When one person accuses a multinational company of designing one of their bestsellers so that it ruins third party products, you might take it as a solely money centered litigation. But when over 55,000 users do the same thing, you can’t help but think that the claims have some truth to them. It’s almost certain that nothing will be resolved, but the 2008 Xbox 360 design flaw lawsuit was reopened.
- Microsoft initially barely bothered to dismiss the accusation, shifting blame to the plaintiffs
- Over 55,000 Xbox 360 owners sued the company for damaging their disks
- The litigation was deemed unwarranted in 2012, and the trial forgotten ever since
- A Microsoft manager initially confirmed the hardware problem, only to deny it later
- The issue is indeed caused by a design flaw, but most likely not an intentional one
Since 2008, over 55,000 Microsoft Xbox 360 owners issues lawsuits against the company, accusing them of launching the console with a design flaw that resulted in a large number of disks being rendered unusable.
Initially, the company dismissed the allegations, going so far as to blame the tens of thousands of scratched CDs on the users’ mishandling of them.
In the years following the initial lawsuit, more and more information came to light regarding the case, with some even claiming that the company knew about the design flaw before the console was even out.
And as it turns out, the company might have indeed known, as Hiroo Umeno, Microsoft manager at the time, admitted that they suspected immediately what the issues were stemming from – the discs not being held steadily in place by the console when the game was played.
Four years after the above information came out, in 2012, Umeno admitted that the company knew about the issue but decided to keep it a secret due to the very low numbers of users that seemed to run into it – about 0.4 percent, of which not all pressed charges.
Despite the large numbers of affected parties – 0.4 Xbox 360 owners suffered the issue, and only part of them pressed charges, yet the number of lawsuits was over 55,000 – judges decided that a class action lawsuit was not warranted in 2012.
With the lawsuit being brought back from the dead in 2016, the corporation will most likely win the case despite stacking heaps of evidence that show that they were aware of the issue and still lied in court about it, even accusing the plaintiffs themselves.
Regardless of the results, seeing as there have been almost 8 years since the initial lawsuit took place, and that most gamers don’t really have enough money to spend on nigh decade long trials, it’s safe to assume that Microsoft has already won.
Image source: Wikimedia
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