Slashdot Mirror
Increase In Xbox 360 E74 Problems
Xbm360 writes "According to data collected by Joystiq as well as Google Trends, there's been a steady rise in reports and discussion of the so-called E74 error on Xbox 360 consoles since August of last year. The E74 error is related to video problems caused by either a faulty AV connector or, more often, a loosened ANA/HANA scaling chip. This is not the first time the Xbox 360 has experienced technical issues; in recent years many people have complained about scratched discs and over-heating consoles — the 'red ring of death.'"
Of course a 1960 Chevy truck was more sturdy than a 2009 model. It's in the nature of things to become more fragile the more versatile they get.
Of the two, I'd say the 1960 one was the more versatile. It's less likely to break if you do weird stuff with it, while doing the same basic job as the 2009 model.
If that was true than the same would be happening to the PS3 and Wii. But these haven't caused not even a third of the problems the XBox had. It was just poor design, Microsoft knew about it but launched it anyway so it would be the first in its generation. There was a thread here in Slashdot about this.
I'm not disappointed by the PS3, I actually have quite a lot of fun with it, but I'd have bought a 360 Elite instead a long time ago if it weren't for the litany of failures reported everyfuckinwhere.
The games are cool, but they managed to ruin this making the hardware a piece of crap. Mod me troll if you like, that's just how it is.
Of course an XBox 360 is less stable than, say, a SNES. Of course a 1960 Chevy truck was more sturdy than a 2009 model. It's in the nature of things to become more fragile the more versatile they get.
This is the attitude that's killing tech industries the world over.
There's a set of minimums to meet for a product to be fit for purpose. Okay you don't need the sturdy steel chassis of a 1960 Chevy truck to drive around town with occassional longer trips so as the technology has improved and parts could be made lighter and cheaper it made sense to do so. However if as a result the damn thing dies for no reason after a couple of months use, or touching it dents it, you bet people will be complaining.
So if someone's throwing around or stomping on their Xbox 360 and it dies, good and well, they're an idiot. If they're careful with it and it still lasts as long as a $2 item from the junk shop there's a problem.
Why is it in tech we have people rant on about how it's the way of progress and things moving forward that tech becomes useless fragile junk, or the software doesn't work on hardware specified on the box as being minimum, or loses people's data, then wonder why people think we're propeller heads?
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
The issue is that an Xbox360 is less sturdy than anything else on the market right now. Compared to Wii and PS3 its a pile of manure disguised as a gaming console.
Its just shitty hardware Q&A from the same company that excels in bad quality software.
HTTP/1.1 400
My guess would be that it's mostly caused by Microsofts relative hardware inexperience. Sony and Nintendo have spent decades building consoles and similar home electronics, but Microsofts prior hardware experience consists of building a bunch of mice and keyboards and using common off the shelf components to build a small computer that they called the X-box, and sold as a console. They grossly underestimated the difficulty and cost of building cutting edge, high quality hardware from scratch, and they keep paying the price for it.
Try out fish, the friendly interactive shell.
There's a lot being said about the infamous red ring of death killing 360's but Sony are getting almost no coverage of their issues.
There's been a large scale problem of Blu Ray drives in PS3s dying from the Diode burning out. This recently happened to me when I wanted to dust off the console to play RE5. I've replaced drive heads in the PS2 before so I thought I'd save £60 and repair it myself. Turns out the drive head that is in 'all EU 40gb ps3s' with two lenses, isn't in mine and I have to fork out another £60 on top of what I've spent already to get the correct part...
There seems to be two main possible causes of this happening: a patch increased the voltage going to the drive in an attempt to speed up the slow load times, some models can't take this and fail (the way the drives take a while to fail completely and cases focus around big new releases that force you to patch make this seem possible).
Second is turning the power switch off when there's a disc in the drive, apparently the drive hates it and is very sensative to power fluctations. Seems incredibly crappy if this is the case. I hate leaving things in standby.
I just can't understand why modern games consoles have so many problems. I've never had any drive fail except in consoles, Not even the cheapest, nastiest generic drives I could get have ever failed.
It's in the nature of things to become more fragile the more versatile they get.
Actually, it's in the nature of /. to consider a random poll on joystiq (which could easily be hijacked by say, ps3 fanboys or MS haters) and unverifiable data from google trends as irrefutable proof of increased E74 errors.
All this time since launch, and consoles are still dropping. I feel a fool for giving them my money *stares pointedly at his 360 with messed up video output*.
Call me a troll, but I feel ripped off: Fucking FAIL
Sex. Drugs, and Unix.
Microsofts prior hardware experience consists of building a bunch of mice and keyboards
Not really. To the best of my knowledge, all Microsoft keyboards are essentially rebranded products of Philips and Razer.
Xbox 360 consoles were dying in store demo kiosks months before the console went on sale.
> Hardcore Xbox fans screamed it was incompetent store employees who didn't know how to hook up a console
Xbox 360 consoles were dying at game media offices months before the console went on sale.
> Hardcore Xbox fans screamed it was just pre-release hardware and the real consoles wouldn't have those problems
Xbox 360 consoles were dying when they went on sale to the general public
> Hardcore Xbox fans screamed that they were just the first batch and that once production got moving those 'kinks' would be worked out
Every new Xbox 360 model continued to have massive numbers of hardware failures
> Hardcore Xbox fans screamed the new models about to come out fix those problems
Microsoft knew about the problems before the console was released and they went right ahead and put the turd of console up for sale regardless. They knew they had a fundamentally botched hardware design and lied through their teeth about the defective hardware until they finally had to fork out 1.1 billion in repair bills.
There is ZERO incentive for Microsoft to ship working hardware. The niche Xbox fanbase of the console market has demonstrated that they are perfectly willing to buy 3,4,5 or more new consoles without hesitation. It has helped inflate the installed base for the 360 mostly in the US but done nothing in Japan and Europe where the number of fanatical Microsoft fans is tiny.
The problem for Microsoft is the sales numbers from major console game publishers is showing equal to or greater sales rates for multiplatform games on the PS3 even though the 360 supposedly having a huge installed base amount in the US.
Either:
1. PS3 owners are buying massively more multiplatform games relative to 360 owners
2. The number of duplicate 360 consoles owned in the US is gigantic
On my 360? I never thought I'd see the day!!!!
It's a common fallacy that versatile means "more fragile", propogated by exactly this sort of poor design and manufacture. Just because you've witnessed it, doesn't mean the opposite (i.e. stable, versatile and modern) isn't possible or available. The problem is that almost EVERYTHING modern is rushed out the door to sell it, especially games consoles - build it cheap, stack it high. "Fix it in firmware" are words that you DO NOT want to hear - it means someone isn't doing their job. Even the ability of upgrading firmware should be rarely used, hard to do and positively discouraged.
It's like the people who say "Well, Vista should crash more, it's newer!". No, it shouldn't - it should be learning by the mistakes of the past few decades and be virtually uncrashable (this is NOT impossible - and yet in two trials of Vista I've crashed machines within literally hours of building them for my workplace without even doing anything "fancy" like installing drivers or applications, or installing new hardware, or using unsupported or broken hardware, etc.). In fact, the exact opposite should be true and it should be more reliable, faster on the same machine, and do more, because it's based on decades-old technology with a new sheen. System requirements should not be going up as quickly as they are (almost damn exponential!) - and now that we're hitting limits (CPU speed, etc.), some OS and programs are showing their limitations and actually getting SLOWER on the top-end hardware because they rely on things just getting faster every year. There was a time when a PC upgrade meant that everything ran faster. Now it merely means that things run.
In terms of software, reliability should be going *up* all the time - the software should be getting fixed more and more as time goes on, not thrown out with each new iteration. You win by making things SIMPLE and reuseable, not complex. The simpler they are, the easier they are to find problems, the less they have to go wrong, the easier they are to fix. That's *software*. Easily updateable, changeable *software*. Hardware should be a million times more solid.
Games consoles are enclosed systems. Their hardware has been fixed to a finite set of components that will not change. Their OS software has a long time in which to be designed and is very basic - load game, run it, everything else should be handled by the application, so it's not like you have to update the DirectX drivers to fix a bug in a shader model or some such crap - the game works or doesn't and it's the game manufactures fault if it doesn't (this is the way it SHOULD work, anyway... I'm not surprised that MS basically try to make the XBox a mini-PC because it's all they know). Console hardware is *static*. Thus it can be tested *much* more extensively for problems than, say, my bodge-job, home-built, cheap-component PC which has been up now for over a year and never crashed or experienced a hardware problem (or, for that matter, needed any significant hardware maintenance in that time - I think I blew the dust off the fans once while it was still running). Or the dozens of servers, dozens of "blackboxes" and hundreds of client machines that I've built along the same lines in recent years. These things can EASILY run for decades, even being knocked about and moved in school environments. The BBC-Micro's that I pulled out of a skip last year from one school I work at were still perfectly operational despite years of heavy use and having been stored with no maintenance and then thrown (literally) into a skip and having building rubble thrown on them - THAT is solid-state hardware of thirty years ago! They were originally bought as a set of 15. There were still 15 there, all working - one of them we still used for flashing EEPROM's! We should have moved FORWARD from that, not BACKWARD.
A computer should be switched on, work should be done, and then it should be switched off. Anything that causes that cycle not to work under reasonable conditions (i.e. not dropped, not placed in a
This is news? Oh... it's breaking in an entirely new way? Now that's news.
"Who modded this informative? Whoever it is must've been smokin' some of that martian pot!"
It's in the nature of things to become more fragile the more versatile they get.
Actually, it's in the nature of /. to consider a random poll on joystiq (which could easily be hijacked by say, ps3 fanboys or MS haters) and unverifiable data from google trends as irrefutable proof of increased E74 errors.
don't forget the ring of death and all those broken discs we made up... because microsoft always makes quality products!
Not really. They have their own H/W design department. They do not manufacture themselves - that's fact. But they design themselves.
Another fact: keyboard/mice/etc H/W design team has ZILCH/ZERO/NADA in common with Xbox* design team. They belong to different business units.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
Microsoft's E74 Of Death
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
This is not the first time the Xbox 360 has experienced technical issues; in recent years many people have complained about scratched discs and over-heating consoles â" the 'red ring of death.'"
I think the term "in recent years" is more than a little unnecessary in reference to a console that's only been available for a little over 3 years.
Blazing Spiders
Maybe, but I can use my playstation to keep my coffee warm.
the fun part is that the competitor had an inverse problem with wiimots being more sturdy than everything else and basically destroying people's tvset, eyes, faces, walls...
Demonstrably false. Microsoft have a quality console under their belts. Despite it's ponderous bulk, the original Xbox was a reliable console. I've rarely heard of system failures or disc scratches, and the device stands up well to custom modding. In addition to this, it was the first mainstream console to have hard drive and an ethernet link. And that was all from a company which, to my knowledge, had never produced a single hardware product.
Now that same company comes out and produces the 360 with its notoriously high failure rate. And it's wasn't down to the complexity of the design. The red ring of death was due to parts and material failures. Scratched discs were again down to a substandard component. Now we have a loose video chip problem.
This is NOT down to design. These issues are trivial to fix if only Microsoft was willing to pay the money. The fact is, they're not. These errors all exist because Microsoft is cutting costs across the board on 360 manufacturing. For every error that is found, you can be sure that three more lurk beneath the surface as a result of substandard parts, components and assembly line procedures.
The reason is clear. Despite their deep pockets, Microsoft are not willing to make the kind of losses everyone assumes they can make with the 360. But they still want a lower price point. It's not just manufacturing. Look at Live. Microsoft are the only game service provider in the world who are charging people to play titles online. When everyone else; Nintendo, Sony and Valve, make playing online completely free, the Live gold membership fee required to play every single Xbox 360 title online stands out like a sore thumb. It's particularly egregious standing next to Microsoft's own Games for Windows: Live, which is also free.
Bad hardware and unnecessary online fees. Why would a company in Microsoft's position continue to hinder itself in these ways? The answer is that they want the 360 to succeed, but are not willing to shell out funds indefinitely to achieve this. The console needs to sell massively, but they are not willing to charge people for this, so production costs are cut instead. The console needs to make money off people during its lifetime, but they are not willing to do this through selling games, so they charge for services that should be free.
Everyone has assumed that Microsoft's funds are essentially unlimited when it comes to their goal of getting a Microsoft console into the living room. I don't think this is true anymore. Over time, it has become clear that a console in the living room is not going to serve as the hub of a digital household. I think Microsoft has realized this and is now simply treating the Xbox as another part of its home computer strategy, but not as an essentially one that must be maintained at any cost.
May the Maths Be with you!
I had an XBOX360, and I had a PS3. Sold both a while back when I realized I hadn't played a console game in over six months.
I don't have a vested interest in this article. I don't measure my self-worth by what strangers think of my choice in consoles. I don't give a damn about the RROD, or about the E74 error.
However, I hate stupid articles like this one.
Everything you need to know about the worth of this article is contained in this chart
Lovely, isn't it? And no, the numbers aren't "in thousands". They're talking about reports over the last year going from 3 per month to 15. That's not failures - that's "emails to joystiq.com". It's worse than useless.
Did the emails spike because owners are, in fact, seeing spiking numbers of failures? Did the spike occur because some other site mentioned it with a link to related materials on joystiq.com? Did the emails say if the failures occured this month, or if some people were reporting failures from a couple years ago?
Al Gore would most assuredly approve of that chart.
They point out that their "little study" isn't perfect, and that it's unscientific, but then they say, "as we interpret the data...". Of course that data is statistically insignificant and hopelessly flawed.
If you're going to start beating the drum on something like this you should get your shit together in advance. Otherwise you're going to look like an idiot.
That was my first trip to joystiq.com. Probably my last, too.
>>>Why is it in tech we have people rant on about how it's the way of progress and things moving forward, that tech becomes useless fragile junk, or the software doesn't work on hardware specified on the box as being minimum, or loses people's data, then wonder why people think we're propeller heads?
>>>
That's an *excellent* question. I popped-in a 5-year-old DVD-R that was *supposed* to be my friend's wedding video, but instead all I got was a bunch of pixelated garbage. Meanwhile my VHS tapes are nearing a quarter-century age, and they still playback just fine. Even the one tape that developed a wrinkle is still watchable and enjoyable. Meanwhile my wedding DVD-R is now a drink coaster. Sad.
I'm an engineer but I'm not like my colleagues. They embrace every new tech that comes along. I ask the question, "Is this new thing better than the old technology?" Sadly the answer is often 'no' which is why I still use pen-and-paper, not an electronic PADD/PDA, and also why I still use a VHS camcorder not one of those DVD-Rs that self-erases itself after five years. ("Obsolescence and stupidity wrapped in the same package. How efficient of you.") I tried to explain that to my brother: Don't buy Vista; buy an XP PC. "But Vista is the newest and bestest!" Now he's unhappy because his Vista machine refuses to play foxnews.com video, and it's pathetically slow, and he wishes he had listened to me.
Technology is only better if it *improves* on old technology, not simply because it's the newest thing.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
"Versatile" stopped meaning "an array of useful features" a long time ago. As long as you can sync your car to your bluetooth phone (firmware upgrades anyone?), have it tell you the quickest route to the nearest gyro stand, and pet your hand and tell you "everything's ok" when your favorite idol-wannabe gets booted, it's "versatile"
Thank you, marketroids.
shatter harmlessly on impact with your significant other in the heat of game battle anger, or remain in one piece?
Depends if the bitch is screen-peeking or not
They say, "Evil prevails when good men fail to act." What they ought to say is, "Evil prevails."
Now he's unhappy because his Vista machine refuses to play foxnews.com video
Sounds like a nice feature to me. Where can I procure this Vista you speak of?
>>>Microsoft knew about it but launched it anyway so it would be the first in its generation. There was a thread here in Slashdot about this.
Therefore it *must* be true because slashdot never posts inaccurate or biased stories! /end sarcasm.
No, it's true because it linked to documents and internal sources proving this...
At least Microsoft was willing to admit the problems and exchange or repair failing consoles. Microsoft was willing to lose money to keep people happy; that's better than what Toyota did when their 2004 truck engines started sludging oil & seizing-up (they blamed the customer). It's good to see a company stand behind their product for a change.
.
Hey fanboy, that's the least they could do after launching consoles they knew they were faulty! And you think they supported the product just because they were nice? Have you thought that it would be much worse for them if they didn't? There's no excuse to launch a product they knew it was going to give a lot of problems, when they could just have solved them by delaying the launch. Sure it was nice that they at least provided replacements, but it was just a compensation for a problem they shouldn't have caused.
The problem is, they never have admitted it was a design flaw. Adding to the warranty for the RRoD doesn't amount to an admission, and to this day no one will say "yes, we screwed up the design". They'd probably face a class-action suit if they did, I suppose. They still refuse to admit any issues with disc scratching, though youtube's full of videos on what causes it. And this issue now appears after a hefty graphics update to the console (NXE), we're seeing yet again the rushed design decisions possibly come back to bite MS in the butt. I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt, but since it's hitting the HDMI consoles pretty hard, I have to wonder...
:) The 360 has shown me that MS can't make a console. So until they make a tank like the PS3, I'm skipping their next offering or two. Games or not, you can't play the games on dead hardware. After 3 Elites, I got a new Arcade system when it hit $200 (with the lighter PSU), and if my Elite dies again (it's showing the initial stages of it now), I'll just put my Arcade unit as the primary system and just throw in the towel.
While I agree it was nice of MS to add to the warranty for the RRoD, I don't have any faith they're standing behind their product. True, they didn't blame the user very loudly (though early on, they were blaming poor ventilation), but they never admitted there was/is a flaw. Now we've another flaw possibly in the making and MS is charactaristically silent.
It's the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.
So, you're saying it didn't fail because of poor design but because they designed it to be inexpensive to manufacture? That sounds to me like bad design. They didn't design it to stand up to normal use and instead designed it to save a few pennies here and there during the manufacturing and assembly process. Sounds like a classic example of a poorly chosen design trade-off where quality is sacrificed to save costs. Now it is coming back to bite them.
It's a trick question. There is no significant other.
You're right about VHS tapes. My little sister's prized copy of some Disney movie was eaten by the VCR. I cut out the crushed part of the tape, scotch-taped it back together and it plays perfectly, minus one sentence of dialogue. Now that's reliability.
For those who don't know what chip creep is, it's the term used to describe the movement of chips that occurs when they're not soldered/improperly soldered, and is caused by repetitive heating/cooling over a span of time. The metal expands and contracts, which eventually causes it to work itself loose. It's an issue as old as the hills, and its really pretty shameful for it to be occurring in the 360.
So what you're saying is that Microsoft sacrificed quality for price and features.
Yep.
Sony appears to have sacrificed price for quality and features. I'll take Sony.
What identifies you as niche buyer. And mass market companies do not care about niche buyers. (Even Sony.)
People see price first - but experience quality only later. That's why it is important to balance the both. If entry price is too high, provided there is competition, many wouldn't bother to even try. But once people bought a console, natural instinct of buyer to protect investments would actually smooth the negative perception of most quality problems.
In other words, in mass market, low quality is forgivable, high price isn't.
P.S. Just recall how Dell improved quality of their PCs. It's not that it improved anything, but they have people standing by with spare replacement parts. Quality is the same usual crap. But if it breaks, they simply replace it - real fast. And perception of Dell's quality really soared in past years.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
No, I think that's an entirely different issue. Take the DVD, for example. The design department doesn't work out all the details of the DVD drive. It's an industry standard component, with an industry standard interface. They design the system to work with a standard DVD drive with certain basic specs, let some other department work out the pricing deals with various suppliers, and then do whatever custom firmware integration they need to with whoever the contract was made with. A lot of it is no more the fault of the design department that it would be if it turned out there was some major flaw in an intel chip used in the system.
The OP's point was the original Xbox was designed using off the shelf components thus it suffers from fewer defects as MS did not have to design or spec out as much as they did with the 360.
In the red ring of death, failure has been blamed on the graphics chip overheating. MS chose not to use an ASIC vendor to save money and designed the chip and assembly themselves. The chip overheating has been attributed to how it was soldered onto the board using cold solder joints (a design choice). This probably may have been exacerbated by the lack of adequate airflow and the inadequate heat sink size (both design choices). After the initial problems, MS went to an ASIC vendor and redesigned the chip to dissipate less heat. I'd call that a design failure.
As for the scratched discs, the only that MS could have done differently was to watch their suppliers and components more closely.
That might be true if more problems occurred as the Xbox 360 got older but these problems occurred when the Xbox 360 was launched and MS was throwing lots of money into the program. The truth of the matter is that MS cared more about beating Sony out to market with a product than getting out a quality product. There were reports that the failure rate at the the factory was 68%.
The lower point is because they now have to compete with Nintendo. If Sony and MS were the only two competitors, their consoles would still be priced pretty high. However, Nintendo coming in with their cheaper console has changed the market even though Sony and MS don't want to admit they are competing with Nintendo.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
I repair all generations of video game consoles for a living, and have repaired several thousand consoles. Allow me to touch several bases quickly:
E74 is not "on the rise", it has stayed as steady as ever. 3 red rings of death are declining with the new designs (they were pushing close to 100% failure rate within 3 years for the first generation), so other problems are finally allowed to surface since the consoles actually stay running long enough now.
New generation consoles are ALL going to have MANY more problems than old consoles. It's because of 3 things. They all run hotter since they have behemoth (comparatively) processors. Second, they have TONS more moving parts. Finally, components are smaller and made to less stringent standards (and there are tons more on each board).
The most complicated repair that really ever needs done to cartridge based systems is replacing a fuse. Almost all "broken" systems just need the game connectors cleaned. The processors usually don't even have a heat sink on them because they don't even get warm. The only heat sinks in the things would be on the 7805's. Also, they didn't use custom processors. Older machines had chips like Z80's or 68000's for brains. Obviously established architectures. Then we start adding moving parts, and you actually introduce wear in to the equation where there was no wear before. That was the problem with the NES blinking. The game connector actually had to move around, so it wore out. That's why the SNES and N64 are so much more reliable. They have no moving parts, robust components, and more cooling power than they need. Exactly the opposite of today's designs. New console designs are inherently recipes for disaster. Cheaper components, tons of moving parts, and not enough cooling.
MS could add more cooling. A better fan, or added fans, and a better designed interior for airflow would completely solve the heat issues that kill these things. However, it would require almost completely redesigning case and laying out a new board with different locations of all the parts, both on the board and around the board (meaning even the faceplate, plastic buttons, and drive size would need dealt with). Good luck presenting that to your boss when your product is turning profits just fine right now.
And to anyone saying they never have their disc drives in their computers go bad, try running a program from the CD for EVERY SINGLE SECOND your computer is on, and it probably won't make it to the end of the year. And open and close the drive a dozen times a day.
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Wow I can't believe you get modded insightful for calling someone a "total fucking loser" while the GP gets modded troll for making a pretty reasonable defense of the 360. Just shows how biased Slashdot is against the 360.
Abaddon: An Xbox 360 Indie game
Not to be an apologist, but i think you missed the point in the trade-off with DVD-R's.
It is well known that writeable CD's and DVD's have a limited shelf life. They're not intended for archival purposes.
The point is that every X years, where X is sufficiently short to prevent data loss, you can make an EXACT COPY of the higher-quality video, with extremely little or no loss in quality.
Try that with a VHS tape.
ERROR: SIG NOT FOUND (A)bort, (R)etry, (F)ail?:
Mine did this in November, a full 3 weeks out of warranty.
Rather than pay $100 to have Microsoft fix it, I threw a blanket on top of my xBox and played some UT2k3 until it overheated and showed three lights, and then sent it in for a free repair.
Are you stupid? The PS3 has sold ~21.3 million units and the 360 has sold somewhere ~28 million [citation given]. Over their lifetimes, the PS3 has sold ~76% of the 360 in about 70% of the time. Which means it's doing better on average over its lifetime than the 360 is.
Disclaimer: I own a Wii, but very much prefer PC gaming.
Stop Global Warming!
Just say no to irreversible processes!
No, it is definitely bad design.
The 360 GPU heatsink is tiny compared to the CPU heatsink, because they had to squeeze it directly under the DVD drive because of their layout. I have heard that originally that had more room - and a bigger heatsink - but it was shrunk when the case was redesigned to be smaller. The board is also under curve stress because of the case, so when the GPU gets so hot it starts to melt its own solder slightly, you get bad joints, and bing, it dies.
Many people have fixed their own RROD problem, at least temporarily, by disassembling the unit and heating the GPU heatsink with a hairdryer, while using something like the X-clamp replacement clamps to keep the heatsink clamped down tight, and effectively reheat and reflow the solder joints. Some people have used flux to fix more problematic consoles, and some repair specialists have even got their own reflow ovens.
Several of the console revisions have basically been an extra heatsink with a heatpipe to try and stop the GPU literally cooking itself off the board. The newest consoles, with the process shrink, have smaller power supplies and generate less heat in the first place, so should be more reliable.
The biggest problem with the 360 is overheating, even in normal use, and that's down to too small a case with consequential undersized heatsinks.
However, I'll grant you that the DVD scratching problem is simply down to them being cheap - they skipped putting bumpers in to stop it digging into the disc, because it saved them a couple of cents per console. The problem comes about because they're spinning the disc too fast, with insufficient magnetic grip. They could have redesigned the drive, but it would have made it too slow reading, or take longer to spinup/eject discs. Microsoft knew about the design problem, but went ahead anyway, because they were too cheap to fix it.
Remember kids, it's all fun and games until someone commits wholesale galactic genocide.
don't forget the ring of death and all those broken discs we made up... because microsoft always makes quality products!
Read my comment, and TFA again. I didn't claim the RRoD was made up. I've suffered one scratched disk myself. I'm saying, a joystiq poll, and google trends are insufficient data (extremely insufficient in fact) for coming to the conclusion that there is an increase in E74 errors.
Umm, you do know what cold solder joints are, don't you? They most certainly are not a design choice. They're a problem of quality control.
I agree with everything you say, otherwise.
It's amazing how many people repeat that BS from MS and Sony about how the Wii is something completely different to them and thus making Nintendo's monstrous lead invalid. They should be embarrassed that Nintendo can tape two Gamecube's together and beat the crap out of both Sony and MS.
:P
;)
The Wii isn't something different and it's not a toyota to MS's Ferrari. For starters in order for the 360 to be a Ferrari it shouldn't die just from looking at it funny and it should host the best selection of games rather than a very narrow selection of games featuring either WWII guys shooting each other in a first person view or homo-erotic space marines shooting each other in a first person view.
MS is losing the multimedia angle too especially with it looking like Netflix may come to the Wii. http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/21/netflix-headed-for-the-wii/
The Wii also has better peripheral suport and support for real keyboards by just plugging your existing USB keyboard rather than selling some ugly keyboard thing to attach to your controller.
Then when you look at the arcade version, that's not even a Toyota let alone a Ferrari. Which is also cheaper than the Wii which sort of ruins your joke about the Wii being the cheap option.
As much as Microsoft would like people to think they're in some higher league of gaming than the Wii and that they some how offer something Nintendo can't; they are wrong. Sure they can offer better graphics but at a higher price through actual financial costs and lack of innovation.
The fact is Nintendo's hardware runs like a Ferrari and will last while the 360 is the cheap Yugo option that will fall apart in 6 months.