Gamer takes Microsoft to court over Halo 3 'errors'
Poor playback causes fury
A Californian gamer has filed a class action lawsuit demanding damages in excess of $5m against Microsoft and software developer Bungie, all because his copy of Halo 3 allegedly doesn’t work properly.
UK gamers have complained of an unreadable error, when playing Halo 3
Whereas most gamers would simply take a damaged disc back to the shop, plaintiff Randy Nunez decided to become a champion for gamers’ rights. He's taking the two companies to court to battle it out on behalf of any similarly affected California consumers.
Nunez’s class action laqsuite, which was filed with the US District Court for Southern California earlier this month, alleges that the game consistently causes the Xbox 360 to “crash, freeze or lock up” while being played.
He also claimed that Microsoft and Bungie have “failed to recall” Halo 3 or remedy this alleged failure to function, despite “mounting consumer complaints and inquiries concerning this operational flaw”.
Microsoft admitted to Register Hardware last month that it’s aware of a problem which stops Halo 3 from loading correctly, but it refused to reveal the cause.
At the time, we spoke to several similarly affected gamers, who each gave us a slightly different account of the problem. However, the common complaint trait was the appearance of a message on screen saying the disc was unreadable or that it couldn’t be loaded.
COMMENTS
@Phill
"Firstly, the complexity is too high. Writing software can be more complicated than landing a person on the moon. One is the theory of moving an object (a space ship), the other is creating a virtual world with true-to-life physics, including the modeling of all 4 dimensions (width, height, depth and time) not to mention gravity, handling object collisions (bullets, player contact, player movement on the ground)."
Exactly what do you think the guidance software on a space ship does? You do realise that time, height, depth, width and gravity as well as other objects (satellites, planets perhaps?) also exist in "the real world"?
Computer games use massively dumbed down physics engines, in the real world just trying to model the air-flow through a prototype jet engine as accurately as we currently can is basically a super-computer sized task.
Just because NASA managed to get to the moon using a computer less powerful than a gameboy doesn't take away from the fact it was an incredibly complex task.
Scratch Alert
From day one, (March), I had this unreadable error on GoW. To my distain, when I removed the disk to give it a wipe, there was the first scratch. As said, any graphically intensive XBox 360 game, where the data is streamed from the disk will cause scratches, (with one particular DVD-ROM drive). Oblivion was rendered unplayable and Forza II too.
That was the final straw. Back to Microshaft the box went via courier. Six weeks later, even after multiple calls, no sign of my box. Over the phone as expected, Microsoft wouldn't acknowledge the fault with the DVD-ROM, even telling me to keep the pantyliner-shaped box on a level and stable surface. Stand the machine horizontal etc and not put jam on printed side a la Tomorrow's World.
Main point of the matter is that they would only refund me four weeks on XBox live. In total my box was AWOL for eight weeks. In fact my box is still AWOL, I got sent a new one, which I promptly sold. Never looked back, (until writing this now). My PS3 might not have all that many games yet but I've the confidence in the product to be working for time to come.
happened to me...
I had the same problem, although occasionally I could get past the crash point. I returned my disc and the replacement was seemingly fine, but as I had followed support advice its uncertain if it was the disc at fault.
Xbox support seemed to suggest it was Hard Disk related that was causing the problem. Calls to their support line asked me to delete all save games in the first instance (great...) and then format the HD. They suggested this before even suggesting I return my copy of Halo3. If that isnt admittance of a hardware fault I dont know what is.
just wanted to show my love
For the man, the legend, the money-making mogul of moguls that is Mr Gates.
Another fine product on his hands here, no probs as far as i can see.
Yeah right, (Enter anonymous Linux/Mac/PS3/OSS fanbois comment here).
:P
It's a fault already acknowledged by MS and Bungie.
Microsoft have already acknowledged a problem with this game (the article is linked from this story page, so not many of you can have read this if you're still calling him a liar).
In fact, on the offical MS forum for the game there is a "disc fault" thread running with over 4,500 responses on it, including video footage of the fault. See the Xbox forum thread entitled: "Re: Post here if u having the Disc Read Error".
Not only that, the official Bungie website acknowledges the fault. They should know - they made the game. Quoted below:
Q: I am encountering issues while playing Halo 3 where the game is apparently failing to read the disc properly. What should I do?
A: We are aware of reports that some people have received a "Disc Unreadable" error or similar issue while trying to play Halo 3. Bungie is working with the Xbox team to investigate the potential causes of this issue. Please visit the Microsoft Support Site and follow the listed instructions to see if this resolves the error message. For additional information or customer support, please call 1-800-4MY-XBOX.
