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Interview with Todd Holmdahl, about Xbox 360 failures
>> Mercurynews.com posted an interview with Todd Holmdahl, Microsoft's corporate vice president of Gaming and Xbox Products Group. Dean Takahashi tried everything to make Holmdahl say something meaningful, but clearly Microsoft doesn't want to talk about the Xbox360 failure issues. Here's an excerpt:
[QUOTE]
Q: What is the post-mortem on Xbox 360 manufacturing? How has it turned out for you?
A: Like any other post mortem, there are some things you would have done differently that you learned and that you incorporate back into your processes. Overall, it was really smoothe compared to the complexity of the product we were building.
Q: I'm sure you've seen some of these complaints that we've written about from the guy who went through seven machines. There are a lot of people posting on the blog saying they still have problems. There is a lot of anecdotal evidence that the quality of the Xbox 360 isn't there. How can you paint the bigger picture for me there?
A: We're very proud of the box. We think the vast majority of people are having just a great experience. You look at the number of games they are buying, the number of accessories they are buying, the Live attach. They love the box. They continue to buy the box. That said, we take any customer issue very seriously. We continue to look into these things very deeply. You have seen we have made some changes to our customer service policy.
Q: Do you still say that is a normal return rate for the console?
A: We continue to say the vast majority of the people are really happy with it.
Q: If you have a high defect rate, won't that ruin the business model? Won't that ruin the profit?
A: I would say we don't have a high defect rate. The vast majority of people are really excited about their product, and that we are targeting profitability for next year.
Q: You guys did get rid of Wistron. Was that related to product quality?
A: We didn't get rid of Wistron. It was a voluntary decision between the two of us. We try to run as efficient as possible. With our supply base the way it is now, two high quality contract manufacturers satisfy our needs.
Q: I remember one of the warranty coverage changes was to offer a different kind of warranty for any of the machines made in 2005. Or any of the machines bought in 2005. It sounds like you learned something between 2005 and 2006.
A: Out of warranty repairs were for early production batches coming out of the lots in 2005. We addressed that as part of that policy or that issue.
Q: That wasn't due to a specific thing. Was it due to the graphics memory?
A: There were no systematic issues that we responded to when we first offered that warranty.
Q: Was there any issue here where I didn't ask it the right way but you could say something.
A: The overriding thing, Dean, is that people have the product, they love the product, it continues to sell well. The stuff we talked about with Live has been very successful. The game attach has been very successful. The accessory attach. We are absolutely committed to delivering a high quality experience. When people do have issues, the leadership team works to make sure that those issues are dealt with as pain free as possible. We go out of our way to try to ensure that happens.
Q: At this moment, I consider this to be your critical issue for this whole generation. What can you say about that.
A: My job is to make sure the customer is happy. This is certainly part of making sure the customer is happy. We have other things. You saw the release of the spring update. I certainly view customer happiness as one of my No. 1 responsibilities.
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Full Interview: mercurynews.com
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