For the record, I, personally, would guess that they are offloading physics to the GPU and there is a flaw in the GPU/shader language they are doing it in that only affects XBOX consoles with certain internal parts. It may, in fact, be a hardware issue (or a driver issue). The fact is that Microsoft released a game that is labeled as playing on an XBOX 360 that doesn't play on all consoles labeled with the brand. At the very least, it is false advertising. At the most, it is outright fraud (given the number of users experiencing the problem).
Posted by: dalisllama
Okay, as a software developer who knows C#, C++, XNA and DirectX, amongst others... Here is what I have discovered over the weekend...
The game freezes when the camera is moving too fast and sometimes when the game goes to save/load (seems to do both at checkpoints). I have removed my memory card, hard drive, cleared caches, played under an anon profile. Pretty much everything I can think of. I played 6 other games this weekend and all worked fine. I had one disk read error, and honestly, it was Madden '06 and it was really dirty. Cleaned it and no problem. I watched Netflix. I even Facebooked.
I also spent the time to try to install the game. I experienced numerous load issues and eventually a disk read error. I uninstalled the game and proceeded upon a different route of testing the issue.
I followed Page 35-36 of this forum and called MS Support. They told me to take the disk back to the retailer and the support tech also mentioned that they thought there were known issues with some of the disks with special items. Tonight I took the disk back to the retailer and swapped it for an identical disk. The retailer was Target. The disk is the one with the bonus Spartan helmet.
Upon getting home and spending some time, I was able to completely repro the issue. Upon starting the first mission, where I am staring at the Noble leader, if I move the camera from upper-left to lower-right immediately upon getting controller access to my camera and I do so very quickly; the screen will freeze. I spent 2 hours on the phone with MS Support on this and, in detail, walked through all of the repro steps. The gracious woman on the call took detailed notes and transferred me to a top-tier support person who took over 1 hour to pick up the phone (the lower-level tech was very good to set expectations, and told me it would be a verrrry long wait, but I wanted to help get this solved).
The higher-tier person who answered was both belligerent and attempted zero troubleshooting steps nor did he take the time to go over the issue. He immediately recommended that I send in my console for repair and, upon my asking, stated that I would have to pay for it. During the hour I had been on hold I took the time to play an additional 5 games in my library for 6-8 minutes each to make sure my console would play other games (remember, I had already played 6 with no issue before calling). I explained this. I asked if it was Microsoft's official word that users would have to pay to repair a console that performs fine except for a single game with the XBOX 360 brand and reminded them that the game was released by Microsoft Game Studios? His answer was: "Yes, that is our official word. There is nothing I can do." and he indicated that he was constrained by Microsoft on what he could offer.
So... To sum up, Un-blam-believable!
I cannot encourage you enough, everyone who is having this problem and who has found this problem, please, please, call your LOCAL, NATIONAL, and FAVORITE INTERNET/GAME news stations and blogs, etc and tell them what is going on? I, for one, will be making some calls tomorrow to see if any lawyers want to start a class action. This is a reproducable issue on consoles that otherwise have no other problems and I cannot believe Bungie and MS aren't even interested in fixing it!
If this is how MS is going to be, forget Windows Phone 7!