For Unlucky 360 Owner Seventh Time's the Charm

Microsoft has maintained that the problems occasionally reported by Xbox 360 owners are not very prevalent; just a small percentage of 360s are faulty, they say. That may be so, but for one unlucky console owner it's taken seven faulty consoles for him to get customer service satisfaction. The Mercury News discusses the tale of Rob Cassingham, a self professed 'Xbox fanboy'. He and his wife Mindy run a gaming center, and were responsible (via direct purchases and through word of mouth) for more than a dozen 360 purchases. For his business, he had six machines ... and every one of them failed. Even one of the replacements for the original unit failed, and for every replacement he's had to wait two weeks to get a new system. As he puts it, "Why spend money for rims on a car that spends 90 percent of its time in the shop?" After the Merc's Dean Takahashi referred his case to Peter Moore, he finally received a new machine as a replacement for his most recent faulty model. Cassingham is still deciding whether to keep it or not.

Comments

Broken.

[Spazntwich]

Your polling method, that is.

I don't own an xbox360, and nothing is keeping me from skewing your sample.

Not an owner

[Ford Prefect]

Everyone always says that failure statistics on the web are poor because nobody comes around and says their system is working fine. Maybe we can do an informal Slashdot poll of all Xbox 360 owners.

I disagree with your testing methodology - such a survey is inherently biased and self-selecting towards those who own Xbox 360 consoles, broken or not.

So in the interests of balance, I wish to report that I do not own an Xbox 360 games console. Or any other console, for that matter. However, this does mean that I have not personally encountered any problems with the Xbox 360's alleged unreliability!

Re:Huh

[master0ne]

why would they? they haven't in the past either.... windows 3.1 was horrendous, so they released windows 95, which was horrendous, so they released windows 98 which was a bit better after second edition came around, and as a upgrade they released ME, which was almost as bad as 95.. and FINALLY they released 2000, then XP which were both a bit better... now Vista which in my opinion isn't much different than XP, because on many levels its better, but on many levels its worse.... so just wait until MS releases Xbox 360 HD-DVD drive XP, and stick with it..... Me, im just gonna buy a PS3 to go with my Wii and have fun..

Typewriters never failed, no rubber stamps harmed

[NRAdude]

Just what is the operating procedure for an XBox 360? Should there be an instruction counter modification that would predestine the unit to power-down after so-many calculations? Buttons should only be pushed such amount of time, determined by the owner and not an infallible throttling censor or agent?

They ran a gaming center. How many hours a day where the machines on? Where they in cabinets? These are a huge factors.

Still that is a lot of failures.

It sounds like the XBox 360 was never intended for the general-purpose computing tasks it was advertised to perform. I can't imagine all the stress absorbed by the remote gamepads; they could possibly channel harm upon the console. It's not like the job of the Xbox 360 is to assure the direction of lightning from the fingers; this gaming center manager obviously presides an over-Orwelian of an ethic that he demands the uptime of the legendary 8-bit/Nintendo Entertainment System with the task redundancy of a type-writer. We all know a gaming center manager is not an advocate of dust-free entertainment areas and ventilated cabinettes...they are the gods that also qualify employees with electrical credentials to refurbish and repair servicable units in the prior entertainment Consoles. These are the guys right next to the TV/VCR Repair culture that have been outsourced and obsoleted because of non-American manufacture of appliances has averted the skilled hands of commoners.

The only reason why all the entertainment Consoles are failing today is because they have cut-out the servicable parts from the pervue of local repair. XBox 360 and PlayStation 3 are complex Orwelian tools that are intended to spread the divide of appliance to entertainment media: starting with DRM. An unhappy/un-spoiled child at the arm of Social Services practically ORDERS estranged parents who can barely afford food with their shelters, to BUY this non-servicable disposable electronics crap because it is worth more than a private tutor -- it is greater than the private tutor.

Re:Huh

[master0ne]

replying to myself here, just wondering how this is "off-topic"? it relates the product being discussed (the xbox 360) to previous products (the windows line of os'es) from the company that produces the unit in question? albeit their previous products have been software, and this is hardware, but it shows previous trends from the company in question relating to problems with their products.... anyway, i'm not trying to rant, and i know if i don't like it i can meta-mod etc.....