An Open Letter to Microsoft

Microsoft,

Your Interactive Entertainment Business division is floundering. Specifically, two areas are obviously in need of a major re-haul. First, your initial XBOX 360 hardware is fundamentally flawed. Secondly, your support services are under-staffed, under-educated, and insufficient for the amount of traffic they are receiving. To fix these problems I offer you three solutions: recall, relaunch, or red ring. These three solutions can be implemented individually or collectively. Hell, for all the general public knows, you may already be implementing these changes. If that's the case, all we ask for is more transparency.

RECALL. The XBOX 360 hardware launched was flawed. Every owner of a XBOX 360 sold at launch is guaranteed a broken console. To make matters worse, every owner of a refurbished XBOX 360 is guaranteed another broken console. We know this not because you've admitted this problem but because of the preponderance of evidence. If the Internet is used as a trustworthy source of information and compare the amount of broken XBOX 360 claims to those of every other current console on the market, it is apparent that the XBOX 360 owns the market of hardware failure. If your own corporate admittance as the basis of this argument, Peter Moore's (former Corporate Vice President of Interactive Entertainment) three year warranty extension should suit just fine. Logic indicates that making such a drastic financial sacrifice for your customers is an open admittance of failure. Unfortunately, this program is not enough.

One solution is officially recalling all affected (infected) consoles. No one outside of Microsoft corporate knows how many XBOX 360s will initially fail (8 million? 10 million?) and that number will increase even higher if you calculate the number of broken refurbished consoles. Instead of slowing down customers by forcing them to call 1-800-4-MY-XBOX, a separate recall would sacrifice short term financial and public relations momentum for long term customer satisfaction. If you want to create your own recall department to handle the bulk of these issues that would assist. Allow consumers to send back their broken (or soon to be broken) consoles when they are ready and show some skin instead of hiding in your trench coat. It's not as if you're running an illegal dogfighting ring.

RELAUNCH. Instead of a full-fledged recall, you could just completely relaunch their console. After the holiday season, perhaps in January and February, you'd halt all new XBOX 360 shipments. Clear all remaining inventory, stockpile redesigned (and functioning consoles), and tell the world that the XBOX 360 will be coming back soon. Tell software manufacturers that they can still sell their games except that new consumers won't be able to buy new consoles. In fact, if implemented fast enough, this plan could be used to spike console sales for the holiday. Drop prices $100 just to clear the shelves and parents will have no reason to sit back and disappoint their video game starved kids.

You might be wondering why a relaunch will work? Three recent examples provide evidence that a relaunch can help revitalize your presence and broaden your audience. The release of the DS Lite, the PSP 2000, and the PlayStation Slim all pushed slowing console sales back to where they need to be. In fact, the PSP 2000 might just save the lagging console from irrelevancy. Find a new game (GTA IV?) or peripheral (HD DVD) to bundle with the system, price it competitively and show the world that they can be confident with a functioning console. With a relaunch you'll lose a bit of ground short term, however, you will be better off in the long run. Your momentum should pick up with superior software and you'll have much happier customers.

RED RING. The failure of your warranty extension is hampered by slow service response, poor customer service, and the overwhelming number of broken consoles. Your customer service department either needs to be complete nuked or expanded extensively. Instead of removing all of your current agents, how about creating a division that only deals with red ring failures? If a consumer sees the red ring, they can call 1-800-RED-RING and speak with an agent about sending back their console. Eliminate the obnoxious computer agent and send customers straight to a team of representatives that only deal with the red ring. This will lighten the load of your other support agents so that they can deal with all of the other (less rampant) issues with the XBOX 360.

At this point it is apparent to everyone that things aren't getting better any time soon. This fact is even more troublesome because the greatness of your software is obvious. Gamers want to play BioShock, HALO 3, Dead Rising (still), and Gears of War. Nintendo apparently hates adult gamers and Sony is too busy trying to sell BluRay to the world. You, Microsoft, needs to step up to the plate now and make further changes. You need to make these changes soon and make them public. You already have an excellent grasp of community and some wonderful PR mouthpieces to utilize. Your faithful fans are losing their patience and it will only take one great game to change the tide.

Hopefully and yet jadedly yours,

Alex