With the usual spin, Microsoft released figures the other day that claim 42% market share for the Xbox 360. This figure factors in hardware, software, and accessories. Assuming that 360 owners, who usually tend to be more active gamers, buy more games than Wii owners for instance then the figure could be skewed. Also factored in is the Xbox Live subscription fee, and as Kotaku puts it, this figure is good for revenue showboating, but not so much for apples-to-apples dick waving contests. The reported install base of the 360 is about 17.7 million, but we don’t know if that factors in the extra 16% that have failed.

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Over 18 million Xbox 360s have sold through since the console’s launch in November 2005, but just how many of those are still working? Squaretrade, a company that specializes in providing warranty support to purchasers of electronic goods from various manufacturers, claims 16% of Xbox 360s experience a hardware failure within six to ten months after a warranty purchase. Three out of every five failures were for the infamous “Red Ring of Death” general hardware failure error, a problem often linked to overheating.The Xbox’s figures compare poorly to competing consoles, which have a failure rate of around 3% — and if anything, the Squaretrade figure underestimates the scale of the Xbox 360’s reliability issues. It’s a good bet that some buyers of Squaretrade warranties went straight to Microsoft after experiencing hardware issues and don’t factor into the 16% number. On its company blog, Squaretrade pointed out that failure rates are “certain to go up” as the machines in their study group grow older.

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Obviously realizing that there is some trouble afoot, Microsoft on Thursday announced price cuts on its most expensive versions of Vista and said those discounts will range from 20 percent to 48 percent. Ironically, those discounts are designed to coincide with the release of Vista Service Pack 1, which according to Microsoft, will usher in a slew of security fixes and improvements that should make the Vista experience much better. I’m still skeptical that Vista will ever truly get off the ground, and it looks like Microsoft is starting to wake up and smell the rotten eggs. Read the rest of this entry »

In their keynote at the Game Developer’s Conference earlier today, Microsoft brought Epic Games on to announce Gears of War slated for this November. It has also been announced that there will be a limited edition Gears of War 2 with extra concept art and the like, expect that at an extra $10 or so.

Apparently they made quite a show out of the big announcement. Immediately after talking about Fable, the screen turned red and the following teaser trailer started to play. It doesn’t have much information about gameplay, so don’t get too excited.

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