"I received a frightening email this morning from a guy who claims he was a beta tester for the 360.

The extensive email outlines a slew of launch issues and ways to crash your 360. I’m hoping to God this guy isn’t on the up and up, but I have a feeling he is, especially since I’ve experienced some of the problems he outlined and have had emails from people who experienced other issues.

OK, so here’s the list, by category:

Games

Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland Described as the most problematic of the launch titles, the Micromole says you can nearly always cause a crash with a well-timed pause. Early in the game, in Beverly Hills he believes, you come across a tagger guy doing graffiti. Go and talk to that guy one time, wait until he disappears and shows up in another part of town. If you pause the game right after you hit the button to talk to the tagger, the game will crash every time.

I’ve also received reports of the game not booting or the soundtrack skipping, though I’ve never experienced this.

Madden 2006 The game has problems playing on Live, according to the Mole and some consoles and hard drive configurations would not download roster updates correctly for the footballer.

Halo Try this game of profile hide-and-seek. Create a profile with the hard drive attached. During gameplay remove the hard drive and the 360 will reboot. Reattach the hard drive again and the system will reboot for a third time. Look for your profile saved onto Hard Drive, it will often disappear." [more]