You forgot one thing about the Xbox One's "always online" announcement: at first, Mattrick's response was quite literally "Fortunately we have a product for people who aren't able to get some form of connectivity, it's called Xbox 360".
I remember hearing that and immediately thinking “So....if I don’t want to have an always online system....you want me to play the 360 instead of the new console......huh?”
I had a friend who worked at Gamestop during that E3. When Xbox One and PlayStation 4 pre-orders opened, they sold every PS4 pre-order. They got zero Xbox One pre-orders. A few days later, Microsoft walked back their always online demands.
I never understand this. MS was looking to position XO as a centerpiece for all media in the living room. They delivered on that visions. However, they were FAR to ahead and people clutching pearls didn’t want to accept it. The fact that they gave up on the digital locker which would FINALLY allow you to buy a physical game and added it to your digital library meaning you could play it with out the disk, meant you could finally buy physical game on sale and get the digital collection benefits along with digital lending. All of that was scrapped. Shame really. Yes it was under powered to a degree and because of peoples hate of the mandatory kinnect the price was a bit out of touch. There are bad things yes, but man if they would of come out with all of those features now it would be different.
@@ovlivion81 What are you on about? People didn't like it because it was anti consumer. Always online, couldn't buy secondhand games, weren't able to share your games with friends, people didn't want the crappy Kinect but it was mandatory, the smug response of Mattrick... it wasn't that Microsoft were ahead of their time, it was that the product was shitty and their attitude was even worse.
To be fair Microsoft was only a little ahead of its time, in a negative way for consumers, consoles are following in step with the PCs by basically just digital licensing all of the games these days. Which is all the developers really wanted as it gives them absolute control over the game.
I remember looking up the "towel trick" fix for the red ring of death issue when my first 360 finally broke in 2011. If you wrapped a towel around the console and left it on for a couple days, intentionally overheating the unit to essentially repair the broken connection by melting it back together. This actually worked for awhile.
I used the trick as well until it stopped allowing more than an hour or so of gaming. I know I should have been a better consumer and demanded my money back... but to be honest all I wanted was my 360 to work again.
I had a similar issue with my Compaq 615 notebook. I cut it open so I had access to the CPU and GPU. Every time I wanted to use it I had to use a lighter to heat them up so the cheap solder would melt back properly.
@@thyristo It's odd how they just cheaped out in the most retar... idiotic way. I'm sure a higher quality solder or the addition of a couple extra fans would have saved them millions. I ended my console buying career with the 360, I think I developed a stolkholm syndrome of sorts and loved it for abusing me mentally and physically.
@@TheCrazierz It's good for companies to be humbled every now and again. Like with Nintendo's successful Wii, they thought they were untouchable and released the lackluster Wii U with the highly unnecessary game pad. Companies do dumb shit when they're overconfident. So, as a PlayStation user, I welcome when their rivals make them nervous. It means they have to do better, be more consumer-friendly, because they know we could jump ship to a rival's system.
@@elhazthorn918 Lackluster? The Wii U was fantastic; their biggest mistake was naming it that. And the game pad was a brilliant innovation that helped lead the way for the Switch.
The PS4 announcement and the simple, yet effective “$299” on the PS1 keynote in response to the $399 price point of the Sega Saturn are the greatest beatdowns from Sony.
Sega: hi our console is disappointing and crazy expensive Sony: destroys Sega Microsoft: hi our console is disappointing and crazy expensive Sony: i'll fuckin do it again
@@yondie491 Saturn launch might have been the biggest mistake of a launch, but it wasn't the worst. Saturn had Daytona USA and Panzer Dragoon at launch, and even though it was $399 it at least came with Virtua Fighter packed in. 3DO only had Crash 'N Burn available for the system months after it had launched. Meanwhile the Jaguar had an arguably even worse launch lineup with Cybermorph and Trevor McFur being the only two games available.
@@yondie491 Sega's biggest problem is the right hand vs left hand shit. Sega of America and Sega of Japan just kept doing their own things, to the detriment of the company overall.
My favorite part about Xbox One’s focus on TV is that streaming sticks were also first being released around this time, meaning that Microsoft was driving off their gaming audience to focus on a TV audience that had no reason to get an Xbox when they could just get a Chromecast or a Roku Stick for a fraction of the price.
The head of Xbox at the time wanted to appeal to more then just gamers by giving Xbox many unnecessary features and issues they wanted Xbox to be the center of your living room
My favorite part of the Xbox One announcement were all the RUclips reactions to it. Damn those videos were so funny, people got so parodically AVGN style mad. As someone who had no intention of getting an Xbox it was just pure schadenfreude.
I actually was at E3 2005 and 2006 when a lot of this stuff went down. Microsoft also sent me retail and debug Xbox 360 at the beginning of the console and BOTH RROD'ed! The Games for Anywhere thing I remember actually going into a back room with the guy that was in charge of it and trying it out, it was a neat concept that was working on some of the more advanced phones at the time such as the Motorola Q, but yeah that part of it never really got anywhere.
I'd love to see a three biggest mistakes of Konami! They've definitely gone away from being a highly revered game company and would be a good shake up to the formula by covering software manufacturers.
@@GiordanDiodato Maybe so, but not to the point where it's slot machines first, & then their video games second. I think I'm being kind with "video games second", I doubt it's even that.
@@Harrison11106 You might be surprised. Sega is also part of SegaSammy, and Sammy is mainly in the gambling, casino, resort business. It’s the problem with a very Western perspective of these corporations, an assumption that video games are critical to their success, or even their identity. Konami just had their most profitable year, so they’ve proven their point that they really don’t need to be making video games.
The Always Online announcement was so tonedeaf and stupid that I had been fully prepared to walk away from all future home consoles, if Sony had followed suit. Sony's E3 beat down on Microsoft is one of the greatest industry moments of all time. You could hear it in the cheers of the crowd, like a terrible weight was being lifted from the shoulders of everyone in the room.
Their biggest mistake for me was rushing out a defective console (360) just to get out in the market ahead of Sony. 3 red ring incidents, and 3 absolutely ridiculous hassles trying to get them repaired or replaced is my Microsoft experience. After the third time they REFUSED to do anything further. So I sold a broken 360 at a pawn shop. Got 25 dollars for it. I haven't bought a microsoft product since... this was 2006. Also, online was FREE on PS3.
I agree. While I have and love my xbox360. I felt like they rushed too much of it. The later model I have was well built and when they finally made to so you could instal games onto the hard drive that helped a lot but for most consumers it was too little too late.
@@littlesongbird1 I actually have an aftermarket 360s myself. I just bought it off EBay last year, because a family member happened to just give me a bunch of 360 games... but I had no console. I paid 40 dollars for the console and two controllers... and it's a special "Gears of War" edition, so it looks pretty cool too. I do like it, but it still has issues... number one for me would be how frigging loud it is. Especially when it's reading a disc. I've only ever had minor issues with my PS 2, 3, or 4 though... so ultimately, I'm glad I stuck with them.
@@Lividowly That's fair enough. Either way, I'm an "older" gamer (41 yrs old), so online playing simply isn't important to me. And once Sony started charging for their service when the PS4 came out, I stopped playing online altogether.
I remember always being scared that my 360 was gonna get the red ring back in the day. There were so many rumors in my middleschool of what caused it.I can't believe it was an over cooling and heating problem this whole time. Glad I had a newer 360 (which I didn't know at the time).
I had mentally blocked Games for Windows Live from my memory, thanks for that Norm. The DRM they used was so poorly implemented that I had to resort to pirating games I bought legitimately as it was the only way to play the game. It was eventually scrapped and done right with Xbox at least.
I feel like "Atari's 3 Biggest Mistakes" is the natural next choice, but I'd like to suggest NEC as a potential subject. Although they only produced two consoles (the PC Engine/TurboGrafx-16 and the PC-FX), their partnership with Hudson Soft in the 80s/90s transition had a lot more potential than many would assume. Had they handled the PC Engine's overseas launch differently (especially in Europe), not rushed the PC Engine SuperGrafx in Japan, and/or not gone lukewarm with the PC-FX's specifications, they could have been around for at least another generation.
I remember when Grand Theft Auto V came out I went through three Xboxes 360 in one day. The game just was too powerful for the system or something. But I remember I went back and forth to GameStop like three times getting new systems
The infamous Red Ring of Death is definitely one of Microsoft’s biggest regrets ever made when it comes to early release. I remember those moments when my 360 got that dreaded rings.
I remember my friend in elementary school told me about how his little sister broke his xbox and give it the RRD was just by simply turning it on and off on repeat.
Aaaah the old console wars tales… I remember being a PS diehard fan and arguing with friend about how the PS3 was superior to the 360 in any way but I knew deep down inside that they had better exclusives, waaay better online gaming and cool features the ps3 lacked… But Sony made me look like a clown in front of my Xbox fanboy friends when the PSN got hacked…
22:35 they likely shipped the "Red Ring" consoles because the consumer would be more apt to just exchange a system than wait for a refund, there was probably some customer statistics behind the decision. Ultimately pricing dictated the console wars in most rounds. Great vid!
Just wanna say every new episode of GH gives me so much joy. Your episode on Tetris was written with such meticulous care and research, and with such gripping storytelling that it felt like it should be a movie. More power to you!
Atari seems like a good choice for a “biggest mistakes” episode. This is also a good place for discussion on the American Video Game Crash and parallels that can be drawn between that era and the modern era of gaming.
Unfortunately, the hard part for an Atari video, is that Atari has done SO MANY screw-ups in the last decades, that picking just 3 would be seen by most, including me, as being "soft" on them.
I have to give them credit, I had two Xbox 360's to red ring on me, and it was probably the easiest and smoothest customer service interaction I have had my whole life when I had to deal with it. Wasn't asked a bunch of stupid questions or put on hold for an hour, they took my call, sent me the box to ship it off, and had a replacement console in no time. One of the guys I talked to even told me about the towel trick so I could at least play until the shipping box came in. I do wonder if they tightened up and oversaw much more of the manufacturing after the fact, because I have a 250gb 360 slim unit that probably was left on overnight/all night (for Netflix/Hulu) for a good 5 years straight and still runs like new to this day.
7 RRoD 7 returns Towards the Tail End I was Sending bad unit and Then Receiving referb In 4days . Been On Live since OG Xbox GT: GIjoseph2022 GamerScore over 70,000
I honestly didn’t even know about the return policy, and my stupid self had my parents buy a new one for us during tax season… It is still working to this day thankfully.
I had 3 red rings, 2 within the first week. Yes, the replacement process was pretty painless but, to be honest, I'm still kinda salty over paying for a new console and getting a refurbished one.
I just need to say thank you. You really capture the magic that existed during each period of your videos and it just makes our hearts swell. Thank you so much for your work.
27:30 that makes sense but other systems had sane setup but never failed like that. Some repair techs said probably unleaded solder was the cause, lead solder can handle higher stress.
Some of my friends always give me their trash electronics. What bothered me with the 360 was if you modified it you would be locked out of Xbox live. When the red ring of death thing came to light a few friends of mine asked me if I could fix it and I learnt it was a hardware failure over the GPU and CPU from over heating and realized it was an airflow issue. I decided to Mod my 360 with a better heat sink that made it look ugly but kept the hardware cool. While I was in there realizing it ran just a basic hard drive I also flashed the OS and put in a larger volume hard drive into the console. I got locked out from xbox live. IT would let me play games offline but anything online I was denied. So I put in the old harddrive. and did a factory reset. What do you know. Still locked out because of hardware. I first thought it was linked to my account but it was linked to the console its self. I tested this logging into xbox live with another friend's xbox. Apparently also changing the heat sink in the console to one that worked better also locked me out. I hate when I am forced to not modify or repair my own shit. This was also when I started getting really big into the Right to Repair movement.
No the console's serial number became banned on live after messing with the hard drive as it's cheat and piracy sensitive hardware. If you were to keep getting consoles banned on live they eventually will also ban the account associated with the hardware bans. You probably would have been fine if you only used the new drive offline and switched the original drive when online. I also refused to pay the premium for a 120 gb on mine and bought a cheap scorpio harddrive online and flashed it. But at that point in time 120gb models were just released and i used a firmware from one of those new models without issues on live.
That's assuming it worked at all. Me and a friend both had failed xbox 360s. Mine had the disc tray error, his the red ring of death. I was in high school, and figured (quite logically imo still), that if I canablized one, I could fix the other. I took his disc tray, and popped it in mine. It didn't even register it. I looked after, and both were made by different companies.
> Apparently also changing the heat sink in the console to one that worked better also locked me out How would it know if there was a different piece of metal? Seems like you're bitter at Microsoft for you installing a modchip.
Very well done video, would love to see this 3 Biggest Mistakes series continue onto development companies too, like Capcom and Konami. I wonder if you can get down to just 3 on those two.
Capcom's three biggest mistakes would be these: 1. Embracing disc lock contents 2. Killing Mega Man by cancelling all its games 3. Turning Resident Evil into an action shooter
The red ring of death was actually due to a California ruling that made manufacturers of consoles start using non lead solder, which cracks easily under immense heat and pressure. You can literally get your xbox 360 "reballed" with lead solder. The same went for the PS3 overheating issue or also known as the "yellow light of death".
GFWL was such a pain. I remember it just straight up eating an activation key and keeping me from playing a game I bought until I, ahem, acquired an executable that was somewhat blemished or cracked even, if one was to describe its condition.
Man I miss Attack of the Show and Screen Savers. Such a cool time to be in my 20's. Believe it or not I have a launch 360 that worked and still works. I even have the later black edition that never had an issue. I got lucky I think. Great vid!
Very lucky man those consoles bring me back to the great old days but damn the red ring Was something I never knew until 2011 But I’ve only had 2 of them Hope I don’t get a 3rd
New to the channel, but man i wish i would have found your channel years ago. I even watched your 100k subscriber episode. Its neat to find a channel of someone similar in age who did the same things. You played Pro Tour magic just as i was finishing school and getting back into magic as a young adult! Your content is fantastic and i've gone through nearly it all minus a couple of the 2 minute long ones from a dozen years ago. Keep up the great work. Amazing stuff!
Shadowrun was actually an incredibly skilled multiplayer shooter. People just weren’t expecting that type of game because of the previous rpgs. If you played matches back in the day you know how good that game was.
I was in a household with some hard core players of the Shadowrun tabletop RPG. "It's a great game, but why did they tie this into Shadowrun?" was the consensus opinion. If it were titled something else it would've done a lot better I think
Speaking of the Xbox One disaster, I want to know who got in a room at both Sony/Microsoft and decided to make it common practice to have constant huge game updates. As someone in a rural community with no internet options other than mobile hotspot, many of my games became simply unplayable until I could go somewhere else to update my console. This was the reason I went back to previous and retro consoles and haven't really looked back. Just the idea of buying a game day one to pop it in the console and require a 30+gb update before playing just seems insane to me.
I'm staying at least a generation behind at this point. Besides the constant updates, I'd rather wait to buy a slim or pro console and games with all the dlc included.
I have all modern consoles, and I hate the updates/online/deal with it mentality of modern gaming. Too big to fail, too many sheep, too many profits. I don't buy digital games, will never buy another xbox console, and don't play games online period.
@@pussydestroyer87 honestly the best way. This way you catch all of the deals and end up buying the games at the lowest value point in their life cycle. Not to mention by then you should only have to update the games one time, and like you said you get the best revision of the console with more power, more storage, and all the bugs worked out from launch console models. I will certainly be adopting the generation behind rule for now on. I have a Series X and theres still no real reason to have it over a Xbox One X unless you just have to play Flight Simulator.
@@JaneDoe-sv1mk definitely feel what you are saying. I may play a couple of times a year online with some old friends, but it's not really worth the subscription at the end of the day. Digital games suck because there is no guarantee that you own them for life, I believe PS users are dealing with this right now if I'm not mistaken. I'm tired of supporting an industry that pushes for rushed and unfinished games, just to release patches down the line. Although ultimately, the updates will probably be preserved on an online database to keep these games working years down the road for the tech savy dedicated gamers wanting to revisit these consoles, the average person would never know, and alot of current and future gens of games will be lost to time.
The answer to this question, as you might have suspected, is far more complex and nuanced than you could have imagined, and while the similarity of the practice at both companies smells of collusion, in reality that is far from the truth. Sorry in advance for the wall of text. The truth boils down to a very dark term in the gaming industry (and software development in general)- Crunch, or Crunch Culture. Basically this is when companies, game developers, console creators create goals, hardware/software objectives, and the untenable release date to have all this completed by. This forces the developers themselves, be it individuals or entire teams, to push themselves physically and mentally, working long hours to push the product across the finish line with little to no delay. In the beginning of this 'Culture shift', it was a temporary measure near the end of a development cycle to get games or hardware to the deadline on time, and only rarely happened, and only a few developers were affected. Major players turned an indifferent eye to this practice, and began requiring heavier workloads in the same or shorter time periods, and thusly Crunch started becoming a way of life, a necessity to produce and push out product by deadline. You may ask, "Well what the heck does this have to do with big downloads and day-one patches?" If you think about it, it's pretty clear. Major players don't want to announce a product and a release, only to hafta announce a delay shortly before that release target. It's bad for business and unprofitable, and opens the doors for competitors to "steal" their profits, so that becomes the measure of last resort. Instead developers and subordinate companies are forced into Crunch to push things out, which increases the risk of buggy code, hardware failures, or whole sections of code just not ready on launch... This is one of the reasons for the, now commonplace, "Day One Patch" that plagues the games and software development industry as a whole, there just wasn't time to get it into the product before the shipping deadline, and became the common measure to finish products under insane deadlines with minimal workforce. If you are curious about the topic, the youtuber Noodle produced a very well done commentary piece on Crunch Culture.
Microsoft was charging money for matchmaking on GFWL and you could use dedicated servers for free, now most games force you into matchmaking and completely leave out a server browser. Ironically they could probably charge for it now and it would work
The Xbox One and 360 Red Ring of Death baffles me for so long as how such a giant company like this let these things happen so often. As a famous nerd on the Internet once said: "WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?!?!"
They were thinking, "give me more money!" Greed destroys everything. Hell, it also costs more, think how much they had to spend to fix their mistake. They could have fixed it earlier, either in development or after launch and not wasted so much. They were worried more about their shareholders than their customers, and that ALWAYS fails.
The 3DO's short life span would be a fascinating story, in particular the entry of software studio Naughty Dog and how they accomplished "Way of the Warrior" in a garage. (The game's soundtrack featured White Zombie, which I believe is the first major-label recording artist to be in a video game.)
I was an XBox rep during this whole era and it was ever so much fun dealing with RROD and the E3 fiasco. I didn't hear too much about the Games for Windows issue.
yo man just wanted to take a sec to comment on how goated your videos are, your narration and production is mad professional. keep up the good work brother
The GPU balling issue (which caused RROD) still plagues hardware today, from laptops and AIOs with discrete graphics to gaming graphics cards. It's a packaging issue with which both ATI (they made the 360 gpu) and nVidia (most prevalent in high powered laptops like macbooks) have had problems.
At one time it wasn't an issue, but for environmental regulatory reasons in the early 2000s the industry moved away from lead soldering & lead solderballs. While environmentally problematic, from a resilience standpoint lead is an ideal element for soldering.
@@2drealms196 I'm gonna side with the EPA on this one. Having our tech last a little bit longer isn't worth *_destroying our home planet before we've even colonized a second._*
@@CoralCopperHead I believe it was actually the EEA (Europe's equivalent to EPA). Mayhaps EPA bureaucracy is a revolving door and too entwined with industry insiders. iirc EPA regulatory oversight for oil drilling was headed by former oil industry execs, who loosened regulations, which in part allowed the BP oilspill to happen.
lead restrictions are health concerns, not environmental ones. and no, it's not better for anyone for them to make something that doesn't work instead of something that does. even if it was just a matter of reducing lifespan of the product slightly, that would have detrimental environmental impact. do you think the massive overproduction this issue caused was good for the environment? making 3 consoles to sell one decimated rare earth mines and wasted an unfathomable amount of energy. $200b in shipping alone is literal tons of carbon emissions.
This is basically the only video where I lived through and was aware of all the events covered. I remember all of these things, though GFWL was the only one I had personal experience with. I also love how different the style is on this video from the last ones, a bit fitting for Microsoft (and a new editor!). Good work.
I'd have to agree, I felt a real connection to these events covered. Even though I was 8 when 6th gen/PS2 launched, the launch of the 360 was the first console launch I felt involved/engaged in as a teenager, and the utter WTF moment of getting that first Red Ring of Death. Also remember the disastrous presentations of the Xbox One, it was one of the biggest disappointments in gaming up to that point. Thankfully they backed off from the constant online connectivity, but I feel like that generation of consoles gave the shaft to people like myself that live in rural areas, with the constant large game updates, it rendered many of my games unplayable until I could take my console to someones house with decent internet and just let it update for a whole day.
@@letsplayclassicgames5024 I lived through all of these "biggest mistakes" lists but before around 1997 was the BI (before Internet) era, so we didn't have the hyper sense of awareness that we do now. I and probably 99.999% of people never knew about the failed partnership between Nintendo and Sony or all of Sega's financial problems or the "$299" announcement. As far as we were concerned, Sega had the Saturn, and then it just disappeared, then Sega came out with the Dreamcast then turned into a third party company. I never knew anything about Sega until 2004 when Google Video, the first major video uploading site was a thing and people uploaded the episodes of G4's Icons talking about it, and so did probably 99% of you too. I'll bet most of you didn't even know about the Video Game Crash or that Sega actually had an 8-bit console before the Genesis. Heck, there's an entire generation that didn't know that video games existed before the NES. This Microsoft list includes things that occurred entirely during the age of RUclips where we all have such hyper awareness of things, but I never heard of the GFWL thing I just remember Gametrailers and people showing their RRoD like SpoonyOne's video where he had a mock funeral for his Xbox 360, remember when people used to watch that AVGN clone? I mainly knew about the XBONE through Angry Joe's rant videos.
@@therealhardrock I would have to agree. RUclips made me aware of those things that happened prior. I actually got to experience the 360 launch/RROD pretty organically though, I didnt have anytime I want access to the internet cause I was just a few years to young, I remember my first experience of Xbox 360 gameplay was at the kiosk where they had Call of Duty 2 and PGR demos to play. RROD I heard about through word of mouth at school, then experienced myself. The XboxOne controversy was the first one I experience through the full lens of the internet and got to see how everything unfold. You are absolutely right too about people not knowing about consoles. I had a yard sale NES shortly before my first PS1 at the age of 6, but I never knew about the SNES, Genesis, Saturn, Jaguar, ect. The only reason I knew Dreamcast existed is one friend randomly had one, I had no idea what Sega was, and it disappeared off the market by the time I asked for one, with out a trace or reason. I only knew of the original Pong consoles and Atari 2600 because my Dad had mentioned them.
The red ring really should have killed them. It was remarkable timing that it did not. It's also a testament to the momentum that console had even with the technical issues.
@@mutalix exactly, the console itself was nothing special. the first year's games were also nothing special, the console only got good games in its second year (and people wanted to compare year 2 X360 games to year one PS3 game, yet another chance at an unfair comparison...didn't end well because the PS3 was actually outselling the X360 when the comparison was made time period to time period). I still remember how the 'gaming media' did everything they could to let MS get away with RRoD and all the problems the console had and how they attacked every single thing Sony and the PS3 did...it was ridiculous how hard they tried to kill that console. It's even funnier because the same 'gaming media' was praising the shit out of the kinect and Xbone and outright predicted it was going to curb stomp the PS4 in sales...even with the rumors that were going on... How amazing time do its thing heh?
@@TSEDLE333 and yet the PS3 had basically nothing worth playing until both consoles had been on the market for several years. I'm not one to defend MS, hell I had a PS3 in that gen, but let's not pretend the criticism directed at Sony was unfounded. The console launched at absolutely absurdly expensive price in many regions, had basically nothing that justified paying that price and was an absolute bastard to program for. While I won't deny Microsoft having deep pockets certainly helped them weather the RROD fiasco to say that the 360 was nothing special is pretty ignorant. It sold well because it gave people what the wanted at that time. The sheer hype for Halo 3 alone probably played just as much of a role as old Bill Gates checkbook did.
I remember my first xbox 360, that was DOA with a RROD, the second console lasted about 6 months before the DVD drive broke. The 3rd RROD'd as did the 4th. Only my Halo3 special edition never died and I sold that before it got a chance. The slim model coming out was a huge relief as I'd invested heavily in the platform. Still one of my favourite consoles of all time despite the problems.
I've had so many consoles and handhelds throughout my life and the 360 was the only console that I ever had problems with. Also knew many friends in school that had issues too
1. The Video Game Crash of 1983 (Atari wasn't the only factor, but they did play a role 2. Delaying the 7800's launch by two years 3. The Jaguar and its development.
5:07 - "this was standard in console gaming" no. It was not. Playstation 3 didnt require subscription to play online. Microsoft started with it and everybody batted an eye
First of all, I love what you do here. It's both informative and educational. What I would like to see next, or at some point, is a video on what went wrong with Duke Nukem Forever's development. It is a game that took 14 years to make and when it was released it was a shadow of what was promised. I do believe that game holds a record for how long it took to develop. Anyhow, I would love for you to do a video on this. I have seen others make videos about it, however, practically all of them focus on how bad the game was after launch and don't focus on what happened behind the scenes. If you could do this, I would be eternally grateful. Thank you.
@@GiordanDiodato it was out so far ahead of competition we had no idea what was exclusive. It was good then but now there is really no point in playing it if you have ps1 and Saturn. I dunno wtf Jaguar was good for. I still wonder to this day.
ruclips.net/video/pI-JPlKROUk/видео.html That video is a great watch and you'll see lots of consoles you've never heard of. The guy in the video explains why most of them were failures.
People don't appreciate just how colossally bad the Xbox One announcement was. How do you go from having parity with Sony in sales to getting outsold 2-to-1.
Most of my memories of GFWL was it randomly disconnecting while you were in the middle of a game, forcing you to reconnect or it wouldn't let you continue and then failing over and over forcing you to close and corrupting your save data. Such fond memories. I even bought a game where it was required to log into GFWL to play and it simply refused to log in so I just had to enjoy wasting my money on that game because refunds on digital store fronts weren't a thing back then. Good times.
With all that's happened, I'm sometimes surprised they're all where they are now. On the other hand, not using 720 is just disappointing. It may be a little weird, but so is One.
Imagine naming the new xbox console Xbox 360 because they think their consumers are so stupid that they would pick a ps3 over xbox 2 because 3 is bigger then 2.
1 correction for the games for windows live section 1. You say that paying for online subscription for consoles was standard @4:55 but this is not the case. It was standard to pay for xbox live yes, but playstation at the time did not have a paid subscription, nor did Nintendo. The ps3 came out a year after xbox 360 and then implemented their paid online services. Other than that great video as always!
"Let me know which mistakes I should cover" oh, 3DO for sure. I don't know how enumerable the problems were, but off the top of my head, 1) the licensing model meant manufacturers had to sell hardware at a profit while their competitors could loss-lead, and 2) trusting 3rd-party manufacturers meant hardware problems could sour the whole brand. Also, did they have a plan for the future, or did they just come up with Gen 1 specs without acknowledging that they'd eventually have to iterate?
The 3DO M2 console was not only in the works, there are prototype units in existence, plus some near-finished software. It was only cancelled because 3DO sold exclusive rights for the console to Panasonic, and Panasonic ultimately decided it was a bad time to be competing against Sony and Nintendo (both of which were probably the right move).
I still love that "How to share games on the PS4" video. It was such a perfect mic drop moment. Microsoft handed Sony SO much ammo with the XBox One. Games for Windows Live was indeed a mess, and I have a bunch of physical games from around that time that I can't get to work any more. A couple of years ago I wanted to replay Bulletstorm, but I wasn't able to get past the main menu because of the GFWL requirement.
You can get a patched xlive dll or another mod on the internet to play those. I was able to play the original Gears of War this way as that game requires Windows Live or something like that to be installed in the system, the patched dll makes the game think it's there and logged with a dummy account.
Sony had previous experience with mic drop moments when they killed Sega's hasty 9/9/99 $399 Dreamcast launch. Sony came out then for the PS2 reveal and simply said $299.
@@SchlossRitter You got the wrong generation. It was Sega's Saturn launch, and the PS1 coming out with $299 in response to the Saturn's surprise $399 launch. The Dreamcast came to market a year before the PS2. But you are right with Sony having experience with a previous mic drop moment with Sega.
I had three, myself. I had already returned it twice before for the exact same issue (red ring), but this time they gave me the runaround... and eventually just straight up told me they wouldn't repair it again. So I pawned it for 25 bucks. Haven't bought a Microsoft product since.
I've read histories of people who had 5. The greatest number I've ever heard was 7 (right then in 2006...the guy was completely addicted to Halo, if I remember correctly)...then the fool sold everything MS/Xbox and never went back. Remember: those 83 million reported units sold? MS used every single one, replaced or not, X360 in those numbers...you can take at least 10-15 MILLION out of those numbers as refurbished and/or outright dead units because of RRoD... MS being its scummy self.
I feel pretty lucky to have never had a rrod. I had one unit where the DVD drive started to fail, but that was the only issue out of 3 launch 360s I had
When it comes to the red ring of death, idk if Microsoft “did the right thing” it was their negligence and greed that led to such a high failure rate. Also, they would have had a class action lawsuit if they hadn’t extended their warranty.
I agree, it's not like they were trying to be a moralistic boy scout, and if they did, then I would prank them and pull out their tent pole when they were sleeping so their tent crashed down on them
They "did the right thing" in the sense of saving the Xbox. That decision on whether to spend the billion + dollars to resolve the problem was the life or death decision of the Xbox.
Great video as always, Norm. I recommended the Stop Skeletons from Fighting videos on both the Xbox One launch and the Xbox 360 Red Ring of Death, as they go into greater journalistic detail about both stories.
So excited for a new video. Idc I have to wait a couple weeks or months, as long your content is quality! The history of video games is fascinating for me since I was born in 1983 and came up in the console market after the arcade crash.
Sorta the same here, just born a few years later. For me, gaming began with the NES. I completely missed the age of Atari and never really knew anyone that had one (aside from my grandparents who had a disconnected 2600 sitting in a box in their attic) so I literally have no perspective or experience or nostalgia with playing Atari.
I'm on my 6th Xbox...i got one for Christmas. It died in 3 days. We returned it to gamestop(or it was funcoland at the time i don't remember) and they gave us another one. It red ringed first power up when we got home. Brought it back, guy couldn't believe it so he hooked it up and it recreated the issue flawlessly. So we got a 3rd one. Which died in less than a week. This time i was directed to send it directly back to Microsoft through a special box they sent you... which you had to wait on the phone 15 minutes to get sent to you. 4th one lasted a few months, and the 5th lasted a year. I bought one again 5 years ago and haven't had any problems. Still one of my favorite consoles tho...
Capcom is great, but they’re known for their bumbling mistakes with marketing and releases. Capcom would easily make for a great 3 mistakes video. The hard part would be narrowing it down!!!
Fantastic video again. When watching your content, I click the like button before it even starts, that's the kind of quality standard you created for yourself, and it's no small feat. About your last note, so many great companies failed throughout gaming history, temporarily or permanently (Atari, Commodore, and so many others...). These could be interesting to cover as well.
Sure, the PS3 stumbled for the first year and a half, but Sony worked their butts off to right the ship and make must have exclusive games. If Microsoft had properly tested the 360 and the red ring of death hadn't happened, even that might not have been enough. In the end, the PS3 and the 360 ended the generation in pretty much a dead heat. And still, Microsoft went ahead with it's Xbox One plan and pretty much repeated what Sony had done the generation before, but without Sony making a big mistake to give them a hand up. So, the Xbox One is one of the worst selling modern consoles. It and the Wii U basically just handed the generation to the PS4.
Norman drops a new video in the middle of the workweek? I might throw out my schedule for a bit this afternoon to watch it immediately? Don't mind if I do!! 👍😁👍
Next to the RROD was another big problem the round scratches the disc drive of the X360 made. So sad, because i realy love the Xbox 360 and went trough a few till i got the last revisions E and the other one before that. Great video by the way brought back a lot of good and bad memories :)
Except unlike the totally irreparable/avoidable RROD, the disc drive laser's ring scratching issue was only a potential problem if you significantly moved the console while a disc was still inside, with going from a horizontal to vertical or vice-versa orientation being by FAR the biggest culprit. (And something many 360 owners would do at LEAST once). Once you figured this out though, aka that you had to eject any discs in the drive BEFORE moving the Xbox, it became basically a total non-issue IMO. Really nothing more than a slightly aggravating annoyance. That said, if you somehow NEVER figured out how the scratching was actually happening (by moving the console), I could EASILY see how it could become a MUCH bigger problem. (Say if you are someone that moves their console between two living place regularly enough that you might not be able to quickly & easily put the pieces together on what's breaking your games).
@@Cooe. I know what you mean, but that was not what i was saying. Supreme Court had a case on this in 2016 over the X360 drives making scratches, google on it :)
The red ring of death issue was so wild. The 360 was so ubiquitous, given that it was a year ahead of the competition’s new hardware. And so the RROD felt inevitable for everyone who owned a 360. I definitely refused to by any future Xbox systems without some type of reasonable guarantee that something like this wouldn’t happen again. I do miss that blade interface, though.
The RROD (3 of them) was the last straw on my console gaming streak coming since the NES. I went full in on PC and Steam + GOG. Better game versions of most games, and (at the time) no direct compatibility/migration for my 360 games (lots of cool Xbox arcade games that stayed in that system), made the decision easy at the time.
I would suggest that you should make Valve's biggest mistake video, because they also a major player in video games history. You have to cover their many failures because of Valve's flat company structure, including cancellation of games. Also Gaben's mistake of hiring top tier engineers and giving them unlimited resources but ended up in company's internal financial trouble, and also their generous mistake by giving their VR tech to Oculus that leads Oculus to be acquired by Facebook. It's an obscure era on Valve history that leads to their dark age. An era where Valve could lead in the mixed reality gaming space, but they couldn't because of that huge mistake.
It’s incredible Microsoft, even as big as they are, survived the disaster of RROD and then the Xbox one announcement directly after. Two of the greatest video game catastrophes in history.
It really speaks volumes of both their tendacity as well as the company's deep pockets to survive those blunders. Sega practicallty ended themselves as a console maker in one and a half/two console generations after a mountain of missteps starting back at the middle point of the Genesis' lifespan and culminsating in their end at the Dreamcast era. Microsoft survived making TWO huge blunders that would have imploded other companies.
@@XenoJehuty84 It realy is unfair when you think how a vissionary company like Sega gets screwed over by making some tbh significant mistakes and goes under while a bigger company that makes even bigger asholish mistakes gets to stay in the console market.
@@Adam-nc6qg to be honest, I wouldn't call Sega a visionary company. They hardly innovated the industry and their downfall and continued languishing in squalor is of their own doing. They would have totally collapsed if not for a generous benefactor giving them money and a way out of bankruptcy
I discovered your channel earlier this Summer, and I have been enjoying every episode! Curious if the SNES Super Scope, or NES Power Pad were on your radar. Best from a former Virtual Boy owner.
One thing I will say that is a mistake and the reason why I am not a console fan is the way the Xbox does online gaming. In that you have to pay to play online. It isn’t a mistake in that it failed (except for GFWL), but it is incredibly stupid that you have to pay subscription fees to play a game you bought online when you can, nine (almost ten) times out of ten buy the same game on a PC and play online with no subscriptions required. And it was only Xbox doing that until Sony followed suit with the PS4, and then Nintendo with the Switch. Should have never happened.
NEC with the TG16 would be really interesting. It's a lot of missteps while both winning and losing the 16 bit console wars in different countries/markets.
I know it's a tiny detail, but it pissed me off that the 360's they replaced RRoD'd systems with had the flat gray vents instead of the metallic ones that the system came with. It really stuck out like a sore thumb when I reattached the HDD.
yeah the launch edition Wich i got had the chrome disc tray , rrod not 4 months later, sent it in to get serviced only to never see that same console ever again, they sent me a different console with a white disc tray... and i had to do this 9 other times until the S console came out , no lie... the good thing is that it only took about 25 days for me to receive s new console😅😅 and i lived about literally a ferry ride away from Redmond WA
The metallic one was the $399 edition, the plastic was the $299 one. Without the hard drive, it didn't matter which version they were sending out except for looks.
I used to work for GameStop when the 360 launched and I remember my company saying "preorder the shit out of it, we will have enough consoles on launch". So my store has 300 preorders. We got in 13...
I think the worst part of the Xbox One was after all the mandatory stuff with the kinect (which I was actually fine with at first) they pivoted so hard that they basiclly stopped support completely for it. I had kids who loved the kinect games and I played a few pretty regularly. I bought the One X when it came out and guess what. They didnt have the "proprietary" connector for it on the console. I use proprietary very loosly. It was just a usb cable with non standard power requirements. I had to literally hack together a fix because it was almost impossible to find the adapters they sold for it. They had them on eBay for $100+ and I refused to pay that.
I was a bit surprised here. I've never owned a Microsoft console, yet I was familiar with all three items on this list. Of course, you told me plenty of details about them that I didn't know; great work as usual. Also, strangely enough until now I never knew the reason why Microsoft got into the video game console when they did, so thank you for that.
I feel like i'm the only one who remembers that Sony was going that all digital anti-consumer route too. There were memes and everything. When they saw what happened at Microsoft's E3, they not only changed everything, but took shots at Microsoft. Nobody ever talked about that and they got away with it. Such a scumbag company.
Also can you please make a playlist called something like "3 biggest mistakes" or "gaming company's 3 biggest mistakes" or something like that please?! Thanks!!
I forgave the RRoD because at least MS would honor the warranty and give you a new console. but the Xbone announcement? I never forgave them for that. and its funny because they got their wish in the end. nobody has physical games anymore and most games require internet to function. the video game industry needs to crash.
I was gifted one xbox360 initially. I went through four of them at no cost from just that one. Their commitment to resolving the problem preserved my goodwill towards the company and I was actually firmly committed to getting the replacement generation of their console whenever it released. The xbone debut changed my mind to quitting playing videogames forever if the future of console gaming is what they described. Fortunately ps4 dispelled that. The people who proposed and approved the xbone anti consumer business plan have business degrees and that's baffling.
It would be interesting to know about the Yellow Light of Death on the PS3. I had to replace my console 3 times. The 3rd still works but I beardly use it just in fear it will eventually stop working...
The only part of "Games for Windows" that I have a copy of is LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga. Yes, I have a *physical* PC version of that game, but I don't know where it went off to. And no, I'm not going to buy it on Steam because that would be paying full price for the same game twice. I had no idea it was more than just a marketing label on some physical DVD (and maybe CD, though I don't know for sure) PC games.
I've heard folks mention this RRoD issue so many times, it always seemed like it was blown out of proportion. Mine had the issue, they sent me some box, and a few days later said they were giving me a new xbox. I had no idea it was this big of a deal. I just remembered not having my 360 for like 10 days one summer.
well done, I learned something as I never knew the root cause of red ring, also this was a time where I was not in to gaming as much so I took a lot away from this.
Atari next? Would love to hear your suggestions. Thanks!
Atari certainly had some stinkers. Lol
Intellivision
sure and also can you do the story of pacman
maybe you can do software companies such as activision or EA
I'M FIRST
You forgot one thing about the Xbox One's "always online" announcement: at first, Mattrick's response was quite literally "Fortunately we have a product for people who aren't able to get some form of connectivity, it's called Xbox 360".
Also, I remember when he said something like "Unless you live in a submarine, you probably have an internet connection." What an asshole.
I remember hearing that and immediately thinking “So....if I don’t want to have an always online system....you want me to play the 360 instead of the new console......huh?”
That really was one of the most disastrously tone deaf statements in gaming history as "get a second job" or " don't you have cell phones"
Legendary response lmao dude was such an ass
Yeah I'm a crowbcat fan, too
I had a friend who worked at Gamestop during that E3. When Xbox One and PlayStation 4 pre-orders opened, they sold every PS4 pre-order. They got zero Xbox One pre-orders. A few days later, Microsoft walked back their always online demands.
The Xbone reveal still flabbergasts me to this day. Don Mattrick should get pension for being the greatest PlayStation salesmen of all time.
I never understand this. MS was looking to position XO as a centerpiece for all media in the living room. They delivered on that visions. However, they were FAR to ahead and people clutching pearls didn’t want to accept it. The fact that they gave up on the digital locker which would FINALLY allow you to buy a physical game and added it to your digital library meaning you could play it with out the disk, meant you could finally buy physical game on sale and get the digital collection benefits along with digital lending. All of that was scrapped. Shame really. Yes it was under powered to a degree and because of peoples hate of the mandatory kinnect the price was a bit out of touch. There are bad things yes, but man if they would of come out with all of those features now it would be different.
@@ovlivion81 I mean putting a disc in seems worth it if it still allows me to sell My copy of the game to someone.
@@ovlivion81 What are you on about? People didn't like it because it was anti consumer. Always online, couldn't buy secondhand games, weren't able to share your games with friends, people didn't want the crappy Kinect but it was mandatory, the smug response of Mattrick... it wasn't that Microsoft were ahead of their time, it was that the product was shitty and their attitude was even worse.
To be fair Microsoft was only a little ahead of its time, in a negative way for consumers, consoles are following in step with the PCs by basically just digital licensing all of the games these days. Which is all the developers really wanted as it gives them absolute control over the game.
It was so horrible that imo they’re still trying to recover from it to this day
I remember looking up the "towel trick" fix for the red ring of death issue when my first 360 finally broke in 2011. If you wrapped a towel around the console and left it on for a couple days, intentionally overheating the unit to essentially repair the broken connection by melting it back together. This actually worked for awhile.
I used the trick as well until it stopped allowing more than an hour or so of gaming. I know I should have been a better consumer and demanded my money back... but to be honest all I wanted was my 360 to work again.
I had a similar issue with my Compaq 615 notebook. I cut it open so I had access to the CPU and GPU. Every time I wanted to use it I had to use a lighter to heat them up so the cheap solder would melt back properly.
@@r_jd279They really managed to fXck it up by using the cheapest solder possible...and thought it was an issue with the components. 🤣🤣🤣
@@thyristo It's odd how they just cheaped out in the most retar... idiotic way. I'm sure a higher quality solder or the addition of a couple extra fans would have saved them millions. I ended my console buying career with the 360, I think I developed a stolkholm syndrome of sorts and loved it for abusing me mentally and physically.
i used this trick a few times also
It was absolutely backbreaking to Microsoft when Sony displayed their "sharing policy" at E3.
"Here you go"
"Thank you"
Watching it live was awesome.
Yea, even as an Xbox fan, I thought Sony killed MS.
I didn't follow that and I am still confused. Do you have to say "Thank you" after you shared a game or before?
I am fairly new to this sharing thing
Dude that moment was so brutal and so powerful. My friends and I literally decided we were going PS4 solely due to that.
@@TheCrazierz It's good for companies to be humbled every now and again. Like with Nintendo's successful Wii, they thought they were untouchable and released the lackluster Wii U with the highly unnecessary game pad. Companies do dumb shit when they're overconfident. So, as a PlayStation user, I welcome when their rivals make them nervous. It means they have to do better, be more consumer-friendly, because they know we could jump ship to a rival's system.
@@elhazthorn918 Lackluster? The Wii U was fantastic; their biggest mistake was naming it that. And the game pad was a brilliant innovation that helped lead the way for the Switch.
The PS4 announcement and the simple, yet effective “$299” on the PS1 keynote in response to the $399 price point of the Sega Saturn are the greatest beatdowns from Sony.
Sega: hi our console is disappointing and crazy expensive
Sony: destroys Sega
Microsoft: hi our console is disappointing and crazy expensive
Sony: i'll fuckin do it again
The Saturn launch was probably the worst launch ever.
@@yondie491 Saturn launch might have been the biggest mistake of a launch, but it wasn't the worst. Saturn had Daytona USA and Panzer Dragoon at launch, and even though it was $399 it at least came with Virtua Fighter packed in. 3DO only had Crash 'N Burn available for the system months after it had launched. Meanwhile the Jaguar had an arguably even worse launch lineup with Cybermorph and Trevor McFur being the only two games available.
@@yondie491 Sega's biggest problem is the right hand vs left hand shit. Sega of America and Sega of Japan just kept doing their own things, to the detriment of the company overall.
@@rars0n "Where did *you* learn to fly?"
I remember working at GameStop during the sale of the 360. I had returns almost immediately. We were so baffled at the time.
The failure rate was absolutely abyssmal
@@henrik1743 3/5 sure dead in the first year units with the last 2 tending to die before the end of 2006....and that was the 'greatest' Xbox ever...
@@TSEDLE333 33% failure rate if not more must be a record. At the laptop company I work at we have 0.2% failure rate
@@TSEDLE333 lmao the ps3 had the exact same thing
@@TSEDLE333 there just wasn't a fancy name for it
My favorite part about Xbox One’s focus on TV is that streaming sticks were also first being released around this time, meaning that Microsoft was driving off their gaming audience to focus on a TV audience that had no reason to get an Xbox when they could just get a Chromecast or a Roku Stick for a fraction of the price.
The head of Xbox at the time wanted to appeal to more then just gamers by giving Xbox many unnecessary features and issues they wanted Xbox to be the center of your living room
Xbox One is Vista of consoles - minus the vista (view).
As one person put it, “the new Xbox promises to bring new features that come standard on many new TV’s.”
Exactly if yu want to enter the console wars and be successful yur # 1 priority should be games not television
My favorite part of the Xbox One announcement were all the RUclips reactions to it. Damn those videos were so funny, people got so parodically AVGN style mad. As someone who had no intention of getting an Xbox it was just pure schadenfreude.
I actually was at E3 2005 and 2006 when a lot of this stuff went down. Microsoft also sent me retail and debug Xbox 360 at the beginning of the console and BOTH RROD'ed! The Games for Anywhere thing I remember actually going into a back room with the guy that was in charge of it and trying it out, it was a neat concept that was working on some of the more advanced phones at the time such as the Motorola Q, but yeah that part of it never really got anywhere.
I'd love to see a three biggest mistakes of Konami! They've definitely gone away from being a highly revered game company and would be a good shake up to the formula by covering software manufacturers.
Yup. They love their pachinko machines now. The only reason they make games at all, I think, is to still keep certain licenses in play.
@@Harrison11106 you know every video Japanese game developer does that, right?
@@GiordanDiodato Maybe so, but not to the point where it's slot machines first, & then their video games second. I think I'm being kind with "video games second", I doubt it's even that.
Maybe we'll get a video on how Yuji Naka made a laughing stock out of himself.
@@Harrison11106 You might be surprised. Sega is also part of SegaSammy, and Sammy is mainly in the gambling, casino, resort business. It’s the problem with a very Western perspective of these corporations, an assumption that video games are critical to their success, or even their identity. Konami just had their most profitable year, so they’ve proven their point that they really don’t need to be making video games.
The Always Online announcement was so tonedeaf and stupid that I had been fully prepared to walk away from all future home consoles, if Sony had followed suit. Sony's E3 beat down on Microsoft is one of the greatest industry moments of all time. You could hear it in the cheers of the crowd, like a terrible weight was being lifted from the shoulders of everyone in the room.
...You hadn't already bailed on console gaming during the WiiPS360 era?
Hearing Norman rant about Games for Windows Live sounds like he’s speaking from the heart lol
Their biggest mistake for me was rushing out a defective console (360) just to get out in the market ahead of Sony.
3 red ring incidents, and 3 absolutely ridiculous hassles trying to get them repaired or replaced is my Microsoft experience. After the third time they REFUSED to do anything further. So I sold a broken 360 at a pawn shop. Got 25 dollars for it.
I haven't bought a microsoft product since... this was 2006.
Also, online was FREE on PS3.
PS3's online wasn't as good as Xbox's though, one time the PS3 online shut down for a MONTH
I agree. While I have and love my xbox360. I felt like they rushed too much of it. The later model I have was well built and when they finally made to so you could instal games onto the hard drive that helped a lot but for most consumers it was too little too late.
At least Xbox live wasn’t hacked risking 77 million accounts
@@littlesongbird1 I actually have an aftermarket 360s myself. I just bought it off EBay last year, because a family member happened to just give me a bunch of 360 games... but I had no console.
I paid 40 dollars for the console and two controllers... and it's a special "Gears of War" edition, so it looks pretty cool too. I do like it, but it still has issues... number one for me would be how frigging loud it is. Especially when it's reading a disc.
I've only ever had minor issues with my PS 2, 3, or 4 though... so ultimately, I'm glad I stuck with them.
@@Lividowly That's fair enough.
Either way, I'm an "older" gamer (41 yrs old), so online playing simply isn't important to me.
And once Sony started charging for their service when the PS4 came out, I stopped playing online altogether.
I remember always being scared that my 360 was gonna get the red ring back in the day. There were so many rumors in my middleschool of what caused it.I can't believe it was an over cooling and heating problem this whole time. Glad I had a newer 360 (which I didn't know at the time).
I never got red ring but my disc drive did break and eat one of my games. Absolutely wrecked my copy of Oblivion.
@@domehammer That happened to me but with Modern Warfare 2 lol
I remember when i first encounted the red ring of death and lost it smashing it against the wall! Good times...
Those X-clamps they used on the CPU/GPU sucked
Funny enough, the solution to that was to avoid the heating/cooling cycle by... having the Xbox 360 be always on! 😆
I had mentally blocked Games for Windows Live from my memory, thanks for that Norm.
The DRM they used was so poorly implemented that I had to resort to pirating games I bought legitimately as it was the only way to play the game. It was eventually scrapped and done right with Xbox at least.
I feel like "Atari's 3 Biggest Mistakes" is the natural next choice, but I'd like to suggest NEC as a potential subject.
Although they only produced two consoles (the PC Engine/TurboGrafx-16 and the PC-FX), their partnership with Hudson Soft in the 80s/90s transition had a lot more potential than many would assume. Had they handled the PC Engine's overseas launch differently (especially in Europe), not rushed the PC Engine SuperGrafx in Japan, and/or not gone lukewarm with the PC-FX's specifications, they could have been around for at least another generation.
It'll probably be more closer to "Atari's 10 Biggest Mistakes". 😂
agree, much more interesting than Atari
I agree with this, and they actually had a 3rd console (the SuperGrafx), the fact it doesn't come to mind says it all
@@stripedrajang3571 Nah 10 isn't enough pal. That would require 20!
I can think of 3 big mistakes from atari. Number 3, the Atari Jaguar. Number 2, the Atari 5200. And finally Number 1, ET for the Atari 2600.
I remember when Grand Theft Auto V came out I went through three Xboxes 360 in one day. The game just was too powerful for the system or something. But I remember I went back and forth to GameStop like three times getting new systems
The infamous Red Ring of Death is definitely one of Microsoft’s biggest regrets ever made when it comes to early release. I remember those moments when my 360 got that dreaded rings.
I remember my friend in elementary school told me about how his little sister broke his xbox and give it the RRD was just by simply turning it on and off on repeat.
I had a xbox 360, I to had to get mine replaced 3 times. Then xbox came out with xbox1 with that foolish launch.
I loved my 360 since I was 7 but 11 years later, mine red ringed😭
Aaaah the old console wars tales… I remember being a PS diehard fan and arguing with friend about how the PS3 was superior to the 360 in any way but I knew deep down inside that they had better exclusives, waaay better online gaming and cool features the ps3 lacked…
But Sony made me look like a clown in front of my Xbox fanboy friends when the PSN got hacked…
Happened to me 3 different times!
22:35 they likely shipped the "Red Ring" consoles because the consumer would be more apt to just exchange a system than wait for a refund, there was probably some customer statistics behind the decision. Ultimately pricing dictated the console wars in most rounds. Great vid!
Just wanna say every new episode of GH gives me so much joy. Your episode on Tetris was written with such meticulous care and research, and with such gripping storytelling that it felt like it should be a movie. More power to you!
This aged perfectly
As someone that's seen some of his earlier videos. I can say he's come a long way since.
Atari seems like a good choice for a “biggest mistakes” episode.
This is also a good place for discussion on the American Video Game Crash and parallels that can be drawn between that era and the modern era of gaming.
Good idea, but he'd probably need to make and hour long video just to cover it all effectively. SO much to unpack there lol
@@chrismaddock5790 I am here for it
Gee ya think???
1. Video Game Crash of 1983 (though there were several factors, not just Atari)
2. Delaying the 7800's launch
3. The Jaguar
Unfortunately, the hard part for an Atari video, is that Atari has done SO MANY screw-ups in the last decades, that picking just 3 would be seen by most, including me, as being "soft" on them.
That was well done. I don't care what console you cover next, I'll watch it!
Your videos are like Rockstar games. You make us wait for 'em, but when they come out, they're top quality.
The GTA 3 rerelease in question:
I have to give them credit, I had two Xbox 360's to red ring on me, and it was probably the easiest and smoothest customer service interaction I have had my whole life when I had to deal with it. Wasn't asked a bunch of stupid questions or put on hold for an hour, they took my call, sent me the box to ship it off, and had a replacement console in no time. One of the guys I talked to even told me about the towel trick so I could at least play until the shipping box came in. I do wonder if they tightened up and oversaw much more of the manufacturing after the fact, because I have a 250gb 360 slim unit that probably was left on overnight/all night (for Netflix/Hulu) for a good 5 years straight and still runs like new to this day.
7 RRoD
7 returns
Towards the Tail End I was Sending bad unit and Then Receiving referb In 4days . Been On Live since OG Xbox
GT: GIjoseph2022
GamerScore over 70,000
They did improve the manufacturing. The final design of the 360 was rushed, and that’s why they quickly updated it to fix it.
I honestly didn’t even know about the return policy, and my stupid self had my parents buy a new one for us during tax season… It is still working to this day thankfully.
Your right i had a 360 get the 3 rings about a year after purchasing from best buy. The trade in process was quick and my 2nd one never had a issue
I had 3 red rings, 2 within the first week. Yes, the replacement process was pretty painless but, to be honest, I'm still kinda salty over paying for a new console and getting a refurbished one.
I just need to say thank you. You really capture the magic that existed during each period of your videos and it just makes our hearts swell. Thank you so much for your work.
Yes, his low, soft voice that stays at the same tone at all times really makes one overcome with excitement.
That's why he's one of the RUclips GOATS. Doesn't upload often but always gold 👊
27:30 that makes sense but other systems had sane setup but never failed like that. Some repair techs said probably unleaded solder was the cause, lead solder can handle higher stress.
Some of my friends always give me their trash electronics. What bothered me with the 360 was if you modified it you would be locked out of Xbox live. When the red ring of death thing came to light a few friends of mine asked me if I could fix it and I learnt it was a hardware failure over the GPU and CPU from over heating and realized it was an airflow issue. I decided to Mod my 360 with a better heat sink that made it look ugly but kept the hardware cool. While I was in there realizing it ran just a basic hard drive I also flashed the OS and put in a larger volume hard drive into the console. I got locked out from xbox live. IT would let me play games offline but anything online I was denied. So I put in the old harddrive. and did a factory reset. What do you know. Still locked out because of hardware. I first thought it was linked to my account but it was linked to the console its self. I tested this logging into xbox live with another friend's xbox. Apparently also changing the heat sink in the console to one that worked better also locked me out. I hate when I am forced to not modify or repair my own shit. This was also when I started getting really big into the Right to Repair movement.
No the console's serial number became banned on live after messing with the hard drive as it's cheat and piracy sensitive hardware.
If you were to keep getting consoles banned on live they eventually will also ban the account associated with the hardware bans.
You probably would have been fine if you only used the new drive offline and switched the original drive when online.
I also refused to pay the premium for a 120 gb on mine and bought a cheap scorpio harddrive online and flashed it.
But at that point in time 120gb models were just released and i used a firmware from one of those new models without issues on live.
@@retrosimon9843 correct
That's assuming it worked at all. Me and a friend both had failed xbox 360s. Mine had the disc tray error, his the red ring of death. I was in high school, and figured (quite logically imo still), that if I canablized one, I could fix the other. I took his disc tray, and popped it in mine. It didn't even register it. I looked after, and both were made by different companies.
@@stevenn1940 Same with apple. Everything is tied to one serial number or something.
> Apparently also changing the heat sink in the console to one that worked better also locked me out
How would it know if there was a different piece of metal? Seems like you're bitter at Microsoft for you installing a modchip.
Very well done video, would love to see this 3 Biggest Mistakes series continue onto development companies too, like Capcom and Konami. I wonder if you can get down to just 3 on those two.
That would be great
Capcom's three biggest mistakes would be these:
1. Embracing disc lock contents
2. Killing Mega Man by cancelling all its games
3. Turning Resident Evil into an action shooter
Konamis:
3. Konami working conditions
2. Turning their franchises into pachinko machines
1. Konami kojima split
Do Service Games (SEGA)!
@@jimmybuffet4970 He's already done SEGA
The red ring of death was actually due to a California ruling that made manufacturers of consoles start using non lead solder, which cracks easily under immense heat and pressure. You can literally get your xbox 360 "reballed" with lead solder. The same went for the PS3 overheating issue or also known as the "yellow light of death".
That and the x shaped backplate they use to secure the heatsink wasn't nearly rigid enough to prevent the flexing in the first place.
Thanks for sharing 👍
Reballing doesn't fix the issue. It's a graphics chip infill problem, not a solder or strict heat issue. A thermal cycling problem
GFWL was such a pain. I remember it just straight up eating an activation key and keeping me from playing a game I bought until I, ahem, acquired an executable that was somewhat blemished or cracked even, if one was to describe its condition.
Imagine living in country in which the service wasn't even supported back then.
It did that to my copy of Gears of War. I didn't even bother trying to get it running, the whole experience pissed me off too much.
Man I miss Attack of the Show and Screen Savers. Such a cool time to be in my 20's. Believe it or not I have a launch 360 that worked and still works. I even have the later black edition that never had an issue. I got lucky I think.
Great vid!
Very lucky man those consoles bring me back to the great old days but damn the red ring Was something I never knew until 2011 But I’ve only had 2 of them Hope I don’t get a 3rd
there was only one reason to watch Attack of the Show, and we all know the answer
@@Fattony6666 Rhymes with Bun, or Nun, or Fun, or............. YEP!
New to the channel, but man i wish i would have found your channel years ago. I even watched your 100k subscriber episode. Its neat to find a channel of someone similar in age who did the same things. You played Pro Tour magic just as i was finishing school and getting back into magic as a young adult! Your content is fantastic and i've gone through nearly it all minus a couple of the 2 minute long ones from a dozen years ago. Keep up the great work. Amazing stuff!
Shadowrun was actually an incredibly skilled multiplayer shooter. People just weren’t expecting that type of game because of the previous rpgs. If you played matches back in the day you know how good that game was.
I was in a household with some hard core players of the Shadowrun tabletop RPG. "It's a great game, but why did they tie this into Shadowrun?" was the consensus opinion. If it were titled something else it would've done a lot better I think
Preach
Speaking of the Xbox One disaster, I want to know who got in a room at both Sony/Microsoft and decided to make it common practice to have constant huge game updates. As someone in a rural community with no internet options other than mobile hotspot, many of my games became simply unplayable until I could go somewhere else to update my console. This was the reason I went back to previous and retro consoles and haven't really looked back. Just the idea of buying a game day one to pop it in the console and require a 30+gb update before playing just seems insane to me.
I'm staying at least a generation behind at this point. Besides the constant updates, I'd rather wait to buy a slim or pro console and games with all the dlc included.
I have all modern consoles, and I hate the updates/online/deal with it mentality of modern gaming. Too big to fail, too many sheep, too many profits. I don't buy digital games, will never buy another xbox console, and don't play games online period.
@@pussydestroyer87 honestly the best way. This way you catch all of the deals and end up buying the games at the lowest value point in their life cycle. Not to mention by then you should only have to update the games one time, and like you said you get the best revision of the console with more power, more storage, and all the bugs worked out from launch console models. I will certainly be adopting the generation behind rule for now on. I have a Series X and theres still no real reason to have it over a Xbox One X unless you just have to play Flight Simulator.
@@JaneDoe-sv1mk definitely feel what you are saying. I may play a couple of times a year online with some old friends, but it's not really worth the subscription at the end of the day. Digital games suck because there is no guarantee that you own them for life, I believe PS users are dealing with this right now if I'm not mistaken. I'm tired of supporting an industry that pushes for rushed and unfinished games, just to release patches down the line. Although ultimately, the updates will probably be preserved on an online database to keep these games working years down the road for the tech savy dedicated gamers wanting to revisit these consoles, the average person would never know, and alot of current and future gens of games will be lost to time.
The answer to this question, as you might have suspected, is far more complex and nuanced than you could have imagined, and while the similarity of the practice at both companies smells of collusion, in reality that is far from the truth. Sorry in advance for the wall of text.
The truth boils down to a very dark term in the gaming industry (and software development in general)- Crunch, or Crunch Culture. Basically this is when companies, game developers, console creators create goals, hardware/software objectives, and the untenable release date to have all this completed by. This forces the developers themselves, be it individuals or entire teams, to push themselves physically and mentally, working long hours to push the product across the finish line with little to no delay. In the beginning of this 'Culture shift', it was a temporary measure near the end of a development cycle to get games or hardware to the deadline on time, and only rarely happened, and only a few developers were affected. Major players turned an indifferent eye to this practice, and began requiring heavier workloads in the same or shorter time periods, and thusly Crunch started becoming a way of life, a necessity to produce and push out product by deadline.
You may ask, "Well what the heck does this have to do with big downloads and day-one patches?"
If you think about it, it's pretty clear. Major players don't want to announce a product and a release, only to hafta announce a delay shortly before that release target. It's bad for business and unprofitable, and opens the doors for competitors to "steal" their profits, so that becomes the measure of last resort. Instead developers and subordinate companies are forced into Crunch to push things out, which increases the risk of buggy code, hardware failures, or whole sections of code just not ready on launch...
This is one of the reasons for the, now commonplace, "Day One Patch" that plagues the games and software development industry as a whole, there just wasn't time to get it into the product before the shipping deadline, and became the common measure to finish products under insane deadlines with minimal workforce.
If you are curious about the topic, the youtuber Noodle produced a very well done commentary piece on Crunch Culture.
Microsoft was charging money for matchmaking on GFWL and you could use dedicated servers for free, now most games force you into matchmaking and completely leave out a server browser. Ironically they could probably charge for it now and it would work
The Xbox One and 360 Red Ring of Death baffles me for so long as how such a giant company like this let these things happen so often. As a famous nerd on the Internet once said: "WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?!?!"
They were thinking, "give me more money!" Greed destroys everything. Hell, it also costs more, think how much they had to spend to fix their mistake. They could have fixed it earlier, either in development or after launch and not wasted so much. They were worried more about their shareholders than their customers, and that ALWAYS fails.
By the time you're having problems, they've already got your money.
The xbox1 never had the red ring of death get your facts right
@@redcrimson1028 I was talking about the Xbox One initial planned launch, not the Red Ring of Death
AVGN rules
The 3DO's short life span would be a fascinating story, in particular the entry of software studio Naughty Dog and how they accomplished "Way of the Warrior" in a garage. (The game's soundtrack featured White Zombie, which I believe is the first major-label recording artist to be in a video game.)
Question is when will Naughty Dog Remake or give a sequel to Way of the Warrior ?
@@Gatorade69 gex
@@Gatorade69 i think some things are best left behind.
@@Abel-Alvarez I see you haven't played the Magic that is Way of the warrior.
I can’t get over how nostalgic for the era of PBS documentaries Norm’s content feels. Another great one!
I was an XBox rep during this whole era and it was ever so much fun dealing with RROD and the E3 fiasco. I didn't hear too much about the Games for Windows issue.
yo man just wanted to take a sec to comment on how goated your videos are, your narration and production is mad professional. keep up the good work brother
The GPU balling issue (which caused RROD) still plagues hardware today, from laptops and AIOs with discrete graphics to gaming graphics cards. It's a packaging issue with which both ATI (they made the 360 gpu) and nVidia (most prevalent in high powered laptops like macbooks) have had problems.
At one time it wasn't an issue, but for environmental regulatory reasons in the early 2000s the industry moved away from lead soldering & lead solderballs. While environmentally problematic, from a resilience standpoint lead is an ideal element for soldering.
@@2drealms196 I'm gonna side with the EPA on this one. Having our tech last a little bit longer isn't worth *_destroying our home planet before we've even colonized a second._*
@@CoralCopperHead I believe it was actually the EEA (Europe's equivalent to EPA). Mayhaps EPA bureaucracy is a revolving door and too entwined with industry insiders. iirc EPA regulatory oversight for oil drilling was headed by former oil industry execs, who loosened regulations, which in part allowed the BP oilspill to happen.
lead restrictions are health concerns, not environmental ones. and no, it's not better for anyone for them to make something that doesn't work instead of something that does. even if it was just a matter of reducing lifespan of the product slightly, that would have detrimental environmental impact. do you think the massive overproduction this issue caused was good for the environment? making 3 consoles to sell one decimated rare earth mines and wasted an unfathomable amount of energy. $200b in shipping alone is literal tons of carbon emissions.
Except it wasnt a solder issue. It was the gpu infill issue. The CPUs use the same solder and didnt fail like the GPU's did
This is basically the only video where I lived through and was aware of all the events covered. I remember all of these things, though GFWL was the only one I had personal experience with.
I also love how different the style is on this video from the last ones, a bit fitting for Microsoft (and a new editor!). Good work.
Fascinating 🥱
@@DubzDude Troll gotta troll the non-troll?
And yes to OP, it was a fascinating video.
I'd have to agree, I felt a real connection to these events covered. Even though I was 8 when 6th gen/PS2 launched, the launch of the 360 was the first console launch I felt involved/engaged in as a teenager, and the utter WTF moment of getting that first Red Ring of Death. Also remember the disastrous presentations of the Xbox One, it was one of the biggest disappointments in gaming up to that point. Thankfully they backed off from the constant online connectivity, but I feel like that generation of consoles gave the shaft to people like myself that live in rural areas, with the constant large game updates, it rendered many of my games unplayable until I could take my console to someones house with decent internet and just let it update for a whole day.
@@letsplayclassicgames5024 I lived through all of these "biggest mistakes" lists but before around 1997 was the BI (before Internet) era, so we didn't have the hyper sense of awareness that we do now. I and probably 99.999% of people never knew about the failed partnership between Nintendo and Sony or all of Sega's financial problems or the "$299" announcement. As far as we were concerned, Sega had the Saturn, and then it just disappeared, then Sega came out with the Dreamcast then turned into a third party company. I never knew anything about Sega until 2004 when Google Video, the first major video uploading site was a thing and people uploaded the episodes of G4's Icons talking about it, and so did probably 99% of you too. I'll bet most of you didn't even know about the Video Game Crash or that Sega actually had an 8-bit console before the Genesis. Heck, there's an entire generation that didn't know that video games existed before the NES.
This Microsoft list includes things that occurred entirely during the age of RUclips where we all have such hyper awareness of things, but I never heard of the GFWL thing I just remember Gametrailers and people showing their RRoD like SpoonyOne's video where he had a mock funeral for his Xbox 360, remember when people used to watch that AVGN clone? I mainly knew about the XBONE through Angry Joe's rant videos.
@@therealhardrock I would have to agree. RUclips made me aware of those things that happened prior. I actually got to experience the 360 launch/RROD pretty organically though, I didnt have anytime I want access to the internet cause I was just a few years to young, I remember my first experience of Xbox 360 gameplay was at the kiosk where they had Call of Duty 2 and PGR demos to play. RROD I heard about through word of mouth at school, then experienced myself. The XboxOne controversy was the first one I experience through the full lens of the internet and got to see how everything unfold.
You are absolutely right too about people not knowing about consoles. I had a yard sale NES shortly before my first PS1 at the age of 6, but I never knew about the SNES, Genesis, Saturn, Jaguar, ect. The only reason I knew Dreamcast existed is one friend randomly had one, I had no idea what Sega was, and it disappeared off the market by the time I asked for one, with out a trace or reason. I only knew of the original Pong consoles and Atari 2600 because my Dad had mentioned them.
The red ring really should have killed them. It was remarkable timing that it did not. It's also a testament to the momentum that console had even with the technical issues.
The only thing that saved xbox was Microsoft's large cash reserves, replace MS with nearly any other company and they would forfit and leave.
@@mutalix exactly, the console itself was nothing special. the first year's games were also nothing special, the console only got good games in its second year (and people wanted to compare year 2 X360 games to year one PS3 game, yet another chance at an unfair comparison...didn't end well because the PS3 was actually outselling the X360 when the comparison was made time period to time period).
I still remember how the 'gaming media' did everything they could to let MS get away with RRoD and all the problems the console had and how they attacked every single thing Sony and the PS3 did...it was ridiculous how hard they tried to kill that console.
It's even funnier because the same 'gaming media' was praising the shit out of the kinect and Xbone and outright predicted it was going to curb stomp the PS4 in sales...even with the rumors that were going on...
How amazing time do its thing heh?
@@mutalix one of the reasons why there have never been any successful challengers to the big three, you need such huge capital to launch a console now
@@TSEDLE333 ...and the Wii outsold both the PS3 and the X360.
@@TSEDLE333 and yet the PS3 had basically nothing worth playing until both consoles had been on the market for several years. I'm not one to defend MS, hell I had a PS3 in that gen, but let's not pretend the criticism directed at Sony was unfounded. The console launched at absolutely absurdly expensive price in many regions, had basically nothing that justified paying that price and was an absolute bastard to program for. While I won't deny Microsoft having deep pockets certainly helped them weather the RROD fiasco to say that the 360 was nothing special is pretty ignorant. It sold well because it gave people what the wanted at that time. The sheer hype for Halo 3 alone probably played just as much of a role as old Bill Gates checkbook did.
okay so one small correction it was actually was not standard for console gaming to pay for online because the PS3 you can play for free online
I remember my first xbox 360, that was DOA with a RROD, the second console lasted about 6 months before the DVD drive broke. The 3rd RROD'd as did the 4th. Only my Halo3 special edition never died and I sold that before it got a chance. The slim model coming out was a huge relief as I'd invested heavily in the platform. Still one of my favourite consoles of all time despite the problems.
Nice description but too bad that it sounds impossible that it was so bad, cool story bro
should've held onto that H3 360, such a beauty
@@JamesChessman like I care about your opinion 😂
I've had so many consoles and handhelds throughout my life and the 360 was the only console that I ever had problems with. Also knew many friends in school that had issues too
I’ve had over a dozen 360s never had one break on me I’ve heard the story’s though
You should cover Atari's biggest mistakes. A video on the failure of the 3DO would be entertaining and informative. Keep up the great work!
1. The Video Game Crash of 1983 (Atari wasn't the only factor, but they did play a role
2. Delaying the 7800's launch by two years
3. The Jaguar and its development.
@@GiordanDiodato The 3 bit was because they were really behind Nintendo and Sega in terms of console release and they just couldn't catch up to them.
You would need a 10hr video!
5:07 - "this was standard in console gaming" no. It was not. Playstation 3 didnt require subscription to play online. Microsoft started with it and everybody batted an eye
First of all, I love what you do here. It's both informative and educational. What I would like to see next, or at some point, is a video on what went wrong with Duke Nukem Forever's development. It is a game that took 14 years to make and when it was released it was a shadow of what was promised. I do believe that game holds a record for how long it took to develop. Anyhow, I would love for you to do a video on this. I have seen others make videos about it, however, practically all of them focus on how bad the game was after launch and don't focus on what happened behind the scenes. If you could do this, I would be eternally grateful. Thank you.
A video on the history of failed consoles, not from Microsoft, Nintendo, or Sony would be interesting
3DO especially. it was a very great system for its time, but it was ludicrously expensive and didn't have a lot of exclusives
@@GiordanDiodato it was out so far ahead of competition we had no idea what was exclusive. It was good then but now there is really no point in playing it if you have ps1 and Saturn. I dunno wtf Jaguar was good for. I still wonder to this day.
ruclips.net/video/pI-JPlKROUk/видео.html
That video is a great watch and you'll see lots of consoles you've never heard of. The guy in the video explains why most of them were failures.
People don't appreciate just how colossally bad the Xbox One announcement was. How do you go from having parity with Sony in sales to getting outsold 2-to-1.
I was a 360 fanboy who switched to PlayStation because of that
Most of my memories of GFWL was it randomly disconnecting while you were in the middle of a game, forcing you to reconnect or it wouldn't let you continue and then failing over and over forcing you to close and corrupting your save data. Such fond memories.
I even bought a game where it was required to log into GFWL to play and it simply refused to log in so I just had to enjoy wasting my money on that game because refunds on digital store fronts weren't a thing back then. Good times.
Yeah, save to your physical computer or console hard disc drive at least, cloud saves are just a safety net in case of hardware failures.
That E3 presentation from Sony was THE greatest beatdown ever witnessed in E3 history.
E3 2013 would disagree.
With all that's happened, I'm sometimes surprised they're all where they are now. On the other hand, not using 720 is just disappointing. It may be a little weird, but so is One.
Imagine naming the new xbox console Xbox 360 because they think their consumers are so stupid that they would pick a ps3 over xbox 2 because 3 is bigger then 2.
One rolls off the tongue a bit better, just a bit
@@shortyorc121
Apple and Samsung have both done this with there phone names to get the highest number.
1 correction for the games for windows live section
1. You say that paying for online subscription for consoles was standard @4:55 but this is not the case. It was standard to pay for xbox live yes, but playstation at the time did not have a paid subscription, nor did Nintendo. The ps3 came out a year after xbox 360 and then implemented their paid online services.
Other than that great video as always!
"Let me know which mistakes I should cover" oh, 3DO for sure. I don't know how enumerable the problems were, but off the top of my head, 1) the licensing model meant manufacturers had to sell hardware at a profit while their competitors could loss-lead, and 2) trusting 3rd-party manufacturers meant hardware problems could sour the whole brand. Also, did they have a plan for the future, or did they just come up with Gen 1 specs without acknowledging that they'd eventually have to iterate?
Rubbish idea
The 3DO M2 console was not only in the works, there are prototype units in existence, plus some near-finished software. It was only cancelled because 3DO sold exclusive rights for the console to Panasonic, and Panasonic ultimately decided it was a bad time to be competing against Sony and Nintendo (both of which were probably the right move).
5:50 But like a minute prior you were talking about how paying for online for consoles is standard even though it wasn't originally
The RROD cause was fairly well known back in the day and there was unofficial how-to guides for replacing the thermal paste connecting the GPU.
Temporary fixes at best. It was a thermal cycling problem, not a thermal paste or solder problem
I still love that "How to share games on the PS4" video. It was such a perfect mic drop moment. Microsoft handed Sony SO much ammo with the XBox One.
Games for Windows Live was indeed a mess, and I have a bunch of physical games from around that time that I can't get to work any more. A couple of years ago I wanted to replay Bulletstorm, but I wasn't able to get past the main menu because of the GFWL requirement.
You can get a patched xlive dll or another mod on the internet to play those. I was able to play the original Gears of War this way as that game requires Windows Live or something like that to be installed in the system, the patched dll makes the game think it's there and logged with a dummy account.
Sony had previous experience with mic drop moments when they killed Sega's hasty 9/9/99 $399 Dreamcast launch. Sony came out then for the PS2 reveal and simply said $299.
@@SchlossRitter You got the wrong generation. It was Sega's Saturn launch, and the PS1 coming out with $299 in response to the Saturn's surprise $399 launch.
The Dreamcast came to market a year before the PS2.
But you are right with Sony having experience with a previous mic drop moment with Sega.
Last time I checked, GFWL servers were still functioning. But even if they shut down, you can usually create offline profile and play that way.
it had the same energy as "$299"
Holy crap the Hardware Gore stock footage at 22:20. Literally a LGA processor upside-down on a pinned socket.
I literally had 2 "Red Ring of Death" issues in 2007... Not as bad as 4, but still insane
Lol I actually felt honored to have it happen to me. My brother and I knew we'd just get a replacement.
I had three, myself. I had already returned it twice before for the exact same issue (red ring), but this time they gave me the runaround... and eventually just straight up told me they wouldn't repair it again.
So I pawned it for 25 bucks.
Haven't bought a Microsoft product since.
I've read histories of people who had 5. The greatest number I've ever heard was 7 (right then in 2006...the guy was completely addicted to Halo, if I remember correctly)...then the fool sold everything MS/Xbox and never went back.
Remember: those 83 million reported units sold? MS used every single one, replaced or not, X360 in those numbers...you can take at least 10-15 MILLION out of those numbers as refurbished and/or outright dead units because of RRoD...
MS being its scummy self.
I feel pretty lucky to have never had a rrod. I had one unit where the DVD drive started to fail, but that was the only issue out of 3 launch 360s I had
Me 2 Red Ring of Deaths one in 2011 my old white 360 & 2020 the Slim one
When it comes to the red ring of death, idk if Microsoft “did the right thing” it was their negligence and greed that led to such a high failure rate. Also, they would have had a class action lawsuit if they hadn’t extended their warranty.
I agree, it's not like they were trying to be a moralistic boy scout, and if they did, then I would prank them and pull out their tent pole when they were sleeping so their tent crashed down on them
Their were also people who's xboxes red ringed so many times that Microsoft refused to fix their xbox.
They "did the right thing" in the sense of saving the Xbox. That decision on whether to spend the billion + dollars to resolve the problem was the life or death decision of the Xbox.
want to get drunk really fast, watch the xbox one announcement and take a drink every time you heard the word TV
Great video as always, Norm. I recommended the Stop Skeletons from Fighting videos on both the Xbox One launch and the Xbox 360 Red Ring of Death, as they go into greater journalistic detail about both stories.
Thank you so much for this recommendation!! 🙏🙏🙏
I'm always on the lookout for indepth documentaries on the good, bad and ugly of video gaming history.
Derek did an awesome job on those documentary videos
I think Derek and Norm might be friends ? Or at least friendly. But yeah Derek's video really goes into depth. Both great channels.
So excited for a new video. Idc I have to wait a couple weeks or months, as long your content is quality! The history of video games is fascinating for me since I was born in 1983 and came up in the console market after the arcade crash.
Sorta the same here, just born a few years later.
For me, gaming began with the NES. I completely missed the age of Atari and never really knew anyone that had one (aside from my grandparents who had a disconnected 2600 sitting in a box in their attic) so I literally have no perspective or experience or nostalgia with playing Atari.
I'm on my 6th Xbox...i got one for Christmas. It died in 3 days. We returned it to gamestop(or it was funcoland at the time i don't remember) and they gave us another one.
It red ringed first power up when we got home. Brought it back, guy couldn't believe it so he hooked it up and it recreated the issue flawlessly. So we got a 3rd one. Which died in less than a week. This time i was directed to send it directly back to Microsoft through a special box they sent you... which you had to wait on the phone 15 minutes to get sent to you. 4th one lasted a few months, and the 5th lasted a year. I bought one again 5 years ago and haven't had any problems.
Still one of my favorite consoles tho...
Capcom is great, but they’re known for their bumbling mistakes with marketing and releases. Capcom would easily make for a great 3 mistakes video. The hard part would be narrowing it down!!!
The What Happened channel has a 5 hour playlist of videos about Capcom’s mistakes. It’s really fascinating, but also sad, I’m a huge Capcom fan.
Fantastic video again. When watching your content, I click the like button before it even starts, that's the kind of quality standard you created for yourself, and it's no small feat.
About your last note, so many great companies failed throughout gaming history, temporarily or permanently (Atari, Commodore, and so many others...). These could be interesting to cover as well.
Sure, the PS3 stumbled for the first year and a half, but Sony worked their butts off to right the ship and make must have exclusive games. If Microsoft had properly tested the 360 and the red ring of death hadn't happened, even that might not have been enough. In the end, the PS3 and the 360 ended the generation in pretty much a dead heat. And still, Microsoft went ahead with it's Xbox One plan and pretty much repeated what Sony had done the generation before, but without Sony making a big mistake to give them a hand up. So, the Xbox One is one of the worst selling modern consoles. It and the Wii U basically just handed the generation to the PS4.
Norman drops a new video in the middle of the workweek? I might throw out my schedule for a bit this afternoon to watch it immediately? Don't mind if I do!! 👍😁👍
Next to the RROD was another big problem the round scratches the disc drive of the X360 made. So sad, because i realy love the Xbox 360 and went trough a few till i got the last revisions E and the other one before that. Great video by the way brought back a lot of good and bad memories :)
Except unlike the totally irreparable/avoidable RROD, the disc drive laser's ring scratching issue was only a potential problem if you significantly moved the console while a disc was still inside, with going from a horizontal to vertical or vice-versa orientation being by FAR the biggest culprit. (And something many 360 owners would do at LEAST once).
Once you figured this out though, aka that you had to eject any discs in the drive BEFORE moving the Xbox, it became basically a total non-issue IMO. Really nothing more than a slightly aggravating annoyance.
That said, if you somehow NEVER figured out how the scratching was actually happening (by moving the console), I could EASILY see how it could become a MUCH bigger problem. (Say if you are someone that moves their console between two living place regularly enough that you might not be able to quickly & easily put the pieces together on what's breaking your games).
@@Cooe. I know what you mean, but that was not what i was saying. Supreme Court had a case on this in 2016 over the X360 drives making scratches, google on it :)
The red ring of death issue was so wild. The 360 was so ubiquitous, given that it was a year ahead of the competition’s new hardware. And so the RROD felt inevitable for everyone who owned a 360. I definitely refused to by any future Xbox systems without some type of reasonable guarantee that something like this wouldn’t happen again. I do miss that blade interface, though.
The RROD (3 of them) was the last straw on my console gaming streak coming since the NES. I went full in on PC and Steam + GOG. Better game versions of most games, and (at the time) no direct compatibility/migration for my 360 games (lots of cool Xbox arcade games that stayed in that system), made the decision easy at the time.
I would suggest that you should make Valve's biggest mistake video, because they also a major player in video games history.
You have to cover their many failures because of Valve's flat company structure, including cancellation of games.
Also Gaben's mistake of hiring top tier engineers and giving them unlimited resources but ended up in company's internal financial trouble, and also their generous mistake by giving their VR tech to Oculus that leads Oculus to be acquired by Facebook.
It's an obscure era on Valve history that leads to their dark age. An era where Valve could lead in the mixed reality gaming space, but they couldn't because of that huge mistake.
It’s incredible Microsoft, even as big as they are, survived the disaster of RROD and then the Xbox one announcement directly after. Two of the greatest video game catastrophes in history.
It really speaks volumes of both their tendacity as well as the company's deep pockets to survive those blunders. Sega practicallty ended themselves as a console maker in one and a half/two console generations after a mountain of missteps starting back at the middle point of the Genesis' lifespan and culminsating in their end at the Dreamcast era. Microsoft survived making TWO huge blunders that would have imploded other companies.
@@XenoJehuty84 It realy is unfair when you think how a vissionary company like Sega gets screwed over by making some tbh significant mistakes and goes under while a bigger company that makes even bigger asholish mistakes gets to stay in the console market.
@@Adam-nc6qg to be honest, I wouldn't call Sega a visionary company. They hardly innovated the industry and their downfall and continued languishing in squalor is of their own doing. They would have totally collapsed if not for a generous benefactor giving them money and a way out of bankruptcy
Finally I've waited 7 years for this
NEC'S three biggest would be good to see
I discovered your channel earlier this Summer, and I have been enjoying every episode! Curious if the SNES Super Scope, or NES Power Pad were on your radar. Best from a former Virtual Boy owner.
One thing I will say that is a mistake and the reason why I am not a console fan is the way the Xbox does online gaming. In that you have to pay to play online. It isn’t a mistake in that it failed (except for GFWL), but it is incredibly stupid that you have to pay subscription fees to play a game you bought online when you can, nine (almost ten) times out of ten buy the same game on a PC and play online with no subscriptions required. And it was only Xbox doing that until Sony followed suit with the PS4, and then Nintendo with the Switch. Should have never happened.
This is quite cool that I want to see Atari next for It’s 50th anniversary.
IMO it’s time to move on to mistakes by software developers. thanks for your content, it’s always fantastic!
NEC with the TG16 would be really interesting. It's a lot of missteps while both winning and losing the 16 bit console wars in different countries/markets.
I know it's a tiny detail, but it pissed me off that the 360's they replaced RRoD'd systems with had the flat gray vents instead of the metallic ones that the system came with. It really stuck out like a sore thumb when I reattached the HDD.
yeah the launch edition Wich i got had the chrome disc tray , rrod not 4 months later, sent it in to get serviced only to never see that same console ever again, they sent me a different console with a white disc tray... and i had to do this 9 other times until the S console came out , no lie... the good thing is that it only took about 25 days for me to receive s new console😅😅 and i lived about literally a ferry ride away from Redmond WA
The metallic one was the $399 edition, the plastic was the $299 one. Without the hard drive, it didn't matter which version they were sending out except for looks.
I used to work for GameStop when the 360 launched and I remember my company saying "preorder the shit out of it, we will have enough consoles on launch". So my store has 300 preorders. We got in 13...
“It was, quite frankly, the worst beatdown in E3 history.” Yep, and Microsoft deserved every damn bit of it.
I will never forget my excitement when I got my Xbox 360. It was almost as exciting as taking it in to swap for a PS3 a few weeks later.
Good choice.
I think the worst part of the Xbox One was after all the mandatory stuff with the kinect (which I was actually fine with at first) they pivoted so hard that they basiclly stopped support completely for it. I had kids who loved the kinect games and I played a few pretty regularly. I bought the One X when it came out and guess what. They didnt have the "proprietary" connector for it on the console. I use proprietary very loosly. It was just a usb cable with non standard power requirements. I had to literally hack together a fix because it was almost impossible to find the adapters they sold for it. They had them on eBay for $100+ and I refused to pay that.
I was a bit surprised here. I've never owned a Microsoft console, yet I was familiar with all three items on this list. Of course, you told me plenty of details about them that I didn't know; great work as usual. Also, strangely enough until now I never knew the reason why Microsoft got into the video game console when they did, so thank you for that.
I feel like i'm the only one who remembers that Sony was going that all digital anti-consumer route too. There were memes and everything. When they saw what happened at Microsoft's E3, they not only changed everything, but took shots at Microsoft. Nobody ever talked about that and they got away with it. Such a scumbag company.
still better than microsoft
Also can you please make a playlist called something like "3 biggest mistakes" or "gaming company's 3 biggest mistakes" or something like that please?! Thanks!!
I bought the Uni-clamp repair kit off eBay to fix my broken 360. Worked like a charm. Then my ex wife stole the console.
I forgave the RRoD because at least MS would honor the warranty and give you a new console. but the Xbone announcement? I never forgave them for that. and its funny because they got their wish in the end. nobody has physical games anymore and most games require internet to function. the video game industry needs to crash.
I was gifted one xbox360 initially. I went through four of them at no cost from just that one. Their commitment to resolving the problem preserved my goodwill towards the company and I was actually firmly committed to getting the replacement generation of their console whenever it released. The xbone debut changed my mind to quitting playing videogames forever if the future of console gaming is what they described. Fortunately ps4 dispelled that. The people who proposed and approved the xbone anti consumer business plan have business degrees and that's baffling.
Love the videos! You put so much time and work into them and they make my day better
It would be interesting to know about the Yellow Light of Death on the PS3. I had to replace my console 3 times. The 3rd still works but I beardly use it just in fear it will eventually stop working...
The only part of "Games for Windows" that I have a copy of is LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga. Yes, I have a *physical* PC version of that game, but I don't know where it went off to. And no, I'm not going to buy it on Steam because that would be paying full price for the same game twice.
I had no idea it was more than just a marketing label on some physical DVD (and maybe CD, though I don't know for sure) PC games.
Aaand who's here after the news about Xbox laying off 1000+ workers and *no longer making physical games, oh good grief*
Woohoo gaming historian is doing another video it's going to be good like always!
19:41 I love how Microsoft was using a PowerMac for their presentation
I've heard folks mention this RRoD issue so many times, it always seemed like it was blown out of proportion. Mine had the issue, they sent me some box, and a few days later said they were giving me a new xbox.
I had no idea it was this big of a deal. I just remembered not having my 360 for like 10 days one summer.
As a kid who played a lot I had it happen 4 times, it was rough.
I tried to fix mine by cannablizing my friend's which had issues. It didn't work
The slim model was great though iirc
well done, I learned something as I never knew the root cause of red ring, also this was a time where I was not in to gaming as much so I took a lot away from this.