A story from my buddy on facebook. Its long but a good read lol.
"Many people enjoy the good/bad/ugly format as it lends itself to easy reading. I will stray from this in my rant simply because I'm to frustrated to organize it.
The simple fact is that new products and services in the digital age are built to break. We all know this whether we are aware of it or not. Gone are the TV repair centers, gone are the days of fixing your phone, and of course no one blinks at buying a new toaster when the old one stops working. Why not?
It costs, on average, about $250 USD to $499 USD to repair a simple car audio radio or amplifier. I tell people all the time to just buy a new one. Its the same money, or even less sometimes, and its new with a warranty. TV's, cell phones, and yes, even toasters used to be big business for repair centers. Now, in the US anyways, these are relics of an era that only prove my age.
I'm not complaining mind you. I would rather get a new TV with more features, or a toaster with the hot dog rack on top (I'm an addict for a good dog), but I list these to illustrate some simple examples of a larger trend to which, I promise, I will get to shortly.
I unboxed my XBox One @ approximately 12:45 at night EST on release night and found myself in love. The console was amazingly fast. The picture was unbelievable, the voice commands responsive, the game play was a 64 player dream-come-true; so crisp that I had to sit farther back from my plasma than normal - like four feet further back!
The next night was not so erection inducing. I was mired in screens that wouldn't respond, game sessions that inexplicably ended with the home screen, and a continuous stream of error messages and notices that were along the lines of, "Its not working... get bent"
Ugh.. to the web, lets see whats going on.
Google, so often a happy companion in my struggles, turned into a horseman of doom. Not only were others having the same issues, but some weren't even able to turn on their new $500 paper weights. There have even been reports of grinding sounds in the disc tray and direct from Microsoft's greatest hits: The green screen of death.
Admittedly, the extreme examples aforementioned are, well, just that - extreme. Lower than 1% of owners ran into these issues; notably the same ratio as the PS4.
After reading all of this (on my phone because the browser on my console was not cooperating), I tried again to load Battlefield 4 and subsequently felt a little piece of my soul come back to life as I stupidly got my hopes up when it didn't immediately kick me back to the home screen - and then it did. Good bye sanity.
After some really uncharacteristic @#$% to my unfortunately trapped-in-the-room-with-me wife that included, but was not limited to, explaining in ridiculous detail all of the bills I could have paid instead of buying my console, I smoked a cigarette and tried again. IT WORKED!!
Not only did it work but because I have premium, I was able to play the Second Assault Maps (Metro,Caspian,Firestorm,GulfofOman)! It was the most amazing thing I have ever played - until it kicked me out again.
It seems as if Microsoft is working on some grand social experiment that involves pushing the limits of our mental stability only to overdose us on endorphin inducing beauty and functionality.
After I finished blowing my top again I began to muse on the emotional roller-coaster I had paid $500 to ride. It disturbed me that I was already so attached to this amalgamation of silicon and solder.
Was it the money? No, not really. To be honest, the money only became a factor once I couldn't express my innate frustrations with clarity and thus resorted to @#$% about what I knew my wife could fathom. She understands that that much money could have been "better" used. She doesn't understand the crushing weight a gamer feels when the future of your passion is right in front of you and it doesn't work.
So what is it really? Well, here we come full circle to my introduction. Things are made to break and there is no doubt that the new Xbox is in pieces. Some of those shards work while others do not.
To those who say it'll get better, I agree. To those who say they are working on patches, I know. To those who profess to have had no problems, I'm jealous.
We live in an age when products and services don't have to actually work in order to sell them. IOS7 was, and still is, a disaster. Any version of windows from 2000 through XP and on till 8.1 is given to us with problems. Why? Because they can be fixed (except Vista of course) remotely. Why would a developer take the time to really hammer out the kinks when they could just sell it and start making money.
Microsoft did this here. They sold a product earlier than they should have just to compete with Sony because they knew that most players would be fine and the rest of us could wallow in dysfunction until they finished writing the code.
My assumptions are that the first night was smooth because of the lower number of people demanding servers. As the Xbox One makes use of servers to run itself more efficiently the second day was mired in an overloaded "cloud".
Assumptions aside the facts are that for now, my new hardware is running on weak software and I must accept that my antiquated ideals on the durability of a product, be it toaster or console, must be put to rest. I must accept that it was built to be fixed, not to last. This is the New Normal.
Juvie83
P.S. Thanks for hearing me @#$%. And yes by the way, I would do it all over again. When it works it is amazing."
