It was a little stunning to learn last week that at least one disgruntled Xbox 360 owner had decided to skip the regular channels when dealing with a burnt out 360 and instead went straight to Bill Gates. Even more stunning, Gates apparently knocked some heads and got the guy sorted out in record time (24 hours).

While Consumerist reader, and Xbox 360 owner, Jon was delighted with the outcome, it seems Microsoft was not so much. Today they've dropped us a friendly note to remind everyone that Bill really isn't your go-to guy for Red Rings of Death:

Bill Gates or Microsoft executives are not an appropriate escalation point for customer service issues. Customers experiencing issues with their Xbox 360 console should contact Xbox Customer Service. Our customer service team is well equipped to ensure that the repair process goes smoothly.

That said, Microsoft stands behind its products and takes responsibility to ensure that every Xbox 360 console owner continues to have a fantastic gaming experience. We are continually improving the design and performance of the Xbox 360 consoles to decrease the likelihood that a customer will experience the three flashing red lights. In the event they do, they are covered for three years under our extended warranty.

Wow, can you imagine the tongue lashing the likely tsunami of angry emails spurred? Gates, I suspect, may be retired, but he's not THAT retired.

Emailing Bill Gates Results in New Xbox [Consumerist]

With a license to seemingly print money, Nintendo took 2007 by storm, establishing console and handheld dominance with its two casual friendly game devices. Nintendo DS and Wii dominated software and hardware charts, seeing a steady flow of week to week sales for both platforms, appearing to only weaken when supply was constrained.

Sony's offerings, the PSP, PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 2, had a solid (if not spectacular) year. The PS3 didn't make any waves, but the PSP did. The PS2, now seven years long in the tooth, still had a bit of life in it.

The Xbox 360? Well, we don't have nice things to say about its Japanese performance, so we'll just let the charts do the talking.

When units of each platform are presented side by side, the stranglehold the Nintendo DS has on the Japanese market becomes apparent. Its weekly sales outpaced every other console's and handheld's performance for nearly the entirety of the year. The only platform to outperform the DS at any point was Sony's PlayStation Portable, aided by a pair of marquee releases (plus a hardware redesign) in the first and third quarters of 2007.

The Nintendo DS saw its largest weekly period sales alongside a few high-profile software releases and in time with holidays, but was less dependent on individual software releases to pull in big numbers. Media Create software sales charts were regularly heavy on DS software, and it wasn't uncommon to see weekly charts feature nothing but DS and Wii software in the top ten—see Dragon Quest Swords and Final Fantasy XII Revenant Wings launch weeks and this past week for examples.

In general, however, Nintendo DS sales trends tended not to spike as severely as other platforms did, with sales of older titles such as New Super Mario Bros. and Animal Crossing Wild World still doing solid business for Nintendo, many months after their respective release dates.

When we look at year-to-date sales in handy bar graph form, we get a much better perspective on the share of the Japanese market that Nintendo carved out for itself in 2007. This was the year that Nintendo DS hardware sales surpassed those of the PlayStation 2, with each at about 21 million consoles sold in the nation, lifetime to date. It's an impressive feat for the handheld, as it surpassed that figure in almost exactly 3 years, compared to a 7 year shelf life for Sony's console.

The DS pushed some 7 million-plus units into the hands of Japanese consumers, a third of its total sales. Not a bad year for the platform widely considered a gimmick before its launch.

On Sony's side, 2007 saw the PlayStation 3 outsell the PlayStation 2 in its first full year on the market, with the PSP achieving just shy of one-half of the DS's sales, a similarly impressive feat for a non-Nintendo portable device.

The Xbox 360, despite seeing a handful of video game releases that sold admirably over the year, continued to be a non-factor in the console war overseas. Its annual sales were about a quarter-million, something the Nintendo DS accomplished on a weekly basis multiple times in 2007. Sure, it's a bit apples to oranges, considering the price differences in hardware and software, but its illustrative of consumer tastes in Japan. Microsoft's efforts to appeal to Eastern gaming tastes with a pair of Mistwalker games, hardware bundles and a few exclusives from Namco Bandai were met with flat sales in the nation.

Who had the biggest slice of the pie in 2007? Nintendo, of course, with over two-thirds of the entire console market dedicated to Nintendo DS and Wii sales. That's not including sales of legacy platforms like the GameCube, Game Boy Advance SP and Game Boy Advance micro, whose total sales were in the 60,000 range and not factored into the above charts.

While DS and Wii sales were slightly down at the end of the year, coming off of a strong Wii launch and solid sales of Dragon Quest Monsters Joker and multiple "Training" games at the end of 2006, strong sales of Wii Fit, Mario Party DS, Dragon Quest IV, Final Fantasy IV and others indicate that 2008 will still be a good year for the company.

Nintendo DS sales against the PSP show that there is still a broad gap between weekly sales of the two platforms. However, the PSP's ability to unseat the DS for a handful of weeks shouldn't be overlooked and close sales numbers for both around holiday periods show that the PSP deserves credit for chipping away at Nintendo's near monopoly on the portable gaming space. Sony has Capcom and Square-Enix largely to thank for that, as Monster Hunter and Final Fantasy titles were responsible for the biggest sales spikes.

In the home console war, nothing can touch the Wii. The PlayStation 3 flirted with console dominance along with the help of a few big name, Japanese friendly titles like the Musou series and a hardware revision, but Wii sales saw fewer sales spikes as households picked up the console with older titles like Wii Sports and Wii Play.

The Xbox 360 peaked on sales of Ace Combat 6, Eternal Sonata (nee Trusty Bell) and Lost Odyssey, but it was regularly outsold by its more expensive rival the PS3.

The Nintendo DS was less prone to peaks and valleys, save for the release of Final Fantasy XII Revenant Wings, largely responsible for a biweekly crush of a half-million units shifted. Big name releases like The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass still got gamers into stores, but non-gaming software, remakes and older titles like New Super Mario Bros. and Animal Crossing helped to push the Nintendo DS into record territory.

Like the Nintendo DS, Wii sales were less bumpy, as heavily marketed and franchise releases seemed to have less of an impact than the desire to play Wii Sports. One interesting trend that seemed to affect Wii sales were strong post-release weeks, with Mario games (Super Paper Mario, Super Mario Galaxy, Mario Party 8) doing more good in their second week of release. The same may be true for Wii Fit, but with end-of-year sales up across the board, it's difficult to determine its impact.

There's little doubt that the PSP outperformed in its third year on the market on the release of Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII which coincided with the release of the PSP-2000 (aka Slim & Light). No other platform saw such a remarkable increase, as sales jumped from 15,000 to 278,000 over the course of two weeks after Crisis Core's come to market. The year's other key release, Monster Hunter Portable 2nd continues to show up in weekly software sales charts.

The PlayStation 3 also benefited from a handful of big releases, most notably Gundam Musou and Shin Sangoku Musou 5, which we'll call Dynasty Warriors 6 when the West get it. Sony's push to release the cheaper 40GB version of the PS3 alongside another Musou game, just weeks prior to Gran Turismo 5 Prologue made for a respectable end-of-year for the lagging console.

PlayStation 2 sales were generally unremarkable during its seventh year. That may be arguable, of course, as a seven year shelf life with over 800,000 sold in 2007 may still impress some. But it would appear that many are ready to move on to the next generation (finally), as it underperformed in relation to its big brother the PlayStation 3. PS2 sales saw less intense highs and lows, as hardcore targeted games like Super Robot Wars, World Soccer Winning Eleven 2008 and Musou Orochi introduced Japanese gamers to invest (or re-invest) in last-gen hardware.

Like the PlayStation 3, momentous releases move Xbox 360 hardware. Eternal Sonata, Ace Combat 6 and Halo 3, along with their respective hardware bundles, were the biggest reasons for Japanese gamers to "Jump In" to the Western platform. Outside of a few surprises—Halo 3's performance, for example—there weren't many unexpected strong performers on Microsoft's box.

Final Thoughts & Predictions
With a slew of attention grabbing releases for the Wii and Nintendo DS due throughout 2008, we expect that Nintendo will continue to reign supreme in hardware sales. Dragon Quest IX, Super Smash Bros. Brawl and Monster Hunter Wii should serve the company well in keeping Japanese consumers interested in buying Nintendo hardware.

Now that Capcom has decided to bring its Monster Hunter series to Wii, that could be a big blow to the PSP. With Crisis Core finally arriving and Square-Enix focusing on more stable franchise remakes for the DS, 2007 may have been the PSP's peak year. Dissidia: Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep should still keep units moving, but we suspect that Sony may look to a future hardware revision or proper follow up to the PSP to generate more interest.

2008 may be much better for the PlayStation 3, as games like Konami's Metal Gear Solid 4, Level 5's White Knight Chronicles, Sega's Yakuza 3 and Sony's own Gran Turismo 5 see release and should push hardware. If Capcom can get Resident Evil 5 and Square-Enix at least one of the Final Fantasy XIII titles out this year, the PS3 may be able to carve out a much larger slice of the console market pie in Japan.

It's obviously still extremely early to see how the 2008 sales landscape will look and there will be plenty of time to see how the chips fall in the new year, but it looks like things can only go up for Nintendo's dual platforms and Sony's PS3.

The BBC News had a sit down with Bill Gates at CES recently and instead of asking him their own questions, they asked him their viewers. This gem, the first in the Q&A video, asked Gates about the hardware issues that have plagued the Xbox 360, almost since launch.

We've had a lot of questions from people who weren't really happy with the kind of service they've been getting from Xbox in the last few years... What are you going to do to ensure that new consoles are more reliable than previous versions

Well we certainly had to apologize to our uses about a number of box that had to be replaced. We did that for free for all of those people, we've gotten a lot of positive feedback about the way we handled it. We've got incredible reliability on the new work we've done. Our commitment is that it will be the most reliable video game box out there. People really love the Xbox because of the content, but we've got to make sure that the hardware never stands in the way of that.

Later in the interview he was asked about Vista and the possibility of releasing a version that would be no-frills, but still support game playing.

Any chance of a no-frills operating system? Just a system that plays PC games and a few basics. I hate the compatibility issues Vista has. And he ends "Help"

Ha ha. Well Vista has been a very successful product. Obviously because it is so broadly used and connects up to everything we get a lot of feedback. Things to improve, new things to work on. We're hard at work on things ,we do downloads of improvements all of the time and of course there will be a major new version coming along. So Vista is very successful, ties into the new hardware advances, but we love getting the feedback. People are very passionate about their PC. They use it more than anything else.

Are you proud of Vista, because a lot of people are questioning whether you should be.

No, I'm very proud of Vista. Like all of the products we ship as soon as we get it out we hear how we could do this differently and that differently but it has been a very important product for the industry a lot of great things were done in Vista. Now we are hard at work on what comes next.

Bill Gates Interview [BBC]

The continued problems were a result of not simply too many people trying to connect and play on Live, but also that too few Xbox Live team members were in the office to react. "It's easy when we're all the office in November, but on December 25th, it's harder to get a hold of everybody," Penello said, later adding "I hope people feel like [giving away a free Live Arcade game] is a fair make good for the inconvenience."

Penello also came to the Live team's defense, noting that "I'd also say in seven years, this has happened maybe zero other times, but I can't remember a time when, other than the slow downloads we had when we launched Video Marketplace, we have had a service outage that wasn't planned."

While Microsoft's Penello and Jeff Bell gave us the impression that the problem is largely addressed when we asked at CES, some of us at Kotaku are still having connection issues, specifically gamertag recovery unresponsiveness. Unfortunately, I'm away from my Xbox 360 and can't report on my own successes or failures with the service. We've heard fewer complaints from readers over the past few days, but still want to hear from you if you're having troubles.

More like the year before Christmas, actually. An entire year where not a day went by that hundreds of electronic and gaming retail employees didn't have to negatively answer the same nagging question. "Do you have any Wiis in stock?" Even though the console sold relatively briskly in the year following its launch, getting your hands on one meant you either won a contest, knew someone who worked for a retailer, shadowed UPS trucks or were just plain lucky.

As the holidays season started heating up, things looked bleak for parents and gamers looking to get their hands on Nintendo's tiny, motion-controlled console. Rumors of chip shortages ran rampant, and I personally was certain that the eBay grey market price for the hot gift item would far meet if not surpass the highest numbers seen during the initial late 2006 release window.

Miraculously that never happened. At the very last moment, in a series of moves that gained them criticism from fans, Nintendo managed to pull together enough supply to curb the often ridiculously inflated eBay demand before it was too late.

Rising...Slowly

As you can see from the chart, back in early November the Wii was selling for a relatively modest price on the world's largest online auction house. While $350 is still $100 than the retail price of the system, the markup isn't quite as painful as it could be. Then the Christmas panic sets in.

By November 21st the price had spiked to $459...nearly double the retail cost of the system, and with a few fluctuations the price stays solidly about the $400 mark. Perhaps consumers hoping to avoid the Black Friday rush 2 days later were trying to get a leg up on things, causing the price to reach this high of a point. Either way, things were looking pretty grim for parents and fans hoping to get their hands on a Wii without getting fleeced by eBay resellers - until one day.

Reggie Spreads The Word.

On December 14th, Nintendo President Reggie Fils-Aime held a conference call to address the growing problem of Wii shortages, detailing the companies plans to get customers matched up with systems by any means necessary. First came the raincheck system, which allowed customers a chance to pre-purchase the machine at GameStop stores across the country, with the understanding that they would be guaranteed a system by the end of January.

Then he announced that seven retail outlets - Best Buy, Target, Wal-Mart, Sears, Kmart, Toys R Us and Circuit City - would have the coveted consoles in stock that weekend, revealing that stores had been stockpiling the systems for a massive, last-minute flood.

While the rainchecks met with varying success due to limited ability, the flood of systems that weekend had a huge effect on the eBay market.

Bursting The Bubble

On December 17th, according to my data seen on the chart above, 11,016 Nintendo Wii consoles were sold on eBay, for an average price of $368 - the first time the price had dropped below $400 in a month. As Crecente noted in a previous post, eBay was positively slammed with Wiis, bringing the average price down and significantly lowering the normally high auction success rates on the console. Folks looking for a huge payoff still made a little dough of course, but nothing like the windfall they were expecting when they rushed out over the weekend to snag the systems for profiteering purposes. By the time Christmas Eve hits, the consoles are dollars away from the lowest price since November started.

Conclusion

As of this writing I cannot say if this was a calculated move by Nintendo to thwart the profit-hungry eBay grey market or simply a happy side-effect of a last-ditch effort to save face in the eyes of consumers worrying about where the product they wanted to purchase was, but Reggie's press conference and the subsequent console flood neatly nipped in the bud what could have been a terribly expensive Christmas for families looking for a little motion-controlled joy. Whatever the case may be, the end result is a small victory for the hardworking folks out there more worried about the smiles on their children's face than the thickness of their wallet.

Nicely done Nintendo.

While Nintendo declined to comment for this story, back during Fils-Aime's December press call he did address the issue of Wii gouging.

"We are always very disappointed if we see retailers that are pricing the Wii or any of our products above the MSRP price."

How I collected the graph data:
To track eBay sales for the Wii I once again used a website called Terapeak, which is of of the most trusted eBay market research tools available. I looked at data for the US eBay site each day utilizing the keyword "Nintendo Wii" in the Video Games/Systems category. I set the price range for $200 through $10,000 to weed out any artificially inflated auctions as well as any fake buying guide auctions. Keep in mind that the results are still in part tainted by systems including games and extra controllers, but I believe the method I used obtained the most accurate results, all things considered.

As for the numbers sold chart, I used the same data, taking note of the "Items Sold" statistic for each day in the period.

There were more than 34 pages of comments and entries for our year-end Shopping Bot contest. And I can see why. Not only were we offering to give someone $2,000 in game-related gear, we're going to do the shopping to pick it up and then ship it out to the lucky winner. And by we I mean me.

I just spent the past hour picking through the posts to find the entries and then used Random.Org to randomly select the winner. Who is listed on the jump page. Cross your fingers:

The winner, from what I could find, only entered the contest a single time, back on Dec. 17. He also seems more of a regular reader over at our sister sites Lifehacker and The Consumerist. Maybe this will change that. The winner is Snwbrder0721. CONGRATS!!!

If you're the lucky winner please contact us ASAP at editor AT Kotaku from the email address you used to create your commenting account.

Reggie Fils-Aime may have referred to it as a raincheck program, but GameStop's official name for their pre-pay Wii program hitting on Dec. 20 is the Wii Certificate Program. There are a couple other things Reggie was a bit off on, according to the details released this morning from GameStop.

The Wii Certificate program will run just one day, Friday, December 21. Customers will be able to go in and hand out the full $250 to reserve a Wii console for pick-up on January 25. Reservations must be made in-person at any GameStop or EB Games location in the U.S., including those in Puerto Rico and Hawaii. The number of reservations available at each store is limited and only one Wii can be reserved per a household.

The certificate itself will be in a custom-designed DVD case featuring a picture of the Wii and Mario. Once the reserved Will arrives customers will receive a telephone call saying it's available for pick-up.

So let me get this straight, you give GameStop your $250 and they get to sit on it for a full month, earning interest, and in return you get an empty DVD case and eventually a Wii? The least they could have done is thrown in a T-Shirt that read: "My Parents Waited Too Long to Shop for Me So All I Got for Christmas was this Shirt and a Lot of Empty Promises. See you in Therapy in Five Years."

Hmmm, maybe that's a bit too long for a slogan.

Over the weekend there appeared to be another sell out of Wii consoles. On Friday, Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime announced that seven retailers-Best Buy, Target, Wal-Mart, Sears, Kmart, Toys R Us and Circuit City- would be throwing a lot of Wii consoles out on their shelves over the weekend to try and sate the appetite of games and their families.

But judging by the obvious spike in eBay listings of Wii consoles, I think it's fair to say the only thing sated was greed. From 9 a.m. Eastern Sunday to 9 p.m. Eastern Sunday alone more than 13,500 Wii consoles were listed for sale in the U.S. on eBay. Coincidence? I can't imagine.

Note: These numbers might deviate a little from 100% complete authentic scientific goodness, but the trend is still relevant.

Some good, scratch that, great news for Rock Band fans from Harmonix today. They wrote to tell us that gamers who are experiencing problems with their guitars (or any of the Rock Band instruments) should contact EA's customer support website and they will send out a replacement immediately.

As sometimes happens when new products first go into manufacturing, we discovered an imperfection with the strum bar in an early production run of guitars that were shipped at launch. We've since identified and fixed the issue in all subsequent production runs of the guitars. If users are experiencing a problem with their guitars or any of the Rock Band instruments, they can visit the customer support website ( http://support.ea.com/rockband) and we will send a replacement immediately. Harmonix is dedicated to creating 100% customer satisfaction and to the users who have encountered any hardware issues, we are sorry for the hassle.

Harmonix also took the time to address some of the concerns about the Playstation 3 guitars.

We've seen all the message board posts, discussions and stories regarding the PS3 edition of Rock Band—from issues with guitar compatibility to frustration that stand-alone guitars and drums for Rock Band have not yet hit stores. We want people to know that these issues have our full attention. We are listening and we read everything that is posted on our forums and we're committed to providing the best play experience possible. We're working hard to ensure that we solve these problems as soon as possible. We promise to keep the community updated and, in the meantime, we thank them for their patience.

Excellent. We all make mistakes, it's how a company deals with them that matters and this is exactly how it should be done.

Rock Band Support [EA]

Then the screen went totally black. And three red lights appeared on the Xbox 360. My revived 360 had died. Again. After being plugged in for less than five minutes. Fine repair work there! What, I'm supposed to send my console off for another twenty-two days so it can crap out during BioShock or Halo 3? Why not just do a recall so all 360 owners can be on the same page? Know: If my Xbox 360 wanted me to select my language now, I'm afraid it would get rather salty. "Welcome to the world of Xbox 360"? Oh boy!

A hacker has knocked GayGamer.net, the only news gathering gay-gaming site, offline with a series of denial of service attacks after flooding the site with threatening emails and hate speech, the site's owner said Sunday.

Flynn De Marco, the site's owner and Kotaku weekend editor, said small waves of denial of service attacks started Wednesday morning, causing occasional timeouts on the site. By Friday the site, working with their host, was able to block the IPs where the DOS attacks seemed to be coming from. Then Friday evening someone began flooding the site's forums and chat room with hate speech, including some death threats, and over-sized images meant to bog down the site, De Marco said. The flood of messages and images all originated from the same IP in Philidelphia, he added.

The site deleted the offensive messages, but the continued DOS attacks lead to the site's host taking GayGamer down until the attacks could be permanently blocked. De Marco hopes to get the site operational by Monday, but is having problems getting a straight answer from their host, GoDaddy.Com.

According to the Federal Bureau of Investigations a hate crime, also known as a bias crime, is a criminal offense committed against a person, property, or society that is motivated, in whole or in part, by the offender's bias against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, or ethnicity/national origin.

Its sad to see that even in the virtual worlds of gaming and game coverage people decide that the only way they can express themselves is by attacking others. Hit the jump to read GayGamer's official statement on the outage.

Hello, faithful readers: As you might have noticed, we have had some connection issues in the last few days and now the site is completely down. I'm sad to say that we have been the target of homophobic hackers. Thankfully, they didn't get to our database so all of our stuff is still in tact. At this point we are jut waiting for our service provider to ensure everything is good before putting the server back online. Hopefully, this will be resolved by the end of this weekend, so please keep checking back. You can't keep a good gay gamer down, so we'll be back before you know it, serving up all the sassy game content you can handle. Cheers, Fruit Brute

Just how many Xbox 360's have died on you. I've had nine give up on ghost on me, good thing they were all loaners from Microsoft. Hit the jump to vote, try not to cheat. :)

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Computer and Video Games reports on a rumor that the always on connectivity of the Wii's WiiConnect24 is being blamed for downing some of the consoles.

The site points out that a number "disgruntled gamers" are blaming the service for causing their Wiis to stop working. Hardly scientific, but the site does point out that while the power consumption is miniscual when in the connect mode, the fans aren't running either, so it can warm up. Anecdotally, my Wii gets slightly warm when "off" but never hot at all.

Nintendo Europe dismissed the speculation:

Nintendo has told CVG: "we've had no reports in the UK of anything like this happening," and advises users to contact the Nintendo Service Centre for further advice on 0870 60 60247 should a fault occur.

The only thing I've noticed personally, is that within the past month or so I've had to twice physically unplug and then replug the Wii's power supply to get it to work. Otherwise the thing looked dead, not even a light on. But again this is just recent and only has happened twice.

Right now I'd say this is just a rumor, a case of premature dot-connecting.

WiiConnect24 breaking Wii consoles [CVG]

The warranty, which gives all Xbox 360 owners a 3-year safety blanket guarding against the dreaded red ring of death, will cost Microsoft more than $1 billion, but Moore said it was about time they stepped up to the plate.

"It needs to be above and beyond because we haven't done what we need to do to take care of our consumers," Moore told me, adding that three years is quite a long time for a consumer electronic.

Moore said the timing of today's announcement, a mere two weekdays before Microsoft's E3 press conference and more than a year after they first addressed the red light issue, was due in part to the company needing to analyze data and figure out the potential cost to the company.

"You gather data... you determine what we have done isn't good enough," he said. "The number of returns we were getting with the three flashing red rings. When we got that data we took this rather unprecedented step."

Moore declined to give any specific numbers for the rate of returns for the Xbox 360, which have been placed at anywhere from 5 to 30 percent, and also didn't want to talk specifics about what changes to the console have been made and are yet to be made to ensure the problem doesn't continue.

"It was a number of problems," he said. "It's not just one systemic problem we are seeing that was causing these three red rings of light... We are always making changes (to the Xbox 360), as we see things we identify the issue, then we make changes to improve the console. And we will continue to make changes with the goal of making (the Xbox 360) a more reliable product."

I pointed out that while the warranty gives Xbox 360 owners a safety net, it doesn't really ensure they won't be inconvenienced with multiple repairs or returns, no matter the cost, but he said gamers shouldn't "have any issues walking into a store and buying an Xbox 360" today.

While this has become an increasingly public black eye for Microsoft, Moore said that consumer satisfaction remains quite high for the Xbox 360.

"You worry about (the backlash from the red light issue). I worry about that, but when we look at our consumers we are almost 90 percent customer satisfaction on the console. As hard as it is to read those letters that say they've had one, two, three break, they also always say 'Can you get my Xbox 360 back to me as soon as possible.'"
Microsoft Expands 360 Warranties [Kotaku]

Any customer who has previously paid for repairs for that error will be reimbursed. Much more importantly, Microsoft says they have tracked down the issues that have been causing the "unacceptable number of repairs" and have made improvements to the console. Why does this sound like deja vu.

Microsoft Expands Xbox 360 Warranty Coverage

REDMOND, Wash. — July 5, 2007 —Microsoft Corp. today announced that it will expand its global Xbox 360™ warranty coverage. Any Xbox 360 customer who experiences a general hardware failure indicated by three flashing red lights will now be covered by a three year warranty from date of purchase. All other existing Xbox 360 warranty policies remain in place.
As a result of what Microsoft views as an unacceptable number of repairs to Xbox 360 consoles, the company conducted extensive investigations into potential sources of general hardware failures. Having identified a number of factors which can cause general hardware failures indicated by three red flashing lights on the console, Microsoft has made improvements to the console and is enhancing its Xbox 360 warranty policy for existing and new customers.
Microsoft stands behind its products and is taking responsibility to repair or replace any Xbox 360 console that experiences the "three flashing red lights" error message within three years from time of purchase free of charge, including shipping costs. Microsoft will take a $1.05 billion to $1.15 billion pre-tax charge to earnings for the quarter ended June 30, 2007 for anticipated costs under its current and enhanced Xbox 360 policies.
"The majority of Xbox 360 owners are having a great experience with their console and have from day one. But, this problem has caused frustration for some of our customers and for that, we sincerely apologize," said Robbie Bach, president of Microsoft's Entertainment & Devices Division. "We value our community tremendously and look at this as an investment in our customer base. We look forward to great things to come."

For any customer who has previously paid for repair expenses related to the three flashing lights error message on the Xbox 360 console, Microsoft will retroactively reimburse them.

Peter Moore's Open Letter [Xbox]

By: Brian Crecente and Michael McWhertor

They've been called fanboys, gaming's fab four and Microsoft employee wannabes, the game-inspired rock band The Xbox Boys crashed onto the gaming scene earlier this year with a set of catchy tunes and an oddly religious fervor for the Xbox 360.

But that fervor doesn't seem as odd when considering that many of the band members have or had ties to New Hope International Church, a Bellevue, Washington-based Christian church that hopes to "turn lost people into fully devoted Spirit-filled disciples of Jesus Christ in our city and all over the world."

When contacted for comment, band front man and church couples minster, Brendan Aye, said that "none of The Xbox Boys work for MS or any marketing companies. Just a bunch of fanboys who like music and gaming (maybe too much)."

Aye, who said he is not part of the band but takes care of their "business/Internet dealings", did not return emails in response to questions about the group's ties to New Hope International Church.

Reached by phone Wednesday, the band's lead singer, Phil Fischer said that the band was "not a religious thing, it was just an Xbox thing."

"We are just in love with the Xbox. This has nothing to do with our religion at all."

The band lists four members in its group, P-Box, B-Box, Beat Box and D-Box. But none of them use their real names. Fischer confirmed this afternoon that the group is made up of: guitarist Bryan Barrows, AKA B-Box; Seattle-area drummer, Bryan Lash, AKA Beat Box; bassist Dave "Kitz" Sproull, AKA D-Box, and himself, a 37-year-old Seattle singer song-writer and former church music minster.

Lash is also a former member of New Hope International Church and Sproull says in his MySpace page that he is a local student worship leader

Fischer said that while the group has nothing to do with religion, its members are Christian. "We aren't ashamed of that, but this is about our love for a console."

According to the official Phil Fischer website, Fischer, who up until recently was a church couples minster with Aye at New Hope International Church, decided to drop his first solo album, "Wounded Soul" and devote his life to God about five years ago.

"I now use my talents to serve Jesus Christ, who without him, none of this would be possible," Fischer writes on his site. In his "Six Promises to You Lord" Fischer says he will "worship you in bars, dancehalls, taverns and other places to reach non-believers."

On the official Xbox Boys site, Fischer, also known as P-Box, lists a different set of laws, laws of the "Keepers of the Orb":

1. Uphold gaming integrity for all gamers of the world
2 .Bring the power of the Xbox to all countries by performing and showcasing the games and consoles
3. Make sure that all age groups and all peoples of Earth have access to the X-Box console and to its games."

These laws, the site says, were delivered to the four band members in the woods of Bellevue, near Microsoft's campus, from a voice "sounding like a thousand horns all at once, but also as quite(SIC) as a single violin note".

The voice also delivered a prophecy, according to the site:

"For thousands of years I have watched, and waited for this moment. I give you three laws to follow. But there are ten total. The final laws the Xbox boys are to uphold are to be written by Microsoft itself when the final prophecy is to be revealed. The final prophecy is that you four, four of integrity and honestly, will receive an endorsement contract by Microsoft. You will perform shows; sell merchandise, and UPHOLD THE LAWS OF GAMING AND THE INTEGRITY OF MICROSOFT. THIS IS THE final prophecy."

The band's official site currently hosts two music videos, one dedicated to Xbox Live and the other to the killing of the final boss in Gears of War. Both are catchy, though bland, pop-rock pieces.

What is unclear is if the messaging of the Xbox Boys band is a deliberate tie-in to Christian themes because the band is, in fact, a Christian rock band or because their leader has such strong ties to religion and Christan rock. A source close to the band said that whichever the case is, Fischer does want to use the money earned from The Xbox Boys to help fund his ministry work in other countries.

Again, Fischer denies this, and asked that the story not run because he feared his budding fan-base wouldn't believe the group is strictly secular.

Erika Doss, a professor of Art and Art History at the University of Colorado Boulder and soon to be chair of Notre Dame's American Studies Department, says it's not unusual for a ministerial group to borrow the language of the people they are trying to reach in order to connect with them.

Doss, who studies the issue of religion and pop culture, said the Xbox Boys site seems to be filled with religious themes.

"It's rare when you listen to Christian music that you would hear the word Jesus," she said. "But everyone usually gets it, there's this pervasiveness of Christian rhetoric."

And the fact that the Xbox Boys aren't upfront about their religious ties isn't unusual either, she said.

"They are appropriating the current technological means in order to proselytize on behalf of their faith," she said. "They are appropriating the whole culture's rhetoric under (their) vision statement."

Doss said she is a little concerned with their possible duplicity, but said proselytizing is about "bringing people to the light through any means possible."

"If they are really about proselytizing then I have some problems with that because they are not being up front about it."

Luke Plunkett contributed to this story.

Luke reported yesterday on Hot Spartan, the news that Halo 2 Vista shipped with "accidental" partial nudity . The "accident" led the ESRB to issue warning labels for the game saying it contains "Partial Nudity."

But what part, exactly, was nude? And how was it in the game "accidentally"? I'll let the ESRB explain after the jump, but be warned the explanation features a naked ass.

"After the M (Mature 17+) rating assignment was issued for Halo 2 for Vista and just prior to the shipment of the game to retail, Microsoft notified ESRB about pertinent content found in a map editor tool that is being bundled with the game. The content in question, although likely to be inaccessible to the vast majority of users, displays a photograph of an individual showing his bare backside to the user when a particular error occurs, and thus warrants a 'Partial Nudity' content descriptor in order to alert consumers to its presence in the product. Microsoft has therefore applied stickers with correct ESRB rating information to the packaging of virtually all copies that will ship to retail in the U.S. and Canada. We have been advised by Microsoft that future runs of the game will be produced without the content in question, thus negating the need for the descriptor to be displayed on those versions.

"ESRB's job is to ensure that games are appropriately labeled, and that is precisely what we did in this case. We greatly appreciate Microsoft's cooperation in this matter." - Entertainment Software Rating Board

That's right, some dip at Microsoft Games Studio (or perhaps Bungie) thought it would be funny to moon users when Vista craps out and churns out a certain error message. Hmm, wonder if it was Steve Ballmer? Maybe he's had our pants around our ankles so long he decided to return the favor. Brian Crecente

While video game retailers have made "significant progress" in limiting the sale of M-rated games to children, movies and music retailers have only made modest progress, according to a report released today by the Federal Trade Commission.

In its latest report to congress, the fifth and most comprehensive study since 2000, the FTC said that while the entertainment industry generally comply with their own standards, the movie, music and gaming industries continue to market adult content to a teen market.

"Self-regulation, long a critical underpinning of U.S. advertising, is weakened if industry markets products in ways inconsistent with their ratings and parental advisories," said FTC Chairman Deborah Platt Majoras. "This latest FTC report shows improvement, but also indicates that the entertainment industry has more work to do."

The most substantiated part of the report comes from an FTC mystery shipper program where unaccompanied children, 13 to 16 years old, tried to make purchases from retailers.

Video games showed the greatest improvement, dropping from 69 percent being able to make the purchase in 2003 to 42 percent in 2006. That's just three percent more than the number of underage children able to get into R-rated movies.

While the mystery shopper study makes for an ugly chart and shoots copious holes in the whole "movie theaters do a substantially better job than video game stores" argument, there's also some interesting grist in the rest of the report.

The study found that while ads for M-rated video games on television shows that are popular with teens are dropping, the same can't be said for internet advertising.

I didn't know this, but the ESRB prohibits ads for M-rated games on web sites where the under-17 audience is 45 or greater and the FTC thinks that the board is not adequately enforcing that rule.

The board is, however, doing a good job of informing gamers and parents about the rating system with 87 percent of parents surveyed saying they are aware of the ESRB system, more than 70 percent use it and three-quarters of the parents surveyed understand the content descriptors and use them.

Many of the parents surveyed did say they wish the system could do more to inform them about the level of violence in games. What do they expect? A frag count?

The FTC did a little digging into the emerging trend of companies using sites like MySpace or YouTube to advertise their goods. They point out that typically when this is done, the page doesn't include any prominent rating information. I guess that would sort of kill the cool of a page wouldn't it?

The report also notes that mobile games often don't try to get ESRB ratings, which is a bad thing, in my opinion.

While the 140-page report wraps up by saying that the Commission continues to support industry self-regulation (sorry Clinton) due to "important First Amendment considerations", it does call for some changes.

For gaming, the FTC calls, again, for the content descriptors of a game to be listed on the front of a title. Sounds like that while possible, that could get really messy. And I don't see DVDs doing that.

This is as important a document as the video game industry can get. Not only does it show that the industry is making vast improvements in the field of education and restricting content to minors, it shows that the video game industry is on the cusp of doing a better job than the oft-cited movie industry.

Good job ESRB. Brian Crecente

The report [FTC]

If you own one, don't worry, it will continue to be 100 percent supported with software and services, according to SCEA's spokesman David Karraker. The decision, he said, was one made based on what consumers wanted.

Here's the official SCEA statement:

At launch, we offered two separate models of PLAYSTATION 3 to meet the diverse needs and interests of our PlayStation fan base. Initial retail demand in North America was upwards of ninety percent in favor of the 60GB sku, so we manufactured and shipped-in accordingly. Due to the overwhelming demand for the 60GB model from both retailers and consumers, we have ceased offering the 20GB model here in North America. In addition to the larger internal hard drive, the 60GB PlayStation 3 features added storage media slots and built-in Wi-Fi not found in the 20GB system. Based on retailer and consumer feedback, we have decided to focus our current efforts on the more popular 60GB model.

There you go, the PS3 has slipped from two SKUs to one, the 360 has bloated from two to three. Brian Crecente

Microsoft sent their official response to this morning's story to me just a bit ago:

Recently, there have been reports of fraudulent activity and account theft taking place on the Xbox LIVE network. Security is a top priority for Xbox LIVE, and we are actively investigating all reports of fraudulent behavior and theft. Any customer with a question about the security of their Xbox LIVE account should contact 1-800-4-MY-Xbox, and
an Xbox Customer Service Representative will help them understand our security policies and procedures.

A Microsoft rep went on to tell me that while they are investigating the concerns, they have not found any security breach of Bungie.net or Xbox Live accounts. Brian Crecente

Xbox Live Hacked, Accounts Stolen [Kotaku]

I was waiting to hear back from Microsoft on this, but haven't so here's where things stand according to ZDnet.

According to a group of Xbox 360 gamers and Kevin Finisterre, a security researcher at Digital Munition, there are rumors that Bungie.Net was hacked and that a portion of Xbox Live was taken over. This hack allowed people to control gamer tags and either steal their points or purchase more points through the accounts.

Finisterre says that he called Microsoft Tech and they confirmed that "accounts are being stolen and that "Hackers have control of Xbox live and there is nothing we can do about it"

ZDNet's Ryan Naraine goes on to point out that a number of people are complaining about the thefts on the official Xbox Live forums and saying that Microsoft reps are doing nothing to help out.

I'll make sure to update this once I hear back from Microsoft. Brian Crecente

Xbox Live hacked, accounts stolen [ZDNet]

The rise and fall of the PlayStation 3 on eBay is one of the most talked about gaming stories of the year. In order to paint a broader picture, I've tracked pricing trends from preorders to Christmas Eve and surveyed retailers to determine just how hard the PS3 grey market has crashed.

In the days leading up to the PlayStation 3 launch in mid-November, people all over the country lined up with dollar signs in their eyes, hoping to cash in on what was sure to be the most sought after gift this holiday season. I talked to many people planning on financing college, cars, vacations, and countless other dream items with the fruits of their labor. A week later those hopes and dreams were crushed, as reports of plummeting eBay prices poured in. Just how fast did the PS3 grey market crash? Take a look for yourself, and feel free to click the graph for a larger version.

Within two days of the system's launch the going price dropped by over $1000. eBay prospectors across the country were stunned at the rapid depreciation of their investment. While they were still looking at $600 profit on average, it was a far cry from the windfall everyone had been expecting.

The smart thing to do in that situation would be to wait, right? Several enterprising folks I talked to during the launch festivities predicted a glut early on, and planned on holding their systems until Christmas, when demand would be at its highest. As the graph indicates, that wasn't the wisest move. Four days before Christmas PS3 auctions hit the lowest point ever, bottoming out at just $724. Figuring in sales tax, that's less than $100 profit on a 60GB system.

Clearly the way to go for the PS3 prospector was preorders. On November 16th, as the reality of the system shortages began to sink in, buyers spent an average of $2,367 to secure themselves on of the 600 or so preorders sold that day, and from the point eBay started allowing receipt-verified presales prices maintained a steady average of around $1500.

How are retail stores being affected?

With the prices dropping so low, many eBay hopefuls have been returning their purchases to the stores they procured them from. Between packing, shipping, and taxes, it's much less of a hassle just to get a refund and forget the whole thing ever happened. I decided to survey several popular retail 'superstores' to get a feel for just how big a trend grey market returns were.

Here's how this worked. I called a random selection of stores across the country from each of the four retailers listed below. I asked to speak to their electronics department first, and then called back to speak with customer service. I made sure to specify intact, boxed returns to avoid clouding data with random defective units. Interestingly enough, not one store I spoke to mentioned any defective returns. If anything the PS3 is a solid machine. Bear in mind that these are not hard numbers. I spoke to whoever was staffing the departments at the time I called, and only counted the answers applying directly to those people. While I'd like to say you could safely double the returned system numbers below, there are far too many factors involved to make it an accurate estimate.

I picked the four below for various reasons. Fry's because of its unique bundling policy, Best Buy because of its huge initial allotments, Target as a major retailer that isn't focused on electronics, and Wal-Mart because I am apparently a glutton for punishment. All four stores had people wait in line for the consoles...one of the reasons you don't see GameStop represented, another reason being that many GameStop systems went to either employees or regulars to the store tipped off by employees. "But GameStop wasn't allowed to sell to employees!" Where do you think I got mine?

Store Findings:

Fry's Electronics
Number Called: 10 - Called double what I had planned for Fry's because the first five all reported having systems in stock.
Average Returns: two per store
Systems Available? Yes

Fry's stands out from the other retailers I've surveyed in that they still insist on selling their PS3 systems in ridiculous bundle packs with eight or so games. Every single store I called reported having plenty of bundles available for purchase. On average each store had received two returns, with the Alpharetta Georgia location, a favorite of mine, reporting four. Systems at Fry's can only be returned with the full bundle intact, and are resold the same way.

Conclusion: Nothing too surprising here. When I was working at GameStop on Christmas Eve I had countless customers tell me that Fry's had PlayStation 3s just sitting there, with no one buying. The only thing harder than trying to turn a profit off of a PS3 on eBay is trying to turn a profit off an $1100 bundle filled with games no one wants to play.

Target
Number Called: five - they're a major retailer, but they weren't exactly a big launch location.
Average Returns: two
Systems Available? No, though two out of five stores did tell me I had "just missed one."
Conclusion: Target doesn't get many systems in, and when they do they generally last a day tops. One electronics rep I spoke to in Colorado told me they had gotten two returns earlier in the week, which didn't last more that 24 hours on the shelf. Low volume, relatively quick turnaround.

Best Buy
Number Called: 15 - Best Buy had the greatest launch allocations, so I gave them a bit more attention while conducting the survey.
Average Returns: Four - One customer service rep said she had seen as many as eight returned, though she worked at a midnight launch store with a much larger console allocation than the rest.
Systems Available? Not a one, at any store. Most likely a corporate sponsored lie, however, as we've been getting several reports on Best Buy holding systems until New Year's Eve.
Conclusion: A much larger allocation equals a slightly higher number of returns. This whole sitting on items for big holiday sales severely screws up survey data. As well as forcing their employees to lie, they also forced me to lie. When I mentioned I was writing a story, I was told they couldn't comment to the press. I had to tell them I was a father looking in to buying one for his son, trying to figure out if the system was reliable. If anyone asks, my son's name is Rufus, and he has a glandular disorder.

Wal-Mart
Number called: Five before I gave up out of sheer frustration
Average Returns: Inconclusive. While I did have one store tell me they'd seen a couple come back, most of them couldn't figure out how to transfer me to customer service.
Systems Available? Possibly. They might not even know what it is.
Conclusion: While I've known some very helpful and intelligent Wal-Mart employees in my time, all of them must have been off over the past two days. I got through to one customer service rep and one electronics department out of five stores, the rest of the time spent either waiting endlessly on hold or being accidentally hung up on.

While return numbers seem to be relatively low, when you figure in the transactions the employees I spoke to weren't privy to, and then multiply the number by even a fraction of the stores these retailers have scattered across the country, and things start adding up. In an ironic twist to the whole story, it seems as though your best bet for securing a PlayStation 3 console, unless you want to shell out $1100 for a bundle at Fry's, is eBay. As of this writing there are over 7,000 up for auction, looking for a good home.

The Grand Conclusion, with a Personal Note
To be completely honest, when I first secured my PS3 preorder with GameStop the first thought in my head was the massive amount of money I could make from selling it. That's how I got approval from my girlfriend to put down the $100. The TMX Elmo had just been released and was selling for ten times retail price. I figured I could triple my money, pick myself up a nice flat panel HDTV...hell, I might even have enough left over for another PS3 once the dust cleared.

What changed? Well the more I thought about the PS3, the more articles I read, and the more videos I watched, until the gamer in me basically slapped the profiteer silly. The PlayStation 3 has real potential. Lair. Motorstorm. Resistance. Soon dreams of a giant TV faded away, replaced by the gnawing anticipation I'm prone to get whenever something big is going to happen in the gaming industry. That, and I got this gig at Kotaku. If you guys ever got wind of me eBaying a PS3 I'd never hear the end of it.

As it turns out my gamer instincts and the threat of hordes of angry readers steered me clear of potential disaster. Aside from a couple brief spikes, there is no way I'd have been able to pull off the television, and I know damn well I would have waited for Christmas like so many others did, only to lose even more.

The moral of this story? There's no such creature as a sure thing. The majority of eBay prospectors walked away from this experience with that lesson burned into the back of their brains. My suggestion for the future? If you want to gamble, go to Vegas. If you want to invest, try mutual funds. Leave the video game system buying to the gamers. We'll all be happier for it.

How I collected the graph data:
To track eBay sales I used a website called Terapeak, which is of of the most trusted eBay market research tools available. I looked at data for the US eBay site each day utilizing the keyword "PlayStation 3" in the Video Games/Systems category. I set the price range for $200 through $10,000 to weed out any artificially inflated auctions as well as any bogus "PS3 Buying Guide" type offerings. Keep in mind that the statistics provided are for both the 60GB and 20GB models combined. Many sellers neglected to specify which version they were auctioning, so weeding out one from the other was nigh impossible. Counterbalancing that slightly are auctions including games and extra controllers, which are also figured into the statistics.

While certainly not a completely infallible system, I believe it led to a more accurate overview of the eBay PlayStation 3 market than simply searching for PlayStation 3 and leaving it at that.

Using the same guidelines outlined above, I poked about for a few more interesting tidbits regarding system demand. For instance, auctions ending on or before November 16th, meaning preorders, had a 96.5% success rate. In the period after the system was released the figure dropped to 73%. Hazarding a guess I would say those figures are due largely in part to unrealistic reserve price auctions.

I convinced my dad to buy my older brother an Xbox 360 earlier this year for his birthday.

Drew loves gaming, but wasn't decided on whether he wanted the Playstation 3, Wii or 360, so I decided for him. I was pretty sure I had made the right call after he received it and started playing the games. He had an Xbox and loved a lot of the titles on that system, so it seemed like a natural fit.

Then he called me last night to tell my his system, his three week old system that he had played exactly one game on had crapped out on him. He was getting the red ring of death. So I told him to call customer service.

"They'll handle everything, they're great. They'll even pay for shipping and Fed-Ex it for you. That's what they did for my systems (yes, plural) when they died."

He emailed back a little more than unhappy:

Brian Crecente

I was annoyed and disappointed when I saw my three-week old 360 wasn't working. I looked up the info about the blinking red circle on the Internet and found out that it was apparently toast. I called Microsoft and was relieved that I didn't have to wait very long to speak with "Vishay." What are the odds that Vishay is housed at Microsoft's campus in sunny California?

After going through the requisite questions Vishay stated (nearly enthusiastically) that my 360 needed to be repaired. He sounded as if he was doing me a favor when he said that all repairs and having the 360 shipped back to me was going to be covered by Microsoft.

When he said that I'd have to pay to ship it to Microsoft, annoyed went to pissed immediately.

I explained that there was absolutely no way that I was going to pay a penny for what was apparently a "shoddy product." Three weeks and it's already a paperweight? No sir.

I told Vishay that if he was unable to handle this situation that a supervisor would be required. After waiting nearly ten minutes Vishay returned to say that I was being transferred to a supervisor. Another five minutes of listening to some very static-filled on-hold music and Vishay came back to say that a supervisor had "approved" free shipment of the 360 to Microsoft.

Microsoft: if you're selling a product that goes belly-up in less than a month never suggest that I should pay anything to get said product fixed. You've blown the customer experience (and not in a good way). Instead of annoyed and disappointed I'm now pissed and unfortunately will stay so for a while. That sucks for me ... so thanks for that.

Unfortunately, these reports of shoddy costumer service on Microsoft's part seem on the rise lately. And what's with a console manufactured in August (I had Drew check) dying after a few weeks? I thought this was an issue with just the early batch of consoles. Come on Microsoft, don't fumble now. Brian Crecente

Instead of just changing the headline we used, I decided to do a little fact checking. By law, any consumer safety issues that crop up in the U.S. has to be reported to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission.

Hopping onto their site I found at the top a listing for the replacement program, something they call a "corrective action," according to a quick call to the commission.

According to the commission only about 2 million of the straps were affected. The report says that Nintendo has received reports of cords on wrist straps breaking, including "three reports of minor injuries not requiring medical attention." All of the incidents, according to the commission, occurred while gamers were playing Wii Sports.

The commission goes on to say that all Wii systems purchased after Dec. 11 should have the new 1.0 mm cord, while systems purchased before then have the .6mm cords. All remotes purchased separately before Dec. 18 have the old cords, according to the report.

Nintendo sent along this official statement about the "corrective action."

Nintendo has a long tradition of delivering high-quality products and excellent customer service. The Wii Remote is meant to be gripped, and the wrist straps are a secondary measure. We have found that some consumers get more excited playing Wii Sports than we could have imagined. This resulted in a very small number of wrist straps breaking. We have replaced the broken wrist straps and continue to reinforce with consumers the safe and fun use of our products. Through its voluntary wrist strap replacement program, Nintendo is offering a stronger wrist strap free of charge to consumers by calling 800-859-4519 or by visiting support.nintendo.com.

I'll post again if I can find out more about the injuries. Brian Crecente

WASHINGTON, D.C. - The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, in cooperation with the firm named below, today announced a voluntary replacement program for the following consumer product.

Name of Product: Wrist Straps Used with Controllers for the Nintendo Wii Video Game System

Units: About 2 Million

Distributor: Nintendo of America Inc.

Issue: If consumers swing the hand-held "Wii Remote" game controllers using excessive force and accidentally let go, the cord connecting the controller to the wrist strap can break, potentially causing the controller to strike bystanders or objects.

Incidents/Injuries: Nintendo has received reports of cords on wrist straps breaking, including three reports of minor injuries not requiring medical attention. All of these incidents occurred when consumers were playing the game, "Wii Sports."

Description: The wrist straps are sold with Nintendo's Wii video game system (pronounced "we"). Its controller, called the Wii Remote, is shaped like a TV remote. Sensors determine the Wii Remote's position in 3-D space, which means that a tennis swing, for example, is done through movement of a consumer's hand rather than by just fingers and thumbs. The cords on the wrist straps included in this program are 0.6mm in diameter. The replacement cords are 1.0 mm in diameter (see photo below).

Sold by: The Wii video game systems have been sold since November 19, 2006 for approximately $249. The Wii Remote has separately been sold from November 19, 2006 for approximately $39. All Wii video game systems purchased after December 11, 2006 should have the new 1.0 mm cord. All individually sold Wii Remotes purchased after December 18, 2006, should have the new 1.0 mm cord.

Manufactured in: Japan and China

Remedy: Consumers should contact the firm for a replacement wrist strap.
Customer Contact: For more information, contact Nintendo toll-free at (800) 859-4519 between 6 a.m. and 7 p.m. PT, or visit their Web site at www.support.nintendo.com

Looks like Nintendo, while a bit slow to react, is taking the classy way out of their flimsy Wii strap fiasco.

After staying mum on the issue since launch, the publisher finally admitted they had an issue to the Associated Press and then announced that they are replacing Wii straps for those who would like the peace of mind of knowing that when they play Wii Sports they won't be caving in the front of their $3,000 plasma screen.

The AP reports that the company announced today that they are "recalling" 3.2 million straps for the Wii.

According to the Nintendo site, if you have an original version of the strap you need to complete a form. Once the replacement strap has shipped you will receive an email from the company. They say on the site they expect to start shipping the straps by Dec. 21 and it will take five to nine days for delivery.

I'd love to take credit for this, but since the announcement came about an hour after my call for free replacements, I suspect it was already in the works.

Once more major kudos to Nintendo for handling this properly. I think everyone could learn from how they deal with hardware issues. Brian Crecente

Strap Replacement Form

Wii Remote Wrist Strap Replacement Request Form

Nintendo is offering to replace the original version of the wrist straps for the Wii Remote with a newer version. Because Wii consoles shipped starting in early December already utilized the newer version of the strap, you will need to determine which version of the strap you have before ordering a replacement. To view the difference between the original and the new version of the strap, please click here.

If you have an original version of the strap, please complete the form below to get a replacement (also, to ensure you continue to have a fun & safe experience, please read our Safety Information for Playing Wii by clicking here).

Once your replacement wrist strap has shipped, you will receive a confirmation email from Nintendo. We expect to begin shipping replacement straps around December 21st. It will take 5 to 9 days for delivery depending on your location. Please do not contact Nintendo regarding your replacement wrist strap until after that time period has passed.

We apologize for any inconvenience and appreciate your interest in our products.

Just about everyone has pointed out just how painfully obvious that the "All I want for Xmas is a PSP" website is really just a bad marketing ploy for Sony. Well everyone, but Sony.

Today Sony joined the club and apologized for the marketing deception:

Busted. Nailed. Snagged. As many of you have figured out (maybe our speech was a little too funky fresh???), Peter isn't a real hip-hop maven and this site was actually developed by Sony. Guess we were trying to be just a little too clever. From this point forward, we will just stick to making cool products, and use this site to give you nothing but the facts on the PSP.

Sony Computer Entertainment America

Ouch. That's gonna smart for awhile. I don't know what's been going on with Sony advertising lately, but it just isn't coming together. The only thing worse than no advertising is exposed viral marketing.

All I want for Xmas is a PSP, the confession [Viral Blog]

Chicago's NBC 5 reports that the Better Business Bureau is now "challenging" Toys R Us on it's apparent practice of forcing bundles on people who come in to buy a Wii.

We first reported on the Toys R Us Wii bundle scam back on xxx, in a broadcast story today, a spokeswoman for the toy retailer said that the issue was not one of false advertising, but rather a "misunderstanding."

She said consumers like the Achims should have been able to buy the Wii at that advertised price, despite what they were told inside stores.

The spokeswoman added that consumers who were screwed by stores will get the advertised price straight away, though she doesn't point out how that will happen.

The station's report goes on to quote a bunch of angry consumers and even points out that bloggers are irrate. Specifically bloggers on Kotaku. That's right, the video actually shows our site. Sweet, huh? Brian Crecente

Target 5: Toys 'R' Us Accused Of 'Bait-And-Switch' [NBC5, thanks BeeJay]

Yesterday our Consumerist bros reported on a foul little bait-and-switch FYE pulled on their Wii customers during launch.

Last night a reader wrote to us to point out that FYE isn't the only retailer bending their customers over to make a Wii extra money.

Yes, I saw the FYE bait and switch video. ToysRus pulled a quick one on us too. After waiting 5 hours in line for my preorder, I found out on launch day that I was required to buy one game and a 25 dollar warranty. The lady in front of me calmly negotiated with the clerk but was promptly rejected. No information about this requirement was made.

If I recall, Best Buy tried this shit with the Xbox 360 and had their collective asses handed to them by a collective of angry Attorney Generals. Let's hope Toys R Us gets introduced to this legal daisy chain too.

A poster on Black Friday Ads reports that CostCo is going to start selling their stock of PS3 ads online starting at 8 a.m. PST on Friday Nov. 17

For anyone who is looking to purchase a PlayStation 3, but doesn't want to wait in line for the chance to purchase one, Costco.com will be selling them online beginning 8:00am PST on Friday, November 17th.

This item will be available for purchase on costco.com on Friday, November 17, 2006 at approximately 8:00 a.m. Pacific Time. The item will be prominently displayed on the homepage of costco.com until it is sold out.

Due to an extremely limited supply, we can accept orders from current Costco members only on a first come, first served basis, with a limit of one unit per household. The Costco warehouses do not have units available at this time.

Supply is limited, so I would expect Costco.com to be very slow beginning around 7:59:30 when everyone starts refreshing their pages like madmen.

Here's your chance to land some PS3 without a shred of line-sitting. Of course you need to be a member of CostCo, but it might be worth it. Brian Crecente

Our good Gawker buddies over at the Consumerist, while remaining total assholes, did manage to spot a fascinating gamer-related story in between all their kvetching about exploding laptop batteries and fruit-flavored Cheerios: at least one Gamestop out there is knowingly selling counterfeit Nintendogames.

The complaint comes via Curmudgeon Gamer, who tried to buy a copy of Aria of Sorrow second-hand from a local Gamespot. He quickly spotted it was a counterfeit and schooled the loquacious pimple behind the counter about how you spot a fake cartridge.

Me: First key was the label. That one doesn't look like the one I own. Then when I looked at the contacts, I didn't see the word "Nintendo" on the circuit board. Look here at Game A. [I hand him Game A, pointing at circuit board]

Dude: Whoa. [he takes Aria of Sorrow from me] You're right, it doesn't say "Nintendo". That's cool.

Me: Yeah. If you peel the price sticker off, you can probably tell the back of the cartridge is slightly different. And if you take the case apart you'll see a nasty cheap battery and a blop of black epoxy or something over the main chip.

Dude: Whoa. Learned something tonight! [he hands back Game A, puts Aria of Sorrow back in case] As long as it's just between you and me, no problem, right? [he closes case]

Well, now it's between you, Curmudgeon Gamer and 200,000 Kotaku readers. But we'll be quiet, won't we, guys? Florian Eckhardt

Gamestop: "We're Selling Counterfeit Games? Coooooool!" [Consumerist]

In these tumultuous times of next-gen console fixed pricing, any small downward swing of price is a good thing. So this is news: courtesy of our plucky soul brothers over at the Consumerist, we discovered this deal on a Xbox 360 Platinum System for only $350 after a fifty buck rebate. Plus free shipping!

The Platinum System package includes the core Xbox 360 console, 20GB hard drive, wireless controller, Xbox live headset, high-definition A/V cable, and Xbox Live trial membership card. This deal is a rare chance to buy this high-definition-ready gaming and media platform for a discount without having to buy a complete package with low-value high-markup add-ins.

You should, as a rule, mildly distrust rebates — they certainly require patience and perseverance — but if you've got both of those qualities (and hell, why wouldn't you? You're still waiting for the PS3, aren't you?) this is probably the best deal on a 360 you'll see for awhile. 50 bucks off? Heck, that's walking around money. Florian Eckhardt

Morning Deals Round-Up [Consumerist]

Our brothers over at the Consumerist spend so much time whining about boring companies like Comcast and AOL that the entire network has practically disowned them. No one likes a Negative Nelly. Losers... see you at Gawker Lay-Off Party 2006!

Nonetheless, they did call our attention to some excellent customer service... from Nintendo! Jacob Kaplan-Moss came home to find that his dog has done the unthinkable... devoured his DS Lite. He thought he'd have to buy a whole new one. Amazingly, a quick call to Nintendo and the luck of getting a kind CSR led him to be able to pay for a 'repair' for only $50.

I can't even imagine a company like Sony or Microsoft doing this for a customer. Kudos! Florian Eckhardt

Bad Dog! [Jacobian.org]

Somehow, our canny brothers over at the Consumerist took time out from insulting all gamers everywhere to hack into Kotaku's email account and steal an email meant for us! We'll let them have it: they need the content. Although our kotaku.com email password is definitely being changed... Crecente's measurements were obviously too easy to guess.

But though the Consumerist bastards stole our email, it's more than worth mentioning the content here. otakuite Phil purchased Tetris DS at his local Best Buy. The salesman then tried to get him to buy a 2 Year Protection Plan for the game, claiming "We get a lot of these returned. I just want you to know that."

We find it frankly incredible that Best Buy would try to foist a 2 year service plan on the buyer of a $30 game. As Phil H. notes: "I've been playing video games for more than 25 years, and I don't think I've ever had a cartridge or disc go bad on me. I had been led to believe that Flash memory is more durable than the old GBA cartridges"

Has anyone ever had an experience where a flash-based game just went 'bad' within two years of purchase? I'm curious as to how common an event this is. Florian Eckhardt

Best Buy: "Oh Yeah, Tetris Breaks All The Time." [Consumerist]

Nevertheless, they have an interesting email from a reader up, detailing his frustration with Microsoft's XBox repair service... specifically, the inanity of Microsoft selling XBoxes under warranty in countries and territories that Microsoft can't ship fixed XBoxes back to.

Quite a few of our unluckier Kotakuites have probably thrashed an XBox or two, so if you've ever been in the same boat, maybe you can go over and give Jorge some advice on how to resolve his problem.

Puerto Ricans Can Buy XBox But Can't Get One Repaired [Consumerist]

On March 28th, 2006, a strange Venusian satellite streaked an eerie fluorescent parabola across the sky, irradiating the world's cemetaries, funeral parlors and abattoirs with an extraterrestrial radiation. Four days later, the dead walked, slavering for human flesh and tasty brains. And we were here covering it.

Just in case you missed Saturday's day-long coverage of the zombie apocalypse on the Glocker sites (the agglomeration of vaguely tech-oriented sites on the Gawker network, containing Gizmodo, Lifehacker, Consumerist and Kotaku), here's a round-up of all the posts made on April 1st. Gizmodo became Gizombo. Lifehacker became Deathhacker. The Consumerist became The Flesh Consumerist. And Kotaku got a zombified subtitle.

The full list of Z-Day posts across all sites is after the jump:

• Kotaku: Making Your Last Life Count [Kotaku]
• Gizombo: Keeping Readers Living [Gizmodo]
• Deathhacker: End of the world? Yeah, Right [Lifehacker]
• Announcement: The Flesh Consumerist [Consumerist]
• Miyamoto Announces Nintendo DSkin [Kotaku]
• American McGree Announced American McGee's Hansel and Gretel [Kotaku]
• WoW Alliance Dwindles As Players Transition To Undead [Kotaku]
• After Z-Day, Sony Confident There Will Be No PS3 Shortages [Kotaku]