EB Games temporarily removes 360s from shelves

360 News | Stock replenished on Wednesday at the latest.

Kotaku reports that EB Games Australia has apparently removed all Premium Xbox 360s from shelves in their national retail outlets due to a manufacturing problem with the bundled hard drive. While not officially confirmed by EB Games, Kotaku quotes "sources within the company" as their information channel.

The problem apparently does not affect the Core model due to the lack of a hard drive and is unrelated to the "red ring of death" covered by the new Microsoft warranty. Sources within the company claim that managers were informed of the issue on June 29th and that store staff have since been manually testing each Premium Xbox 360 prior to sale. The problem apparently manifested as a machine that completely failed to boot on startup and appears localised to EB Games thus far.

New stock is apparently on order and should be distributed through EB Games' retail network by Wednesday. While not related to the red ring of death, if true, it is unfortunately symptomatic of the reliability problems consumers are increasingly perceiving as being associated with the Xbox 360.

UPDATE: PALGN called EB Games this morning with a representative from the Camberwell store telling us 1/3 of the Xbox 360's had problems. They currently don't know when the consoles will be in stock.

UPDATE 2: Shane from EB Games has spoken to PALGN and clarified that this was simply a bad batch of consoles and stock on the Eastern Seaboard should be arriving tomorrow, other states should have Xbox 360's in store on Wednesday.

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39 Comments

Crestfallen

4 years ago

Cro knows all about this.

DancesInUnderwear

4 years ago

The place I got mine from had 6 broken ones out the back, including my first one, and I took the last working one.

dvsbastard

4 years ago

"The problem apparently manifested as a machine that completely failed to boot on startup and appears localised to EB Games thus far. "

This might be the case, but I got 2 consoles (one faulty, and one completely DOA) from Big W 2 weeks ago.

ugh the boot

4 years ago

What a piece of crap! Every now and again I will notice a new problem with the 360.

The first problem I had was quite a while ago now (about 8-9 months ago) one day I logged on to find my gamertag had corrupted and couldn't load! I had already had my 360 for a while and I was horrified all my achievements, saved games and arcade games were gone! Anyways I ended up having to delete my corrupted profile (which I was reluctant in doing) and downloaded it again off the live system and it worked fine for like a couple of minutes and then it did it again, so I rinse and repeat and it's been fine ever since. Honestly I don't know if that was the HDD or if it was the profile itself....anyways....dodgy...that's all I got out of it. The funniest thing about this was however when I called customer service to initially try and get some help they took all my details etc and looked into my account, anways I had recently taken advantage of a free gold 3 month or 1 month membership that came with the headset i'd just bought anyways I entered those details into my account (regardless of already having a 1 year membership that was like only 1 or 2 months into)....but it did something weird and that it said I was on the 1 or 3 month membership but the expirey date was over like 11 months away (which is right because my 1 year membership plus the free month/s I got would've put it upto that), but the customer service guy on the phone thought this was weird and was gonna 'look into it' and I told him "NO!!!" leave it alone!! I've still got my 12 month membership packaging i'd bought and the free membership that came with the headset and if they mucked me around anymore there was gonne be trouble (I was already frustrated with the corrupted profile problem so I didn't want them to rob me of something i'd already paid for otherwise I would've killed someone...anyone at Microsoft). Luckily the guy heard how angry I was and just left it alone! Good cuz I would've taken that crap as far as it would go (hey I had proof i'd paid for all that crap so I knew I would win, it was just their dodgy system that obviously didn't know how to add up all my months membership properly).

The next problem you guys pretty much know about and that is the disc drive stopped reading discs (it would say 'insert disc' when one was already inserted) and it actually scratched up 3 of my games (probably more but I only noticed it on 3 of them cuz those were the only ones that stuffed up with a horrible scratching sound immediately before). I managed to get it fixed under warranty but I thought to my self....wow how dodgy it wasn't even the 3 red rings thousands of people have complained of.

Another problem I have is actually with the controller....about a couple of months ago when playing Command & Conquer 3 I noticed that when I tap left on the controller the thing sort stays in a 'slowly-to-the-left' mode....in that the cursor kept slowly moving to the left. Honestly I first noticed this problem on F.E.A.R cuz sometimes I would be crouched behind a barrel for cover and my dude would sometimes just keep sorta slowly moving to the left....and I honestly thought it might've been a configuration problem or something with F.E.A.R itself and not the controller but when I noticed it on C&C3 it tested it a few different ways and tried recalibrating the controller etc but the problem remained. Seriously it's not a huge thing but honestly it stuck in my head as 'dodgy' especially when I had already experienced a couple of other unecessary problems.

Now I have a problem where all my Xbox Live Arcade games have become the demo versions (yes i'm talking about the full games i've paid for). Like about 10 games of mine have become the demo version for no reason.....I haven't tried downloading them again but I figure it should be alright cuz it's linked to my profile....but I can't help but think.....dodgy!

I wonder what other surprises my 360 has instore for me?

rodvcpetrie

4 years ago

I'm lucky because I haven't purchased an Xbox360 yet. It will probably be another six months before I do, so hopefully these major problems will be fixed by then. I could handle minor things that could be fixed by patches, but major things would be too much of a hassle for me to deal with.

Juztin

4 years ago

rodvcpetrie same, I'm hope the elite doesnt have any problems.

Crestfallen

4 years ago

MS confessed that the actual design of this console is flawed. No quick fixes will suffice, it needs a totally new makeover from an engineering point of view.

If you want its games, then suck it up, cross your fingers, buy it, and enjoy the guaranteed 3 years you'll get. Who knows what'll happen in 2010.

sEiFeR

4 years ago

Talk about a kick to the balls.

Cro

4 years ago

crestfallen wrote

Cro knows all about this.

This is exactly the problem I had. Localised to EB my arse..

Anyway, my current 360 actually started with this problem but I managed to get it load up once, entered my info, did some update from my copy of Forza and it hasn't happened since, on probably 20 start ups. So, hopefully it won't be a problem anymore.

Still **** mad at MS for some other **** since.

TheAnswer

4 years ago

This really isnt looking good for the 360, all these problems.

I'm just glad my console hasnt had any real problems, knock on wood, now I've said something I have probably jinxed it.

genxevo

4 years ago

yeah at our store we've been getting the error 65 (or is it 68??) on our latest batch of 360s.

first we were told to take out the hard drive, turn on the 360 and let it fully load, then turn it off, put the hard drive back in and then turn it on again and it should fix the problem.. but it nly worked 20% of the time

and the first few times microsoft let us return the console so we could give the customer a replacement (first 30 day replacement warranty) but then after 2 days they wouldn't accept the console saying it was only a hard drive problem and the hard drive ONLY could be sent back for a replacement.

when that started.. i can tell ya customers were not at all happy when we told them what had to be done

Itachi

4 years ago

TheAnswer wrote

This really isnt looking good for the 360, all these problems.

I'm just glad my console hasnt had any real problems, knock on wood, now I've said something I have probably jinxed it.

roflmao you not the only one i am also one of the lucky people out there with no problems *Touch wood*. Damn this is some more bad news for MS.

Capoeira

4 years ago

*profusely knocking wood*

*Knock.. KNOCK KCOOCOCOKK!!!@!!@!@!!##!@!@!@*

Please let mine live.

Cro

4 years ago

genxevo wrote

Yeah 68.

That's what happened to me, about them saying you can only get a replacement sent out. But we managed to get a reference number off them and took the bastard back anyway..

I mean you shouldn't have to wait 15 days to use what you paid for.

Seriously, it took them 3 weeks to pull the things from sale? That is pathetic.

Jaws

4 years ago

Looks like the rabbit hole is far deeper than everyone originally thought hey?

Its a shame because the system offers alot to gamers, and like ive said once or twice, id have one sitting in my home if it wasnt for the dismal hardware quality.

Karai Pantsu

4 years ago

I still find it hard to believe that such a fundamentally broken piece of hardware was released for sale. Don't get me wrong, I <3 my 360 to bits - It's pretty much the only console I play with any kind of regularity (Wii for odd bits of VC, PS3... for charging my phone). But its obvious that my relatively problem free ride with it is an exception to the rule, which is a real shame.
They let it go on for too long without addressing the issue, and I really think that is going to have far ranging implications for them.

Jim Dash

4 years ago

^ In the form of the PS3 slowly becoming everybody's console of choice over the next couple of years.

And it deserves to be, it can do no wrong, even with its sometimes dodgy interface.

Karai Pantsu

4 years ago

The Frontend UI of the PS3 really, really gives me the ****. MS may have ballsed up the hardware in a monumental way, but the software side is sublime in comparison to the desolate, barren wasteland of the PS3. The 360 was out for, what... a year before the PS3 hit? Surely the boffins behind the PS3 could have tried to at least match the functionality of the 360.
I know that it isn't a big thing to many people here, and a bunch of you dig it a fair bit - but for me the PS3 frontend is equally as broken as the 360s hardware and that really should change (even though it wont).

Jim Dash

4 years ago

What I hate about it the most is that you can't do ANYTHING in game. All I want is to be able to read messages, play my own music, view my profile, whatever, by hitting the PS Button in-game.

But hopefully updates will fix that.

diogenes92

4 years ago

Tellin' ya ppls. PS3 is the go. Tho 360 is still a kool console despite these issues.

ittekimasu

4 years ago

hmmm i was kinda hoping the elite would've had its hardware fixed being a perfect opportunity to recover but from what i'm hearing, it seems that the elite will be cursed with the faults of the premium, not really making it an elite at all.

ugh i don't want to risk getting one if i know its going to eventually break

Passa

4 years ago

ugh the boot wrote

Oh god.. the fact that you've gotten to the stage where an off-center thumbstick is alright scares me even more. I was going to buy a 360 a week ago for $540, instead I stuck it on lay-by for something like $5. After reading that I'm really close to calling them up and telling them to stop with-holding the 360 for me..

EDIT: This also ruins my master plan of getting a 360 just before Halo 3 is released, so that it'll hopefully still be functioning when it comes out

but now that they're failing before they get to EB I'm not so sure anymore..

Joseph

4 years ago

I was gonna get a Xbox 360 last week, and it would've been from EB as they said they'd match the Big W offer. I'm glad I bought a laptop instead. These problems are concerning me, so much so that I'll be waiting until they are eradicated altogether from the console. I want to hear reports of 2-4% of failed systems, not 33.33%

Qbert

4 years ago

You guys have been talking about how this will all be fixed when they get a 65 something or other chip correct? I don't know to much about it, but is that what the Elite's are getting (along with 120 gig)?

I just want a working console by Christmas...

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