We received a tip two days ago cluing us into a post that was due to go up at Gamerandy (which I coincidentally always read as "game randy") concerning problems with keeping the unit in a vertical position. After some calls to Xbox support and speaking with some helpful people, they both denied this. They did say that moving the console while running would, of course, result in the now known scratches on the disc, but the claim that there is some kind of engineering defect preventing the system from being played in a vertical position was refused.But people want to see a car crash; there are over 1300 diggs for this story over at digg.com. If this were true, why wouldn't Microsoft just tell people to use it horizontally? Do they want to ruin your discs and pay for costly repair jobs? Why would they orient their own kiosk units vertically if this was a rampant problem? The overheating power supply was widespread enough to result in a fair amount of people (3%, 5%, 10% who knows) having problems. Moving the unit while running, same thing. If there was even a miniscule problem with the units being played vertically I think we would have heard it by now. It would have permeated the forums and resembled the deafening clamor of either the overheating or scratching debacles. This could be the nascent growl of a growing problem but I'm guessing it's one broken 360, one mistaken representative, and one unlucky gamer. If 10,000 more people speak up and complain, we can reevlauate. Until then, move along -- there's nothing to see here.
