The Video Game Critic

A few weeks ago, my Xbox360 completely died, with the 3 red lights of death.

I bought a core system as a replacement the other week, and transfered my hard-drive from my broken system to the new one.

Now everytime I boot up the system, I have to manually select my hard-drive profile, it doesn't automatically log-in, like my previous system.

Is there anyway I can make it so my new console automatically logs in my profile?

As far as I know, the change you are seeing is part of their latest Spring update. My system is doing the same thing and it started right after the update. I have been too lazy to see if there is a way to put it back to automatic sign-in but I would assume there is a way.

This is exactly part of the reason that the Videogamecritic doesn't hook his console systems up to the internet.  If he wanted to deal with patches, fixes, and updates he'd just play computer games!
Sudz

companies shouldnt ship broken products

I agree, but every game has some problems, I've never seen a perfect game that doesn't have any bugs what so ever. Patches just don't fix games that won't start, that crash at a specific point everytime, etc. They're rarely just for fixing broken games.

If games that have a bug aren't allowed to be released, we'd never have any games these days. And they also often include nice improvements.

True to a point Leo, but is it just me, or do the games that can be fixed by patches generally sloppier than games that will never be touched? It sure seems that way, if they have a way to 'fix' them later I don't think they are tested as much, plus the bugs in these games are generally major, and should have been found before the game was shipped. Patches are a real pain to people who don't like to fool with computers, i.e., me.

I don't buy many PC games, but I bought Hidden and Dangerous when it came out a few years ago. It was a mess, you fell through environments and die, it would freeze up driving certain vehicles, etc. (Plus the group A.I. was a disaster, but that was not a glitch!) It was still fun, but that frustrates me when a game is that fundamently flawed. In my experience I have never run into glitches that bad on more stable platforms.

What I worry about with this kind of patching system for console games is the same thing I worry about concerning online gaming.  Online gaming and distributing patches for broken games are both dependent on servers being kept alive for downloads.  What that basically means is that newer consoles and patched or online games will not have the longeavity we are accustomed to because an obviously broken game will not be patchable once the servers go down and an online-only game will not be playable unless they have an option for direct link to another console.

Traditionally the console market has required only physical accessories that, once obtained and cared for, we are fully in control of individually.  Games can go on being played.  But what happens when a dependency on a server is realized.  Hard drives don't last as long as other peripherals, and so the patches won't stay there forever.  When the need to find a new console or replace the hard drive inevitably comes, it won't necessarily be enough to keep these games going.

I could just be an alarmist though.  I used to be opposed to non-cartridge-based consoles for the same reason, worrying that the CD-ROM drives would go out eventually, and much more quickly than the cartridge-readers would.  But in retrospect, replacing a CD-ROM drive is much less of a problem because their composition and operation are pretty standardized, which is not the case with cartridge-slots.

I really think the console world has been going downhill since the loss of cartridge systems with the N64. Before a game is burned onto a zillion ROM chips you can be sure it is as close to 100% bug free as humanely possible.

Consoles, more and more, are nothing more than "exclusive" dumbed-down PCS. You got hard drives, DVD drives, internet functions...and games released quickly WITH bugs saying "aw we'll patch it later".

It's getting to the point where it doesn't make much difference, you may as well play games on computer. And with so much being able to be packed on a DS or GBA "chip" game, it's increasingly a marketing ploy rather than a necessity. Old 8-bit computers had both ROM cart and disc drives, why not now!?

[QUOTE=Alienblue]
It's getting to the point where it doesn't make much difference, you may as well play games on computer. And with so much being able to be packed on a DS or GBA "chip" game, it's increasingly a marketing ploy rather than a necessity. Old 8-bit computers had both ROM cart and disc drives, why not now!?[/QUOTE]

For the simple reason it costs far less to produce a single CDROM/DVD than it does to produce ROMs with similar capacity.  Seriously, who on earth would want to spend a hundred dollars per game for SDMemory with 9 GBs of disk capacity.

As for the other comments on patching, get over it.  It's a simple method to update issues that aren't really hindering gameplay.  Mostly they're tweaks for the multiplayer to balance out things. 

As for the 360 spring update, my console still logs into my profile automatically.  It's a setting, go look for it.

I appologize in advance for being so harsh but geesh, it's like no one has anything better to do than gripe.