Microsoft is ending Xbox 360 production more than 10 years after its debut | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft is ending Xbox 360 production more than 10 years after its debut

venturebeat.com

114 pointsdoppp103 comments

IMO, the amazing thing about the 360 was how they were able to successfully continue selling it in spite of having the ring of death issues[0]. I know people who would go and buy a new machine when theirs died without thinking about it twice. One even gave me their 360 when the ONE came out. Microsoft sure knows how to build brand loyalty.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_360_technical_problems

Speaking as a 360 owner, I think it had more to do with a really good selection of launch exclusive titles that kept people coming back. The original gen 1's were not of great quality at all, even beyond the RROD issues the console felt cheap and poorly made, the power supplies were insanely large and generated a ton of heat, etc. Microsoft sold the 360 with good exclusives, which is what Sony then did with the PS4 while Microsoft bumbled around trying to be the center of your living room, like Sony did in turn with the PS3 (and why it had similar issues the One now has).

To be fair: The Elites that came about later on were a MASSIVE improvement. The originals were the low bidder manufacturer and it showed, and I think M$ learned from that. Despite it's software issues (which I've gone to at length in other threads) the One does feel like solid hardware and good build quality.

I never really understood Microsoft wanting to be the center of the living room. Its just a weird concept to me.

The living room is typically the biggest screen in people's homes, the screen they spend the most time with, and the screen they are the "fondest" for as it is the home for much of their entertainment. Why wouldn't Microsoft want to be at the center of that? Microsoft wants to "own" all of your screens, by being the friendly operating system and development tool provider for them, so of course the battle of the living room is huge for them.

Yes, that's a good point, and I get that. But these days there are more smaller screens that they don't control because their mobile phone strategy was a huge failure. I would focus on controlling the smaller screens because that's where most entertainment and things happen.

Typing this from my android phone.

I have so many opinions on this and could quickly devolve this into a long winded tangent, but the short answer is: Yes, there are many screens and Microsoft clearly has strategies for all the fronts, mobile included. Also, just because Microsoft is down, don't count them out just yet in the mobile screen front. Microsoft has the best leverage right now, of any company/platform, to turn wins on any screen into possible gains in all of them...

Microsoft Lumia owner and fan

I wanted a Windows phone. The GUI was so nice. But they sort of give up. Knowing MS, they are probably cooking something now that they are in the embrace stage of their business plan.

I owned a Lumia Icon for about a year not terribly long ago, about the time WP 8.1 came out. My observations:

- The Update system was extremely confusing, I had a hell of a time just figuring out how to update to 8.1, including needing a firmware update, figuring out how to apply a firmware update, then doing it three times over because I had that many. While the system eventually notified me of the system update, it remained silent on the firmware.

- The UI language was fantastic, seriously I loved the way the phone handles information. The only issue there is that many apps like Facebook and what have you totally ignored it, and Microsoft let them on anyway. What good is building a UI like that if you're going to let the developers just do whatever they want anyway?

- The app store in general is extremely limited. I realize Microsoft can't do anything here but I'm holding them partially responsible because of how late they were to this game.

- My Icon would get very hot with only regular use. A quick flip through twitter or even just some websites and the back of the device became uncomfortably warm.

- The keyboard is AMAZING. Seriously Microsoft knocked it out of the park on that one.

- The device felt well built and (aside of the heat issues) never presented as though it was poorly made. Connectors were solid, battery life was very good, and the bright colored interfaces with the white-on-black text make it genuinely a pleasure to use.

Eventually I had to face reality and bail (too limited on capabilities, plus I'm an iOS developer and at the time they just released the 6, the first decently sized iPhone) and went that way. That said should I change careers I'd definitely look the Windows Phone way again.

Is that really true? I would think that most people spend more time on their phones than watching TV.

You are right. http://flurrymobile.tumblr.com/post/128773968605/the-cable-i...

It may not be true anymore, but it certainly was when the Xbox division was first conceived.

I think the "aha!" moment for this is, today, still another 30-50 or even many more years away. I could ramble on for hours as to what I want the future to look like, but suffice it to say it really would be what we generally refer to now as the "automated home of the future". The largest obstacle right now is branding and current technology. Every individual company is vying to meet all your needs. Microsoft wants you to have a "Microsoft Home", Apple want you to live in your "Apple Home", Google the "Google Home", etc. This is not the future. The future, done right, requires seamless integration of all the devices we will own. To the point where we stop thinking of everything as even being a separate device. A single system that blissfully handles your entire home life.

The current situation is laughable. Existing devices in this space are designed as standalone items, which may or may not even be meant to integrate with other devices. The "standards" that have been brought to life thus far are... ugh. Just no!

I will be satisfied the day I can turn every wall into a touch display, with wireless speakers everywhere. Every lightbulb, every speaker, every appliance, every goddamn little thing seamlessly integrated into one beautiful system. No push-and-pull of different standards trying to fight for a place in my home. No separate apps on a stupid smartphone depending on what I want to control.

Microsoft's example with wanting to be the "home media center" is such an insignificantly tiny part of the whole puzzle. A TV and a set-top box gets me nothing of what I want for the future. They only have their eyes set on media consumption, what you will pay for to download and watch/play on their stupid service. It has nothing to do with actually being the center of your home, only the center of your living room spending habits.

I'm so disappointed with how slowly things are moving along. Computing is still in its infancy, and we haven't really advanced very far at all. We need a few true visionaries and inventors to come along and make things start to happen. So far, we've got nothing worthy of being called amazing.

tldr; I don't want a home media center. I want Jarvis dammit. Actually, I want more than Jarvis. And fuck 4K TV; I want to skip ahead to 1024K wall surfaces that you can look at with a fkn microscope and not tell the difference between a display and reality. ;)

Weird, I'm actually building a system to do just that. Alpha should be out in early May.

You're building 1024K wall surfaces?

I wish I had the budget! No, I'm building an IoT system not aimed at low power mc.

The interesting thing here is that Microsoft (in so far as Microsoft's years of PR will have you believe) agrees with you: the Xbox and "home media center" is a tiny part of the whole puzzle; it's just a currently somewhat successful part of the puzzle.

Have you ever read Bill Gates' The Road Ahead? The book hasn't aged well, of course. (To put its age in perspective, it was a big deal that it launched with an accompanying Multimedia CD-ROM.) But a large gist of the book is exactly that point that technology will (and should) drift into the foundations of the home, seamlessly touching nearly every device and surface in the home. Most of the details are obsolete by now, but I do think the overall vision is still inspiring. (Even to this day, Microsoft keeps and updates a "smart home" concept for PR usage that they can play act what a seamlessly integrated supere home may be.)

Things are moving slowly because they have to. It's been 20 years since The Road Ahead was published (!). There's a sense that if Microsoft had found some magic way to jump straight to whole home automation and seamless device linking in those 20 years they would have jumped on it.

The interesting thing is that even in the world we have you can see that DNA threaded through their efforts. The Xbox is the TV set top box that succeeded after multiple, multiple attempts at Microsoft before they found that the intersection of Games and Media Center was the way to get into that space.

The 360 tried to extend your media center from a home media server you probably didn't own. The Xbox One tries to extend itself, your Xbox and its access to your TV, to every Windows 10 device you probably do own... Yes, Xboxen have to standalone as game playing warriors on the threshold of your television, but you can see Microsoft trying, however successful you think they may be, to expand that deeper into your house...

Then there's other "standalone" pieces of the puzzle that have been R&D efforts and direct learning experiences. Kinect put a UX R&D lab in a bunch of people's living rooms. There's no HoloLens without Kinect, and HoloLens too has that DNA of trying to get to a place where everything in your space (not just house, but maybe even your office) is seamlessly digital. There's Cortana very much trying to be your day-to-day Jarvis, at least for appointment scheduling and reminders today.

The reason I ramble down this tangent with you, is that the interesting thing today, that I don't think you appreciate given your opening paragraph, is the difference between what Microsoft wants these days, versus what Apple and Google are trying. Some of it comes from the maturity of thinking about all of this stuff for more than two decades already (and building many, many baby steps toward it) combined with fresh executive leadership. Microsoft has backed away again from trying to build "the Microsoft Home" and is content to once again be in a place similar to where the company started (and those bits of DNA that remain from The Road Ahead). Microsoft wants you to have an awesome home, regardless of which devices you choose to use, but they want those devices to be full of Microsoft software and connected to Microsoft's cloud. They don't mind being exclusive again, they seem to want to be the company you come to for the best apps and the best tools to develop your own apps.

The Xbox One wants to extend itself to every Windows 10 device that you already own, as well as Android and iOS. The Xbox app is installed by default for home Windows 10 users to make it easy; it's just an app store download away on the other platforms. Cortana wants to extend "herself" to every Windows 10 device that you already own, as well as Android and iOS. Again, Cortana is there by default in every Windows 10 install, but available for Android and iOS, too.

I cannot tell you if this New Microsoft will be any more successful at making our homes amazing seamlessly integrated, beautiful systems, than the Old Microsoft, but I'm willing to bet that they might be, and I'm willing to hope that it will be faster than another 20 years away as so many of the puzzle pieces start to come together (Xbox integration with Cortana; Better cross-device Cortana "hand off"; "Cloud Notifications" merging all of your device notifications and dismissal; ...), and maybe much, much faster than your pessimistic 30-50 year horizon...

«So far, we've got nothing worthy of being called amazing.»

Per Gibson's Law, "The future is already here, it is unevenly distributed" is the corollary that "The things we have today seem ordinary and boring, as we forget that they are really the future, distributed to us today". There are technologies we take for granted today that make the "big amazing future" things proposed and explored in The Road Ahead seem quaint by comparison. Sometimes we forget to stop and appreciate how amazingly the bits of future that we have that are already here.

I totally get the concept, the problem is the execution is always terrible. The one has extremely similar problems to the PS3 because they both try to be a ton of things they didn't need to be. The PS4 is much better, Sony learned it was better to be great at one thing than to be ok at one thing and suck at a whole bunch of other things, and hopefully Microsoft will learn that too.

It's brought on by being a big company that wants to leverage existing customer bases into new markets. Both Sony and Microsoft engaged in the "platform strategy" in the last two generations, while Nintendo sat back making traditional gaming consoles, focusing on building their own market rather than invading an existing one.

Basically, the console brand, to MS and Sony, is ultimately a tool that can be used to build a potentially bigger empire. Share and revenue prospects come before whether the experience makes sense, and in the echo chambers of such large companies, it's easy to fashion a story where every consumer is hungry for all of this stuff and wants a single source to deliver it.

Microsoft can thank Peter Moore for doing the right thing

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015-07-02-peter-moore-rec...

He made XBox customers happy with the added extended warranty but it cost MS over $1 billion, so he was ousted. From another perspective, one can also blame him for rushing out the 360 too early, but then that's how MS was able to gain market share at the expense of both Sony (temporarily) and Nintendo.

Ultimately, it might give them the edge now that they are going all open source-y. You don't really need to think very hard and see the Xbox ONE as a hub for home IoT devices.

And Nintendo. It pains me to see such the company that brought me so many wonderful memories (still does) get turned into a minor console player. Thanks Zeus they have the DS.

MS was really generous with how they handled defective devices. I had a friend call MS because his 360 broke 4 YEARS after he purchased it and they still fixed it.

Maybe... but I saw recently that the PS4 is outselling the Xbox One two-to-one. I'm not on top of that world enough to know all the reasons why, but the "ring of death" could be one.

That's more likely explained by the fact that PS4 launched $100 cheaper and is more powerful.

Its more about brand recognition than anything else. Now they are at parity pricing and they still dont close the gap.

After having had my original XBox fail once and XBox 360 needing to be replaced three times, and eventually still dying, with Microsoft refusing to replace the third, I switched to PS3, and now PS4.

I will never buy Microsoft hardware again, ever.

So, yeah, that is definitely a factor in my case.

PS4 launched cheaper. And sony was way more aggressive on sales.

all my friends that do have PS4s got them for 'free' when buying a new TV.

VGChartz has console sales figures: http://www.vgchartz.com/

Microsoft badly bungled the launch of the XBox One by making several unpopular decisions, including non-resellable games and others I can't recall. Sony's announcement was a few days later and they basically said "the PS4 will be are doing the opposite of everything that Xbone is". Microsoft backtracked later, but the Xbone was tainted and the mindshare battle was already lost.

Is that why they can bombard the entire UI with ads? Every single page has tons of ads, and MS misleadingly only notes one of them as "Advertisement" (autoplay video). I disconnected my Xbox360 from the Internet because it's faster that way, and cleaner.

I see the Xbox One is pretty bad, too, and this "ads everywhere" has leaked into Windows 10 (though you can turn them off a bit).

> this "ads everywhere" has leaked into Windows 10 (though you can turn them off a bit).

Where? I've been using Windows 10 everyday for months and haven't seen an ad. There was that one time that something resembling a Tomb Raider ad was served to users' lock screens, but I never saw it myself and I've never seen anything else.

Maybe it depends on which version of Windows 10?

lock screen, start menu, "growl" notifications…

You're really making a mountain out of a molehill, I can hardly find ads on W10 if I try. Never actually noticed one before.

Maybe they're just really subtle ads, and thus (to some) more insidious?

Mainly the start menu. Just because they aren't "random ads" like a Coke video, doesn't mean they aren't ads. Showing offers to buy software is definitely an ad.

I think there's pop-ups for Office as well as pre installed "apps" that are just links to buy.

I feel like I'm losing grip on reality. My installs of Windows 10 have none of these things. Are we just talking about Windows 10 Home here?

Which version are you currently using? I will be making the jump shortly.

For many, I think there was a pretty simple explanation: Halo. The hardware was a little iffy, but XBox has always had the mother of all console exclusives upon which to build their ecosystem. (Though the significance of the Halo franchise seems to have faded a bit in recent years.)

Yeah Halo was it for me, and probably the only real reason I own an Xbox One (although we'll just say that Halo 5 leaves something to be desired...) I think Microsoft has stumbled recently with console exclusives. A lot of people felt that Titanfall[1] was kind of a bait and switch. People paid $60 or whatever for what was essentially a multiplayer-only game. (The sequel will not be an Xbox exclusive.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titanfall

Halo is what sold me. Also, I was "in to computers", so the fact that Microsoft was making a video game console was pretty cool to me.

I was 11 years old when the first Halo game came out, and I got the original XBox/Halo for Christmas that same year.

Before that, I was playing Final Fight on Sega CD. So going from that to Halo was a real eye opener. I had never experienced emotion like that in a video game before. The music was EPIC, the story line was immersive, and the graphics were excellent for the time.

Halo is considered (by me) to be the first game of the new era. Sure, there were other successful "3D" FPS games that were out before Halo, but the original Halo hit all the marks and was the first taste of modern gaming for a lot of people. Many of my friends went from playing Mario/Sonic/etc... straight to Halo. It represented a massive leap in graphics quality, so much so that even games of today don't look _much_ better than Halo to me.

Halo is the only reason I purchased an XBox 360 and XBox One.

There has to be some sort of record set with regard to the number of units sold vs the chances the unit would fail. It seems like everyone's xbox 360 would fail, no one was immune.

I have a first generation Xbox 360. Microsoft repaired the RRoD three times under warranty. The fourth time it RRoD'd was out of warranty and so it sat for a couple of years. Later I fixed with about $15 worth of parts [1] in an afternoon. It's still running after 10 years with the same 20gig hard disk.

Analyzing my experience, the out of band warranty extension is a feature of an underlying value Microsoft placing on gaming. It's not just that the repairs were the right way to make something that was going to suck suck less. It's that the core proposition of the Xbox 360 was that the experience of using it would keep getting better and that it would get better because games would get better. Playing FIFA 16 is better than playing FIFA 12 was better than playing FIFA 07.

Beyond that, the software keeps getting better because Microsoft values developers. They're not all just share croppers who pay 30% to enter a downward race toward ninety-nine cents.

[1] 8 cheeseheads, a tube of thermal paste, and a sheet of .070. aluminum from the hobby shoppe.

I'm suprised the topic of emulation hasn't been raised yet! The Xbox 360 emulator project Xenia[0] has made great progress on perserving a generation of games[1].

[0]https://github.com/benvanik/xenia [1]http://xenia.jp/compatibility/

I've been following the progress of that project over the past few months, and it's amazing to see what they've achieved in such a short time-span, given the difficulty of the task.

Personally the emulator is of no use to me, but like you said, it's all about the preservation of the generation of games. In 50 years will it even be possible to find a working Xbox 360? Probably not. That's why projects like this are needed.

PS2 went on for 13 years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_2

> Sony finally announced that the PlayStation 2 had been discontinued after 13 years of production – one of the longest runs for a video game console.

Nintendo's Family Computer (aka the Nintendo Entertainment System in the rest of the world) was released in 1983 and only discontinued in Japan in 2003. Even after that they still repaired consoles until 2007.

Sega's 8-bit Master System console is still being sold in Brazil.

http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/brazil-is-a-video-game-...

Who makes them now though?

Tectoy

http://www.tectoy.com.br/master-system-evolution-132-jogos/p...

Are they paying a license to Sega then?

ah the PS2, what a sturdy built console, a department store nearby kept selling those for years (like pancakes)

I still have one sitting in front of me. And it's for one game: Metal Gear Solid.

AMEN to that! I also keep them for a machine with lower subversion risk. Unlikely given most didn't even use the Ethernet. Fortunately, I've got other options for now so I can remain a MGS, Final Fantasy 7, and whatever machine. :)

I am not a hardware guy, but honestly, they should mini-fy XB360 and make it appleTV competitor but with a huge game library.

but with a huge game library

They have actually backported quite a few games[0] to run on the Xbox One (where you can use the original disk, or now even buy them as digital downloads). So my guess is that they are likely to push for more Xbox One sales (where buyers have the convenience of playing either era of game) rather than try to create a mini-device that would only be able to play older games and not newer ones.

[0] - http://www.xbox.com/en-GB/xbox-one/backward-compatibility/av...

But that misses the parent's point. At $300, the Xbox One isn't an AppleTV competitor.

Sure, but it would eat a non-zero amount of Xbox One sales. Presumably that's why Microsoft isn't about to do it.

Wouldn't that have been a concern these last two and a half years anyways?

That's certainly what I was getting at. An AppleTV doesn't take away from sales of any other Apple product (that I know of). Whereas this theoretical product might take away from Xbox one sales (which they target as a TV + multimedia + gaming system).

That's not a backport, that's just a port. Backporting would be converting XBox One games to run on the 360.

I am a hardware guy. Cooling would be a small issue (but additional die shrinks may make it possible)

There were 3 generations on Xenon which powered Xbox360 (90nm (2005), 65nm (2007), 48nm (2010+))[1]. Modern processes are 28, 16/14 (10nm is Intel only really and Xenons were fabbed GlobalFoundry) [1]. The 2005 vs 2010 models reduced power consumption reduced power consumption from 177watts, to 88watts (under intensive gameplay) [2].

So realistically there are 2(ish) nodes available 28nm and 14/16nm [3]. Which could likely (best case scenario) halve power down to 50-40watts. Apple TV by comparison uses 1.8watts [4]. Passive cooling is possible, but the case foot print would be larger.

I'm not a thermodynamics guy.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenon_(processor)

[2] http://www.anandtech.com/show/3774/welcome-to-valhalla-insid...

[3] 14nm/16nm are 28nm but a different gate style. Features are still 28nm. Also I'm assuming GlobalFoundry is calling their 45nm node 48nm because they called their 14nm node 16nm.

[4] http://www.flatpanelshd.com/review.php?subaction=showfull&id...

Those are stats for the Apple TV third generation. The fourth generation is significantly different and uses more power but it's hard for me to find an exact official number from Apple. I don't think it's much more though.

According to iFixit the 4th gens PSU is rated at 12V@0.917A, so it maxes out at 11 watts.

https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Apple+TV+4th+Generation+Tear...

I got curious and found this:

https://www.apple.com/vn/environment/pdf/products/appletv/Ap...

Looks like about 0.2-0.3 watts in standby, a bit under 2.5 for content streaming. The power supply is spec'd at 11 watts.

That's basically the Nvidia Shield

If it wasn't going to eat into Xbox One sales, I'm sure Microsoft would consider it. The Xbox 360 makes a far better media center than the Xbox One does. The apps on the 360 crash less then on the One and dealing with crashed apps on the 360 is much more reliable.

For example, when your YouTube app crashes/hangs on the Xbox One, returning to the menu does nothing as the app pauses/runs in the background. You can hit the menu button (akin to a right-click) on the YouTube icon and select Quit. If you run YouTube again, it'll still be running and crashed. The trick is to menu button and quit YouTube and then run a couple other video apps (usually Netflix and Hulu do the trick). This is usually enough to fully offload the YouTube process and allow it to run again.

This is how Microsoft's flagship entertainment console works. In 2016. Seriously.

Everytime our cat sitter watches our place, I have the Xbox 360 hooked up for her to watch videos on. It's easier to use and more reliable.

If you quit the app with the menu button then it is quit completely. Essentially, the "home" functionality works just like on iOS or Android. You're right that it is not always intuitive in situations when an app is hanging/frozen, but I'm not sure why you have to open other apps to get it to quit - I've never had that problem.

Disclosure: I used to work on the Xbox Live team at MSFT but no longer do.

That may be what's supposed to happen and what does in testing, but that's not real world behavior.

I had the YouTube app crash on my Xbox One just yesterday. I hit menu and selected quit. Waited a few seconds. Hit menu again and quit wasn't an available option which should mean that it's done being force quit. Started YouTube again and it will still hung playing audio with a frozen picture. Sometimes I'll start it again and it'll just show the YouTube logo for a few seconds then return to home. It'll often do this a few times in a row. I have maybe 6 people in my neighborhood with Xbox Ones that all experience the same issues.

I can also confirm this.

Xbox one dev here - can confirm what my sibling said about the quit button. It immediately suspends (quits) the process. I've poured many hours into the product lifetime cycle of my game.

On the other hand, if you don't hit quit, than hitting home and opening a bunch of other apps is exactly what you'd have to do to get the constrained (minimized) app to force quit while in the background.

Quoting my below response so you see it as well: "That may be what's supposed to happen and what does in testing, but that's not real world behavior.

And it was just confirmed by another HN user.

Sony tried to do something similar with the PlayStation TV https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_TV

I bought an Xbox 360 about six months ago to serve as a Windows Media Center extender - while I was at it I picked up GTA5, too. It's still a very respectable machine, given that it cost me less than $100.

Did you buy this new?

This is why the XBOX 360 has had fairly long legs.

It's no longer "just a game console" and is really in the first generation of converged, internet-updatable consoles.

And in that generation? Even if your console doesn't run the latest games, there's still substantial value delivered for a lot of people through Netflix, social features, casual games, etc. And MS can continue backporting their UI updates.

Is Netflix, Hulu, etc. still behind the Live Gold paywall?

No.

Original: http://news.xbox.com/2016/04/20/xbox-360-celebrating-10-year...

I never owned an xbox, but for games that require a controller and suck with a mouse and keyboard, the 360 controller is the best one I've used.

The Xbox One controller is a decent incremental upgrade on the 360 controller when you get a chance or find a cheap one in a store. The port on the back of every Xbox One controller is bog standard USB micro port (just like mobile phones, PS3/4 controllers, so many other things) and you can just USB plug it into your PC with no adapter needed.

It's been a heck of a run! Thanks, Xbox 360 :)

And to some it's still more than is needed in an actual games console. Still many titles to enjoy as an infrequent older gamer.

Surprised they continued manufacturing them this long. Why wait until three years after releasing the Xbox One?

I presume the fact that Xbox one got only recently the capability to play old 360 games might have something to do with it. But which one is the cause and which one the effect?

Console generations overlap; when a new console is released the older one is reduced in price and becomes the low-end value console.

Just to add to those two other points, the 360 was Microsoft's leading platform for developing countries and countries with heavy import restrictions.

For example, Brazil's incredibly protective trade policies requires electronics to be made locally if they are to be sold at an affordable price point. The 360 only went on sale there in 2011 when MS opened up a local manufacturing facility and it was the last refuge of the PS2 which only went on sale when local production began in 2009. The Brazilian market isn't large enough for MS to justify duplicate tooling and other custom production equipment needed to produce a local version of the Xbox One. However, the decline in demand for the 360 would have led to excess production capacity, allowing MS to set up a local plant with the excess equipment from underulitized original production lines.

Also, the 360-specific tooling and production equipment has long since been paid off which greatly reduces the cost per unit. The 360 provides MS with a budget offering capable of accessing developing markets which can't support the $300 pricepoint of a current gen console.

I purchased a 360 a few days ago so that I could play Street Fighter 3: Third Strike with my friends from back home. It's a fine console, but I was worried about the prospects of Microsoft shutting down Xbox Live at some point.

> It's a fine console, but I was worried about the prospects of Microsoft shutting down Xbox Live at some point.

Well, as long as they still need to run Xbox Live for the Xbox One, it's probably in their interest to provide the (relatively) small amount of work to keep it functioning with the Xbox 360. Plus, they charge for the service, so as long as Live makes them money (it does![1]), they are likely to keep it going.

1: http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2015-10-22-xbox-live-r...

Especially since they're offering the ability to run Xbox 360 games on Xbox One, including support for Live. I can't imagine it's any more work at all to keep Xbox Live running for actual Xbox 360s if they need to keep it running for 360 games running in emulators.

As long as the income is greater than the expenses for MS, they'll keep it running.

> Gamers will also be able to continue to buy over 4,000 Xbox 360 games or Xbox 360 accessories at retail and through our Xbox 360 store online, while supplies last.

Guess I need to stock up on 360 controllers

84 million worldwide run is respectable! Is there any breakdown per region? I'm somehow under impression that Xbox360 was, primarily, US hit.

Good job on the awesome product! insert hand clapping smiley face here

Which iteration? My roommate went through two of them due to the red ring of death.

The S and E models don't have that problem. I've heard some of the later chipsets for the original model also fixed the problem.

From what I've heard, the 360 was original designed with an environmentally-friendly (read: not lead) solder that had never really been used in a major product. The original design already had heat problems and the solder turned out to be easily melted.

I must have had S or E... because I never had that problem. My kids and I still play it to this day.

The original model is the one with the memory card slots on the front (and the only one that comes in white). The S came out in ~2010 has an angled, thinner-in-the-middle design, and the E (came out when the Xbox One was announced) looks like a smaller Xbox One with rounded corners.

The problems I mentioned weren't universal, but they were about as close to it as you could be. Maybe you had an S or an original model that was later in its production.

The 360 has a one year general warranty, but the red ring problems were so widespread that Microsoft added a three year warranty for red rings specifically.

Some laptops had similar issues (e.g., a Lenovo, whose support issues caused me to rage-quit Lenovo products forever).

From my memory, it wasn't that they melted too easily, rather they developed stress fractures from thermal cycling. Perhaps due to brittleness relative to lead, or perhaps due to thermal incompatibility (expanding or contracting at the wrong rate)

Testing HN's Unicode support here (and your browser's)...

Edit: And it failed. I tried the emoji for the record: http://emojipedia.org/clapping-hands-sign/

But... I haven't had the time to play Fable II yet :(.

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