Video Games

The Xbox 360 has had a rough few weeks.

Faulty hardware and a big warranty extension, missed sales targets, a lackluster E3 showing and the departure of the Xbox division's most prominent and respected executive have left Microsoft looking a little disorganized.

In order:

•Faulty hardware and the big warranty: On July 5, Microsoft announced that it was extending the warranty on the 360 to three years and would reimburse anyone whose console had already broken outside of the original warranty period and had to pay to get it repaired.

The catalyst for the announcement? "An unacceptable number of repairs to Xbox 360 consoles."

Translation: The 360 is about as reliable as a Yugo.

Total cost to Microsoft? Between $1.05 billion and $1.15 billion.

Microsoft says that all the flaws have been ironed out and that new consoles being made are problem-free.

But the company hasn't done a product-wide recall or even recalled the botched Xbox 360 systems sitting on store shelves.

So if you head out to buy a 360 in the next few months, you'll have no way of knowing whether you're buying the new and improved system or the ticking time-bomb system.

•Missed sales: Microsoft warned several weeks ago that it wasn't likely to hit its annual sales targets with the 360 and made it official this week.

The company shipped 6.6 million consoles in its fiscal year ended June 30 and now has a total worldwide installed base of 11.6 million, short of the 12 million the company had hoped by that time.

In fact, as GamesIndustry.biz reminded us, Microsoft originally hoped to have 13 million to 15 million consoles on the market by that time but downgraded those projections.

•A lame E3 showing: The performance wasn't necessarily bad.

We all got to see that Halo 3 is coming along for its Sept. 25 release, and other titles such as BioShock and Mass Effect look excellent.

But we knew about all these games before the show, and so, because Microsoft decided to focus on games shipping before the end of this year, we got no early looks at upcoming titles.

Instead, we got a barf-colored, Halo 3-themed special-edition console (that won't even include the game).

•Final kick in the pants – Peter Moore jumps ship: Mr. Moore, vice president of interactive entertainment for Microsoft (i.e. Mr. Xbox), announced right after E3 ended that he is leaving to head up Electronic Arts' sports games division.

While the guy looks like a weasel, he's actually been one of the humblest and most eloquent public defenders of the console (except for his lame refusal to admit there was a problem with the 360's hardware until the warranty extension was announced).

His departure creates a gaping charisma hole in the Xbox division, and the company better hope his replacement – Don Mattrick, ironically a former EA executive – is equally adept at playing lion tamer to the hordes of growling video-game fans.

A big price cut before the Christmas season could go a long way to relieving a lot of these problems.

And if Halo 3 is awesome, a lot of gamers might be willing to forget about the other missteps even without a price cut.

But this hasn't exactly been the summer of love for the 360.