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

http://venturebeat.com/2016/04/20/microsoft-is-ending-xbox-360-production-more-than-10-years-after-its-debut/

by doppp • 10 years ago

114 100 10 years ago

sremani• 10 years ago

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

dsp12342• 10 years ago

but with a huge game library

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

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

sjs382• 10 years ago

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

throwanem• 10 years ago

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

valarauca1• 10 years ago

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

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

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

I'm not a thermodynamics guy.

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

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

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

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

WoodenChair• 10 years ago

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

andersen1488• 10 years ago

That's basically the Nvidia Shield

JohnTHaller3• 10 years ago

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

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

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

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

daveidol• 10 years ago

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

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

teamfrizz• 10 years ago

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

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

kalleboo• 10 years ago

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

robbiemitchell• 10 years ago

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

fsloth• 10 years ago

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

wmf• 10 years ago

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

cc438• 10 years ago

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

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

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

buckbova• 10 years ago

PS2 went on for 13 years.

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

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

TazeTSchnitzel• 10 years ago

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

barbs• 10 years ago

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

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

sogen• 10 years ago

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

vhost-• 10 years ago

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

CodeCube• 10 years ago

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

vblord2• 10 years ago

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

Grazester• 10 years ago

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

justinlardinois2• 10 years ago

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

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

ComputerGuru• 10 years ago

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

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

ikeboy• 10 years ago

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

untog2• 10 years ago

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

littleweep• 10 years ago

Did you buy this new?

ethbro• 10 years ago

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

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

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

toxican• 10 years ago

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

PTRFRLL• 10 years ago

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

Guess I need to stock up on 360 controllers

asimuvPR7• 10 years ago

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

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

FussyZeus3• 10 years ago

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

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

asimuvPR7• 10 years ago

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

chaostheory• 10 years ago

Microsoft can thank Peter Moore for doing the right thing

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

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

asimuvPR7• 10 years ago

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

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

blktiger• 10 years ago

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

draw_down• 10 years ago

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

Aleman360• 10 years ago

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

bitserf• 10 years ago

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

I will never buy Microsoft hardware again, ever.

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

gcb0• 10 years ago

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

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

clouddrover• 10 years ago

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

sangnoir• 10 years ago

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

MichaelGG2• 10 years ago

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

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

pdabbadabba3• 10 years ago

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

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

Maybe it depends on which version of Windows 10?

pdabbadabba3• 10 years ago

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

remarkEon• 10 years ago

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

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

Unklejoe• 10 years ago

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

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

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

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

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

emehrkay• 10 years ago

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

brudgers• 10 years ago

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

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

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

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

Keyframe• 10 years ago

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

webkike• 10 years ago

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

kbenson• 10 years ago

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

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

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

cwyers2• 10 years ago

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

ChristianGeek• 10 years ago

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

vancatrabbit• 10 years ago

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

waspleg• 10 years ago

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

WorldMaker4• 10 years ago

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

tomyws• 10 years ago

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

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

aqzman• 10 years ago

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

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

johnchristopher• 10 years ago

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

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

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