So I went down to GAME all kiddy like a school child to pick up my brand spanking new Xbox One. Did the standard queuing up, chatting with other consumers and what not before leaving the store as the proud owner of not one but two Xbox Ones (one for me, one for a friend).
I unwrapped it, plugged it in and fired it up. It was all going so well. Kinect was working beautifully, the interface was slick and easy to navigate. Then I popped a disc into the drive to start installing it and that’s when I heard the noise. It sounded like those clackers you get to put on the back of bicycle tyres to make them sound a bit like a motorbike. A few agonising seconds later and a message popped telling me the console could not read the disc. I took the disc out and it was undamaged as far as I could see. I tried it again, same thing. I even tried a Blu-ray film to make sure and still the drive made the demonic noise and said no.
I’m not the only one having this issue, with a video appearing on youtube of a poor chap with the same issue, which you can watch below:
My unit has this exact problem, sound from hell and all.
The Microsoft support response has been underwhelming so far, with the standard advise of clean the disc. It is late though and local support are unavailable; there is only so much a guy on Twitter can do about this. Lukily as I mentioned earlier I have two Xbox Ones with me and I can confirm that the other one is working just fine.
I’ll keep you all updated on the response to this. I’ll be contacting GAME tomorrow morning and will see if they can supply a replacement. If not then it’s onto Microsoft and you can bet your sweet ass I’ll be demanding so compensatory swag. Maybe a PS4?
Edit: That last bit was a joke, just in case anyone takes it the wrong way. I love the xbox one (the working one I’m currently playing on, the broken one not so much) and won’t be sulking off to the PS4 because of a launch day dud. Knowing my luck I’d get a dead PS4 too. Currently playing Battlefield 4 and it is beautiful. So far there have been about 3 reports of this failure so there is no need to blow this out of proportion yet. Happy gaming and I hope none of you have this issue.
Update: I rang my local GAME when I woke up, they referred me to GAME support. GAME support asked me to try running the console upside down with a disc in as this has fixed the issue on some consoles. Sadly no luck for me so they have provided me with a replacement which is being shipped to my local GAME store asap. GAME support were extremely helpful so big thanks to them. I asked how common the issue was and out of the 133 consoles my GAME sold, they have heard of 3 issues.
Update 2: Sorry I didn’t update sooner guys, I’ve been busy playing Dead Rising 3 which can only mean one thing. My Xbox One has been replaced and is now in full working order. Big thanks to GAME and their support who normally receive a lot of flak from consumers. They were a huge help and got things sorted extremely quickly. I asked again in store today how many complaints of faults they had received and they said around 5 out of about 200 consoles sold, which would leave us with a failure rate of about 2.5%, though of course we’ll need official word from Microsoft on the actual numbers. Happy gaming folks.
Have you had or heard of anyone with similar issues? Let us know what you think in the comments below.