask Jake (or Jacob?) to field your questions and funnel them to me for answers. Then we can do that in an organized way. But for now, I'm going to try and answer some that I thought were most important.
First, why the secrecy?
MS knows who I am. That's why I'm not concerned about self identifying to them in these postings with details only they would know, as some here have pointed out. The people who founded Xbox hw number 10. 1 left to go be the VP of manufacturing at Qualcomm, 1 left to go be the GM of engineering at Zune, 1 left after only 2 months in ‘99 due to conflicts with toddhol. He works on Surface now. The rest still work on Xbox. I am the only one who left the company entirely.
I am not concerned about MS knowing who I am. They are worried about me revealing their problems. Not the other way around. Plus, I have contacted every single attorney who has filed a lawsuit against MS and offered to help. Some have accepted, and that work is in progress. We'll talk about that in another post. It's very interesting, I just don't want a bunch of fan boys trying to hack my home PC (that I use for work). Harass my kids, call my house, etc.
Second, why now?
Well, it's not just now. I've been reaching out since before the product went into manufacturing. I left before launch. But many employees continued to contact me about the problems with the product and its launch. I did my best to help them figure out how to mitigate the problems caused my bad management decisions, and test the boxes right. Sometimes my ideas worked, sometimes they didn't. I then started to contact reporters. Sometimes it went no where. Sometimes, it resulted in a spectacular thing, like the ambush interview with toddhol just before MS admitted guilt. But still, it happened too slowly for me. That's one reason I'm doing this now.
When those articles were posted last July, I chimed in as a commentator. That's when Jake invited me for an interview. But I didn't see it then. It was only recently when I goog'ed "xboxfounder" on a whim that I found that old invite. So I contacted him to see if he was still interested. I sent him a current resume from my current work email account, and he believed me. If you guys don't, then tell me what you need to see as proof. And I will provide that.
Last: My motivation.
I have always been in a position to stand up for the customer. MS stopped me from doing that. They need to pay the price now. If you guys won't get together and make that happen, you have no hope for the future with them. It's not my fight, but I am here fighting. You decide what you want to do. And then do it!
