If you’re a gamer you’ve no doubt heard that soon after the launch of the new Xbox Consoles, the Series X and the Series S, problems were reported primarily with the optical drive of the Series X but also, in at least one case I saw on twitter, the fan of the Series S.
Naturally, the peanut gallery — I.E. the masses of gamers online, are being hyperbolic as ever, citing this as a “reason to never buy a system on launch” or, as is typical of people who seem to make a career out of hating the Xbox brand, claim things as extreme as this is the new “Red Ring of Death” (although, oddly, they don’t actually call it by the correct name, so you have to question their knowledge of the actual history of the RRoD.. but that’s another story.)
The reality, however, is far from that — this is most certainly a relatively isolated situation and far from indicative of a major design flaw with the hardware. Indeed, for the most part the general design of both of these systems, from a component level, is on par with that of the Xbox One S and Xbox One X, which is pretty solidly engineered. Remember, I’ve been inside of more systems than most people will ever see in their life — my job is, in part, console repairs. I know these things inside out, and have seen them survive crazy conditions or, alternately, break at seemingly nothing.
No design is perfect. Any engineer will tell you that. You do the best you can with what you can, but you can’t always predict the real-world situations these machines will encounter. In fact, as an aside, I strongly believe the entire design of the PS5 is directly due to one major design flaw in the various PlayStation 4 models, and some PlayStation 3 variants as well (again, that’s another story for another time.) My point is what works is kept with, what doesn’t work is changed, but you never know for sure how a product will last in any given situation until it’s actually in use.
“But Chris!” you scream at me from beyond your computer screen — “These are brand new systems. People haven’t had time to mess them up!” which is true from the perspective of the end user – the gamer who just shelled out $500 for this hot new hardware.
That’s not true, however, of the product’s life from the factory to that customers house.
Remember, these systems were not available in stores. You had to order them online. This means instead of the usual, relatively sane trucking process that bulk orders of items will have to get to stores, being shipped in freight cases and usually only having a few “transitions” from truck to conveyor belt, etc, before they hit a store shelf, these systems people have ordered were shipped via the likes of FedEx and UPS.
Now, when you think of shipping companies like that, what comes to mind? Certainly not the gentle treatment of packages! No, these are volume jobs, and these companies treat every box the same way — they chuck, slam it, hurl it, whatever gets it where it needs to go on its long journey.
While yes, the box will likely be packaged well, and certainly the interior packaing of Xbox and PlayStation hardware is superb – I’ve never seen one that’s been opened arrive completely broken physically — that doesn’t mean there can’t be some damage done via shock to components inside the case, like the fan or the optical drive!
Indeed, the problems being presented in video clips online look and sound just like something being dislodged, which is a common problem when a system is dropped. Who’s to say these systems experiencing these issues weren’t relatively abused in shipping? Maybe thrown down at drop off, or maybe they fell off of a conveyor belt?
It’s a case that shouldn’t happen, but does, and while it’s like Microsoft will look into ways to refine the optical drive (and fan) designs, that doesn’t mean the design is inherently flawed — it clearly isn’t as this isn’t a universal problem.
No, honestly I fully blame the shipping companies on this. They don’t take care of packages going through their systems and there is only so much a manufacturer can do to prevent such damage in the design itself!
I, for one, am waiting for units to make it to stores so I can buy my Series S myself, in person. Time will tell when that will be, but I’m going to imagine or, well, hope, I have no issues with mine whenever the time comes.
More new-console goodness coming up!