Hey, without Xbox One, the PS4 probably not even by half as good as it is hardware/software wise. As a matter of fact, without the Xbox 360, Sony probably never would have turned things around with the PS3 because there would have been no reason to.

Saga? Candy Crush is a "saga". That was a debacle!

Now that red ring of death looks more green than red to me.

Weren't they basically forced to do this though? If I remember correctly weren't the government or some standards agency getting involved because Microsoft kept downplaying how bad the problem actually was?

In my case I bought extended store warrenty as there were already widespread reports of failures and still complete denial from MS. After my 360 died again the store replaced it, yet the warrenty didn't carry over.

Maybe they saved the Xbox brand, yet I'm probably not the only one that was hesitant to buy an XBox One on release. It made the choice to go with ps4 first a lot easier. Currently I still rather wait for a slim redesign XBox One. Once burned, twice shy.

Ka-pi96 said: Makes Ballmer sound pretty good

Having been CEO of Microsoft for many years I am certain that behind closed doors he's friggin excellent at what he does and probably not a whiney prick who just wants to blame people and fire them for every mistake. It's just his public / on stage persona that is so cringingly polarising.

But also even though $1.15Bn is a lot of money in anyone's language, with MS's total revenue and profitability it is really just a blip, albeit a biggish one but a blip nonetheless, in the accounts. It's not like $1.15Bn would require Steve to go to the board and say "you know that important project we've been working on? Well we have to pull funding for a year to cover the costs of a fuck up with the Xbox 360 and it's RRoD." No, that $1.15Bn was pulled out of cash in hand.

Also Xbox failings would never have harmed share price, because at that time Xbox was seen by the share market as a money pit and hearing of a $1.15Bn fix it job for a design / engineering fault would just cause an eye-roll by the sharemarket, a momentary pause to consider whether this affects MS's core business, quick realisation the answer is no, and carry on.

I dunno about any agency, but yes, they were forced into it at least by realising the enormity of the problem and that it meant the death of the Xbox brand if they didn't do the right thing. But Peter Moore isn't going to admit their first reaction was denial, do nothing and hope it goes away. Esp since apparently the engineering people had no clue why the problem was happening. If they say "we don't see any faults, so it hopefully is just a random thing" then the bosses will base their decvisions on that advice.

Still, this company, like all others, do not act out of the consumer's interest, they act out of self preservation.

Decision tree:

Will profits be substantially negatively affected by this? Yes - take action, No-go to next question.

Will an important brand or company image be significantly negatively affected by this? Yes - go to next question; No - fuck 'em

How much will it cost? It won't affect other parts of the business or the share price - take action; too much - go to next question

Is the cost of a class action more or less than the cost of fixing the problem? Class action cost is more - take action; Class action cost is less - go to next question.

Will lives be lost or will there be serious injury? Yes/Probably - go to next question; No - fuck 'em

Can the loss of life/injury be buried or hidden or blamed on something else (especially blame the consumer or make them look like they are clueless idiots)? Yes - fuck 'em; No - I guess we better do something.

At the press conference: "Our customers are our number one concern."

Public and media: "Yay! they are so great for doing the right thing! We love you Mr/Mrs/Ms soulless corporation!... Hey, did you watch [insert inane reality TV show] last night?"

Steve Balmer got through the first 3 or 4 questions and immediately decided the cost was within acceptable limits. If he'd decided the cost was too much, he would have let the brand die, told Xbox customers to fuck off, and buried Xbox along with Zune. And that would have been the right decision for the company. MS would never have saved Xbox at any cost, so it is fortunate that the cost was low enough that it was worth doing the right thing by customers.

Yeah that all makes sense. If they had decided to give up it would have been interesting to see how they'd handle it. After reading all that I was going to ask if you were a programmer and then I seen your username and avatar :P

Actually I'm not a programmer, I'm a vet. But my name and avatar come from this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1BdQcJ2ZYY

:O really. What type of animals do you mainly "specalize" in? I thought you might have been a programmer because the way you structured that whole thing was basically pseudo code.