This Error is caused by having a VGA Cable and an Awkward resolution set up on your 360 for your Screen. For me, the culprit was 1280x1024. So, it's nothing to do with Microsoft, or any individual console, it's just due to the game's poor code optimization. To get the game to run, set your console to a Standard Resolution, (Such as 640x480, 1280x720, etc.) and the game will most likely run.

To change your system resolution:
On the Dashboard go to My Xbox -> System Settings -> Console Settings -> Display -> Screen Resolution
(Alternately, you can use the guide to get to System Settings)

Thanks; I'll tell my programmer about that and see if that fixes the problem in an update.

No problem. Can't believe it took me this long to figure it out, as I've seen similar things happen in other games. For some reason, no one really tests/debugs with any thought of the VGA Cable and the added resolutions it brings.

I think that most creators don't have a VGA cable, and a lot of the testers don't either. But now (if that is the fix) we'll know to look for that.

The other issue we had is that there is a sound problem that causes random crashes that is framework based, and not our fault, so we assumed that something went wrong with the framework due to the other issue and nobody running into any crashes in testing.

When I peer review community games I use  a VGA cable though in general I only test with 1920x1080 and 640x480 - its pretty common for games to fail badly at 640x480 becuase its the only resolution that the xbox can't automatically scale down to if you try to use 1080p in your game.

But I admit to not testing at other resolutions - I'll start adding some odd aspect rations into my test passes. I'll also add this test into the checklist we give to developers and reviewers. http://forums.xna.com/forums/t/19525.aspx if you are interested - we really do try to give developers and testers a good list of ways to break the games even though, like professional games, some bugs always slip through.

In general most community games don't care about screen resolutions - they instruct the xbox to use 1280x720 and then let the xbox hardware auto scale and letterbox as needed. But some games do try to use the resolution set in the dashboard to give a different experience. Looks like this is one of them

Nice catch and repro steps - I wish more people gave such good and specific feedback.

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ZMan

XNA Game Studio MVP
http://www.thezbuffer.com

How is 1280x1024 uncommon? It used to be the most common native resolution for LCD displays (that's the reason I use it.)
Anyhow, hoping this gets resolved, wanted to try the game for a long time now.

 II 9572AD II wrote:

How is 1280x1024 uncommon? It used to be the most common native resolution for LCD displays (that's the reason I use it.)
Anyhow, hoping this gets resolved, wanted to try the game for a long time now.

Key words, "used to be". Now everything is developed for widescreen resolutions, namely 1080p.

I tried many of the VGA cable resolutions, and it seems to only work on the exactly 4:3 resolutions (640x480, 1024x768)
1280x720 did not work.

I didn't try the higher resolution widescreen ones, though, as I don't have that resolution on my monitor.