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Microsoft Insider Details Xbox 360 Red Ring Problems
kylemonger writes "A blogger at the Seattle PI has interviewed a Microsoft insider about the Xbox 360 project. The insider purports to have the background story on the 'red ring of death' (RROD) failures and why they are so common. 'RROD is caused by anything that fails in the "digital backbone" on the mother board. Also known as a core digital error. CPU, GPU, memory, etc. Bad parts, incompatible parts (timing problems) bad manufacturing process (like solder joints), misapplied heat sinks or thermal interface material, missing parts, broken parts, parts of the wrong value, missed test coverage. Any one or more, on any chip, or many other discrete components, would cause this. And many of the failures were obviously infant mortality, where they work when they leave the factory and fail early in use. The main design flaw was the excessive heat on the GPU warping the mother board around it. This would stress the solder joints on the GPU and any bad joints would then fail in early life. There are also other significantly high failure rates in other areas, like the DVD.'"
As recent as just a month ago in an interview with an Xbox exec and also statements from Bill Gates recently no definitive statement was made that any solution to the Xbox 360 hardware failures had been found and instead focused on what an amazing replacement program they had. That is shocking for a product that has been on the market for more than two years. With all of Microsoft's resources they still haven't been able to demonstrate publicly that a random sampling of whichever is their latest model can be operated with a staggeringly high defect rate.
Xbox 360s were dying in kiosks months to weeks before hitting the shelves in huge numbers.
Xbox 360s were dying at review sites in huge numbers around the time the system hit the shelves.
Xbox 360s have been dying for two years now and there is no sign that Microsoft will ever fix the fundemental design problems of the console.
Each new model is heralded as the one that 'fixed the RRoD problem'. And the failures continue. Each new model comes out and the very day they do owners start posting their RRoD problems.
It is common now for people to have gone through five to six Xbox 360s over the past two years. And people who have had to have their console replaced ten or more times is not rare.
Absolutely pathetic.
Microsoft has forever linked their name and the Xbox label with hardware failure and shoddy design. There never has been anything in the console market in the same league as the Xbox 360 hardware failure fiasco and almost certainly never will be again. No other company in the world has the necessary nexus of unlimited resources and incompetence that Microsoft posses to ever top this sad bit of console history.
I can tell you now that mine, while only a month old doesn't get tooooo hot and hasn't broken,... THE NOISE PROBLEM IS ANNOYING.
Yes, I said problem, it's simply un-acceptably noisy, sure if you're playing Sporty Mc Loud cheer 09 or Explosion masher 12 that's fine but for an RPG or or any adventure style game, ugh!.
I got my PS3 and 360 within a week of each other (good deal here in Australia at the time) and the 360 is almost not being used at all due to the noise, it's just frustratingly loud AND it can't easily be fixed.
The PS3 is quiet for 2 fantastic reasons,
1: the developers can COUNT ON there being a hard disk inside it, so they use it, infact all games install 300 to 1000mb to the hard disk, increasing load times on the repetetive data and dropping laser wear / noise
(not so the 360, thanks 'core' and 'arcade' models... sigh)
2: the data per square inch on the blu ray disks is substantially more, meaning it can spin lower and still deliver data relatively quickly.
I was playing Crackdown the other night and my g/f* called me, so I paused the game, then muted the home theatre system, I'm trying to talk to her but all i can hear is the whirr of a 16x dvd rom spinning at full speed,... big big sighs
I own the premium ffsake Microsoft, FORCE the developers to code in, if there IS a HDD found, to utilize it properly - because right now all i'm hearing is dvd's spin, how that's going to go on the disc spin motor over the years who knows?
While I'm on this topic:
Everyone has likely heard that GTA4 will be better on the 360 due to better game engine code, the PS3 is running it slow (or was?)
Problem is, one thing GTA is RENOWNED for is the constant disc access, chirp chirp chirp on PS2 and Xbox 1, HDD flash on PC - through GTA 3/ VC and SA
Do I really want the disc thrashing about on the 360 version when I could get it for my PS3 and (likely) have the developers utilise the HDD a lot better?
Decisions decisions.