Suit Filed Over 'Halo 3 Incompatibility'

Via Kotaku, a story on the CourtHouseNews site is discussing a suit filed by a CA man against Microsoft over Halo 3. "Microsoft's highly touted "Halo 3" video game, made exclusively for its Xbox 360, causes the Xbox to freeze or crash, ruining the game, according to a federal class-action complaint ... Lead plaintiff Randy Nunez says he paid $59.99 for his game. He wants class certification and damages." Given the lack of widespread note of such crashes, it's going to be hard to prove this in court I think.

Right

[gcnaddict]

You've got to be fucking kidding me.

Might spell BIG trouble

[Torodung]

If that's really a repeating issue on his box, and folks aren't reporting similar experiences because you "can't return video games," then establishing a class is the way to make sure anyone with problems can jump on the bandwagon. It lowers the barrier to file suit, in the same way that corporations have had that barrier lowered, vis-a-vis bulk subpoena provisions in the DMCA.

The result of lowering the barrier to file is always that more people file.

This could turn grave for MS and Bungie very quickly, even if the problem is strictly Xbox360 hardware. If Halo 3 taxes that hardware to it's limits, and the CPU/GPU has cooling problems, it would cause exactly what the plaintiff describes.

Class action is every service provider's worst nightmare. It will be interesting to see if anything comes of it.

--
Toro

Not a Xbox 1

[4D6963]

I know it sounds ambiguous but upon reading the complaint [courthousenews.com] it turns out it is indeed about having the game not run on a Xbox 360, and not a Xbox "1".

Read the complaint

[faloi]

It's pretty explicit in the complaint that the failing system is a Xbox 360. Maybe the people at Kotaku figured everybody reading the article would know that the guy was trying it on a 360, so they didn't explicitly state it in their summary.

Re:Might spell BIG trouble

[Cassius Corodes]

The old XBox didn't make any money either - however the long term tactic of Microsoft is to break into the market even if it means losing money. Granted it was supposed to happen with this console but I'm sure they have to money to ride it out.

Re:/. mods...

[Brian Gordon]

You can have the last laugh in 17 months when the metamod backlog catches up :)

Re:Might spell BIG trouble

[Moridin42]

The biggest difference in the success of Microsoft and Nintendo.. is in the fact that Nintendo turns a profit on their hardware sales. Microsoft takes a loss on the hardware, trying to make it up on license fees later. Which they have as yet been unable to do.

Re:Might spell BIG trouble

[Moridin42]

A profitable quarter doesn't make the division profitable. It just means that for one quarter the division took in more money than it expensed. Previous quarter losses are still losses on the tally sheet. For the division to be profitable over its life it has to have future quarterly profits to offset those previous quarter losses.

All the owners of Xbox360's from all the previous quarters didn't go out and buy new Xbox360s, so Microsoft didn't take new losses on the hardware. But they are continuing to buy games this quarter, generating the revenues. So while it may be that the Xbox division will sometime relatively soon become profitable as a whole, it hasn't happened yet.