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Xbox 360 Failure Rate Is 54.2%
Colonel Korn writes "The Seattle PI Blog is reporting that a soon to be published Game Informer survey finally shows the failure rate of XBOX 360s: 54%! The survey also shows the rates of failure for the PS3 (11%) and Wii (7%). Impressively, only 4% of respondents said they wouldn't buy a new 360 because of hardware failures."
"According to the print edition of Game Informer, 5,000 surveyed people said the XBox 360 fails over half the time. The same survey found failure rates of 10.6% for Sony's PS3 and 6.8% on Nintendo's Wii. Microsoft trounced the competition with over five times the next highest failure rate. The article also notes that the survey revealed a skew to the numbers as the Xbox's were the most used consoles: 'Results said 40.3 percent of 360 owners use the console three to five hours a day, compared to 37 percent of PS3 owners. Meanwhile, the plurality of Wii owners (41.4 percent) play their consoles less than an hour a day.' Even worse news for Microsoft is that only 3.8% said they would buy another Xbox (due to failures) and the survey found they had rather shoddy customer service."
So it should be noted that a potential skew is that from the surveyed five thousand, Xbox users play their console more than Wii or PS3 users. While this certainly wouldn't explain the skewed percentages, it indicates the consoles are in higher use causing potentially more wear and tear.
But yeah, bad indicator for Microsoft and this new information actually caused me to wait to buy an Xbox 360 at the new reduced price. I think the 3.8% figure of repeat business is a good indicator that a lot of people agree.
Off-topic musing: It's interesting this Game Informer dead tree article has such virtual world implications yet the original source chose for it to be only released in their print edition and not on their site. Has GI always done this? An indication of things to come or a death knell for its readership?
My work here is dung.
To combine the expandability of a game console with the reliability of a PC stuffed with chinese manufactured expansion cards!
Suddenly I am really glad I bought that extended warranty.
If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
Of course the failure rate is 54.2% percent...
Microsoft is made of FAIL, so they're giving it away free with every XBOX 360 purchase.
PS> Yes, I only wrote
Focused significantly more on quality control and then simply shipped every second 360 casing with packing peanuts and achieved the same result?
"Even worse news for Microsoft is that only 3.8% said they would buy another Xbox" vs. "Impressively, only 4% of respondents said they wouldn't buy a new 360 because of hardware failures."
Sony took the time to trim down the expensive PS3 for the cheaper (for them and us) PS3 slim - why has Microsoft not done the same and done a hardware refresh of the 360? Surely it would give them a chance to take care of the RROD problems!
Now we just need to know how often people play their consoles. I have a Wii. I bought it because it looked fun and it wasn't overprices. Now, I'm not and avid gamer. I only play maybe 1 or 2 hours every couple of weeks. At such low usage, I would be surprised if the thing didn't last for 20 years. Many people I know with Wii's fall into this same category. Contrast that with XBox, where I think many more people are avid gamers, and would use their machines much more. A higher failure rate would be expected. Probably not this much more of a failure rate, but a higher one none the less. Also, take into account the fact that MS will replace your broken unit with a refurb, and that most people who get a replacement unit, will put the unit back in the exact same spot, with poor ventilation and cooling that the previous one was at, and you have a recipe for disaster.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Impressively, only 4% of respondents said they wouldn't buy a new 360 because of hardware failures."
Obviously, only 4% of the respondents have never talked to a frustrated RROD 360 owner.
I want to be retired when I grow up.
In fact, a Game Informer survey of 5,000 readers found that the Xbox 360 has an astounding 54.2 percent failure rate. That means 54.2 percent of Xbox 360 consoles fail in one way or another.
So what you are saying is that 54.2 percent of people who submit a voluntary survey want to bitch and moan about how their Xbox got a RROD in some way or another (never mind the quantity of people who downright abuse the thing by sealing it in a TV console cabinet with no circulation and proceed to play Halo 3 for 10 hours straight).
It turns out that 75% of statistics can't be trusted at all. Oh, and 80% of the time, it works every time.
The 54.2% rate calculation was performed on an Xbox 360 which has a failure in the floating-point unit which itself failed before completing the calculation.
The correct failure rate is 108.4%.
Impressively, only 4% of respondents said they wouldn't buy a new 360 because of hardware failures.
You mean "appallingly" right? Talk about low standards.
Those stats are useless without more data such as "hours played before first failure" etc etc..., maybe XBOX-360 users play with their console 10 hours a day while Wii ones barely 10 minutes before they go /yawn... making the first ones more prone to fail...just my two cents
I think that's lower than some of Microsoft's other products. Redmond must be celebrating...
The whole issue is all about heat, I've bought my Xbox 360 right after xmas the year it was released and have had very few issues with it. I personally believe it is because I've always used it up-right and the power supply well ventilated. The only issue I had w/ it at all is when I accidentally knocked it over and wrecked my COD5 disk recently.
Pete/Petri "damn, my chainsaw is clogged with 1's and 0's again." --clyde
I own a 360 and in the year I've had it I've had no problems. However, I know a few people who also have them and the people with consoles that RROD have had the problem happen twice or more whereas everyone else has had no problems. I can understand that the problem is mostly on Microsoft's back but if it's the same people whose consoles are breaking then surely they're doing something to it that's creating problems?
If we can hit that bull's-eye, the rest of the dominoes will fall like a house of cards... Checkmate.
These failure rates seem awful high. In the last 20 years I have had 2 consoles fail. One was a NES and the other was a SNES. The NES had the usual problem where the cartridge connector wore out, and the SNES mostly worked but would occasionally crash if it got too warm. I bought another SNES and it works fine. The other consoles I own are:
Saturn - still works
Dreamcast - still works
Gameboy color - still works
Gameboy advance - still works
PS1 - still works
N64 - still works
Gamecube - still works
Wii - still works
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_360_hardware#List_of_revisions
I have a Jasper system and it runs very cool.
If my Wii failed, I'd get a new one too. Why? Because I got all the controllers, the games, the wii board (which is failing BTW, but also been in heavy use) and that put together is quite a bit compared to the Wii itself. I would consider it a pretty big negative mark when looking to buy the next generation though.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
at the boardroom is the one thing on my mind.
Engineer: very few, say less than 5% of people say they will refuse to buy an XBox due to its failure rate
Ballmer: so what is the failure rate?
Engineer: uh, more than 50%...
Ballmer: So....we're boiling a frog it seems?
Engineer: we may as well be vaporizing a frog. it neither knows, nor cares.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Everyone knows that 0.54!=0.88818.
These are the same fanbois that bitch that a PROPERLY engineered device is too big, too ugly, etc.
Honestly, from all I have seen and read, the xbox is just in too small of a case. its all heat related issues. Trouble is as consumers, if they made it a little bigger, gave it larger fans, better cooling vents, etc.* we'd be up in arms that "its too bulky. if I wanted something this big I'd buy a computer!" but wait boys and girls, it IS a computer; its just a uni-tasker as my hero Alton Brown would say.
So the cut goes both ways. Never let Marketing have too much say in product design; Give them too much leeway and they'll F it up.
*or M$ owned up to the failed heat paste and corrected it. Trouble is thanks to lawyering, if they actually DID the right thing and admitted a design fault the'd be sued into oblivion becuase they sold a crap device. Instead they just say "nothing to see here... move along. Here's a free repair!" and appease the masses.
At what point does the FTC have to become involved in something like this? Microsoft is knowingly selling a defective piece of equipment -- at what point does this become against the law? IANAL but I would be interested in hearing from someone more knowledgeable than I on this issue (which is not saying much as I know next to nothing of these sorts of laws).
To the haters: You can't win. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
Readers of Game Informer are obviously heavier users of their XBOX360s than the average owner who is casual and does not read any gaming magazines.
When you want to use statistics you have to use a truly random sample if you want your results to be interpreted as valuable.
What we have here is known as a sample of convenience. It was easy for Game Informer to simply poll its loyal readers rather than get a truly random sample of XBOX360 owners.
Might as well ask people at the STD clinic if they have ever had an STD, then extrapolate these results to an entire campus or area. (Yes , unbelievably this has been done before... lol)
Microsoft has made the CPU smaller and redesigned the power supply over the last couple of years, has that helped at all? I picked up my first 360 last Christmas, and it's been working fine, but the RROD is always on the back of my mind.
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
There is an important word in there that can easily be missed, "another". The survey is of current Xbox owners asking about another purchase. The numbers could very well be 50% wont buy because they dont have the money, 46% wont buy because they dont want two of them, and 4% wont buy because they are worried about failures.
In order for an accurate number, they should have surveyed the public and only taken samples from those that were already thinking about buying a console.
Pray tell, why? A gaming console is merely a dedicated computer. Millions of servers run constantly for years without failing. If the typical failure rate was anywhere near this for a given companies' server, laptop, or desktop computers they would quickly lose market share, yet many people run those at near 100% uptime. Such a number is absurd regardless of usage statistics. Luckily for M$, their customers have come to expect failures and consider them to be a natural and inevitable consequence of the computing experience, and they don't bat an eyelash. It's sad really.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
The high failure rate is just there to boost their consoles sales numbers. Good thing they sell them at a profit.
Never had a problem with mine. When I worked for Geek Squad I did see a lot of them coming in with problems though. Seem to have gotten better over time. Didn't Microsoft extend their manufacturer's warranty to account for this? At least they're not turning their backs to the situation.
My 3rd XBox 360 went bad a couple of months ago, and this is the first one that died outside of warranty. I had the option of paying $100 to have Microsoft "repair" it (presumably making it work again, but leaving the flaws that caused it to slowly die in the first place), or I could spend $200 on a new XBox 360 Arcade (which replaces all the parts that are actually broken) and get a fresh 3 year warranty. I chose to buy a new unit, because when you buy a 360, that warranty is the most valuable part of the package. As I see it, I'm not buying the hardware, I'm paying for a 3 year lease on the hardware. I suppose another benefit of buying a brand new unit is that the newer 360 consoles should have less heat-related problems than the originals. So who knows, maybe this one will last a little longer.
Oddly, the only reason I bought a 360 in the first place was because the DVD drive on my original XBox went bad, and I wanted to get a new console and continue playing my original XBox games. Before that, I only bought a new console when I wanted to upgrade to the latest technology. These days, I only buy a new console to replace a broken one (like the PS2 I bought the first time I had to send my 360 in for service).
Well obviously, who needs 2 xbox's? That's just needless excess!
"selection bias" ?
are actually replacements of an existing unit instead of new purchases. In other words, I believe the total is 30M units shipped to date. How many of those units are distinct owners, and how many are replacement boxes?
A large portion of the failed units are simply repaired, but many are repalced. In fact, I'm sure that there are quite a few people who don't bother with the warranty and buy new units (I know many who have).
I personally toasted 2 360's then after getting one replaced I sold it and it fried once more. More over of the 9 or so people that I know personally with 360's 7 of us have shipped them back more than once...... At least Microsoft is holding true to their name in the computing industry. Big phat turds the lot of them. =]
According to this 5000 respondent survey the failure rate is 54.2%, but the article points out that over 30 million consoles have been sold. I would place little confidence in the 5000 person survey. Who knows what this survey consisted of, was it a simple cookie-based web browser poll where the same person can vote over and over again? Do you really think retailers would put up with 1 out of 2 people returning the XBOX they bought there? And honestly using a blanket percentage for failure rate is just plain ol misleading. We need to know the Mean-Time-Before-Fail figure to really get a handle on the quality. So, I call BS on this whole thing.
Seriously, you can bet that the other 96^ have more than one game, so they're locked into the platform - or they can trade their games and buy a PS3 or a Wii.
Wii failure rate of 7% - "see, we TOLD you to use the wrist strap!" - consoles dinged by flying WiiMotes?
Please know that I am a Microsoft hater by deed, speech and thought. They rank pretty high as the most evil companies on the planet. But I have to say this:
I know the failure rate of the XBox360 is high. There are fan/cooling kits all over, ample RROD informational pages on the net and the fact that nearly everyone I know with a 360 has experienced a failure. So why is XBox360 better than the rest? Their willingness to repair/replace the units is higher than they are required to be. They have replaced or repaired units for free that were beyond their stated warranty periods. They need to coaxing, no escalation process of speaking to managers or the like. They just do what it takes to make things right. For the same reasons I recommend Dell laptops, I recommend XBox360 for gaming. It's not so much the "superior hardware" or anything -- they are all pretty much in the same ballpark. It's how they handle themselves when things go wrong. In a way, their high failure rate actually serves to highlight their strength in the service and customer service departments. They really do yield good and positive results.
Most people are surprised to find that I own any Microsoft products at all but the facts are the facts. I won't buy ANYTHING Sony, but I might own a Sony TV or video camera... those are typically very good and very reliable. I won't buy any Microsoft software if I can help it, but the XBox360 works pretty well and the service and support are above and beyond.
I'm not a "dedicated" hater of anything. I always make room for redemption or improvement. I honestly hope that Wndows7 lives up to its reputation for being "better." I really wished Sony gave a rat's ass about the reliability and customer satisfaction of their products and there are other companies I wish would turn themselves around as well such as wireless carriers. I don't want to say that I will excuse or forgive and forget so easily, but I'm always a "moving forward" type of person and that's what I'm most interested in -- I can't change the past and neither can anyone else. But we can move forward and make improvements and so can everyone else.
What this really shows is how Microsoft has taken its "Good Enough" software development process and managed to bring that model effectively to a hardware platform. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the consoles were designed to fail after approximately 3 years of use. After that point MS would love for you to buy a new Xbox since you've managed to accumulate a number of games that only work on their platform and all your friends and family are on their network... of course you're gonna buy another one (or pay them to fix yours). Its just like their windows business model except that there is more fierce competition.
I myself am considering buying another one and mine has already died and been repaired. (I want one with an HDMI output and a much larger hard drive... the video brick is so huge and 20gb doesn't even let me store discs on their without removing other content I have.) I don't NEED one right now though so I'll probably wait until (a) my xbox dies again or (b) the new "valhalla" revision is release wihch, in theory, should be smaller, quieter, cheaper, cooler, etc...
If you were to ask me "Why would you get another xbox after having so much trouble with the one you have now?" I'd tell you its because every Wednesday me and 2 of my uncles, 1 cousin, and 1 second cousin all get together on xbox live and play Call of Duty: World at War or Halo 3 or some other game. That wouldn't happen without the xbox and xbox live service... at least not with games that we like.
Xbox 360s are manufactured and tested by Flextronics at their plant in Guad Mexico, known as Flex-Guad.
It is not the fault of Flex that these units fail, it is the poor design that went into them and Flex doesn't care because they are only paid to build it.
Flex runs many different products through their assembly lines for Cisco, Nintendo, Motorola, Avaya, etc and from TFA, other competitors to Microsoft don't suffer failures.
Xboxs are flawed in so many ways:
1) Restricted airflow over heatsinks using air dams
2) Awful heatsink design and little or no thermal paste between Asic and sink
3) The Asic they use are exposed die with no heat spreader
4) Microsoft tried to design their own GPU and processor themselves and failed miserably and hired a 3rd party to correct it
5) Use of lead free solder on their BGAs (very brittle and prone to low yields)
It is no surprise that many units fail due to excessive playing because the 2 main chips heat up to the point of warping the circuit board itself because it is very thin (cost cutting measure).
Microsoft placed the two hottest chips near the center of the board and it warps due to heat. The solder balls crack when the board warps and you get those lovely E74 failures. Turn it off, let it cool and it works for a bit until it warps again.
That x-clamp strategy used on the heatsinks was wrong to begin with. The newer generation Xboxs use solid bolts instead of these locking pins. If you have ever opened an Xbox you will notice those very LARGE capacitors littering the board which are prone to failure with the heat. I have myself repaired Xboxes and can tell you those caps do not survive the removal process for CPU and GPU.
If you are a PCB designer and get a chance to see the XBox circuit board, you can see that Microsoft really didn't build a proper board. They hired a team of monkeys to cobble together the Xbox and tried to fix thier mistakes 3 board revisions later. Nintendo however, built a really nice board for low cost using proper design practices.
Microsoft can do no wrong. If all the issues (both technical and legal) with Windows haven't convinced people to vote (with their wallets) for other products, nothing will.
Microsoft has set a precedent that its ok if things crash and ok if things break. They have cemented this into the mind of users with their software products over the years. Also, lets be completely honest here, have you ever gone on any of these forums and read the banter or seen how technical questions are answered? I'd say that the vast majority of gamers are NOT technically well versed. They are the quintessence of mindless consumers. I know that sounds harsh but its true.
How is that off topic??? Moderators from Hell... or from Microsoft?
Microsoft is just misunderstood. It is not a computer gear company, it is an abuse company that uses computer gear to deliver abuse.
That's my opinion, and the opinion of millions of others, it seems.
Steve Ballmer has no technical knowledge, apparently. Can someone with no technical knowledge run a high-tech company successfully? Successfully as in profitable without an abusive virtual monopoly?
Has anyone just posted a picture of an xbox on failblog?
Especially if this is over the entire lifetime of the 360. I didn't buy a 360 until the beginning of 2009. Every single person I know that has had an Xbox has had at least 1 RRoD, most several. I have a Wii, and I'd been intending to buy a PS3 but Sony kept falling over itself to make it hard for me to buy their console, most importantly refusing to drop the price to something reasonable. During the years Sony could have had my money, Microsoft got its act together and newer Xboxes eventually got better and failed less and less, and MS improved their customer service from "absolutely the worst" to "tolerably bad". I made sure the Xbox I bought was one of the new models (was packaged with games that were a new bundle at the time), and I've been pretty happy with it so far, which I never thought I'd say about a Microsoft product other than their keyboards and mice (which are the best peripherals I've ever used).
Prior to the massive RRoD publicity my anecdotal experience was 100% of 360s were going to RRoD eventually, it was just a question of time. After MS got their act together the failure rate for NEW Xboxes is a lot better, but it's going to be nearly impossible to bring the failure rate across all models down to anything reasonable unless no 360s fail for years to come, if they even ship them that long. Sony's failure to take advantage of Microsoft's stumble is their biggest mistake ever in the Console Wars, and only the massive install base of the PS2 and their lazarus act with the PSP is keeping them afloat. Nintendo just doesn't care really, since they have the insanely popular DS, and the Wii is a profitable sideshow in the grand scheme.
I wouldn't touch the XBox360 due to this. Even if I got the system for free, unless they also give me a 10 year replacement plan for it, I won't deal with it. I still an original Intellivision I system which works just fine still to this day. As well as a first generation NES, first generation SNES, N64, Gameboy, PS2, all of which are 10 years old (or in the case of the NES 23). They all work perfectly fine, and I expect my consoles to run that long. And yes, I still do play the Intellivision, "Night Stalker", and "Tron Deadly Discs" are awesome games even today.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
I own nearly every console you could imagine (well, I'm still looking for a working Sega Master System), the only failure I've ever had was a Wii. No it was not covered. My 360 has worked fine for the year and change that I've had it, even leaving it on for hours at a time on pause (that the voodoo experts will tell you not to do).
Oh, and it's never scratched my disks either.
I'm not saying that RROD and disk scratching doesn't happen, it certainly is documented, but who cares? Do you have any idea how much time I screwed with a PC game last night just to get it to install and work? And then even more time to defeat SecuROM BS and play without the disk.
My 1600 dollar LCD tv screws up encrypted HDMI sound sometimes, my newest car is a pile of crap within 90,000 miles with all sorts of unexplainable problems, my digital camera software is flaky on any OS, Ubuntu's version of Pidgin is still vulnerable to the lib-purple problem, it's all crap. We all pay crap tons of money for stuff that is flaky and crappy (well, except for the free crap), if you're not used to it and can't accept it wake up and stop buying/using it.
Strangely sometimes you'll get something that runs flawlessly when it should suck, like my cheap Ford Escort with no air conditioning and a tape deck, it has run for over 150k miles with a couple belt changes and spark plugs.
Given that the failure rate for their premier hardware platform is 54.2%, I wonder what the failure rate is for their premier software platform (Windows, duh). Higher or lower?
I've had three boxes, of which two have failed. One failed within months, the second just after the warranty expired. The third is still running, but for how long...?
the newly created Microsoft Motors has had to issue it's 23rd recall notice this year with engine failures reaching 54%. Microsoft is currently in talks with the Obama administration concerning a possible bailout of their Motor Division.
I am not at all surprised in the numbers.
Every person I've known who has had a 360 has had it die.
Mine just died last week.
I also read a lot of people wouldn't hesitate to buy the next iteration, I am very hesitant.
I won't buy another next gen console until at least a year after it coming out to determine the failure rate, as this has really made me cautious. I know that MS was nice enough to extend warranties on the 3 red rings deal, but what happens when they decide not to next time?
They sent me a shipper tag, and repaired and returned my machine. A week later I was back in the game. No big deal....
Didn't cost me anything.
the failure rate of all consoles will be 100%
is considered the best?!? Any manufacturing company that I've worked for thought 0.5% was an epic fail. 7% is brutal. How do they get away with this stuff when how many computers go ages being trouble free?
Actually, thinking about it, with hard drive failures fairly common I'm going to lighten up. What I would be most interested in is WHAT part of these things are failing. I think that would be far more enlightening.
I call it 'The Aristocrats'
they spent billions, with a "B" to create the product, after its first year on the market, they had to dump over $1 billion into it to fix all the broken units and extend the warrant and that was on top of the hundreds of million in annual losses. The old PS2 was and probably still is selling better than the product. IIRC, the PS3 is getting smaller, cheaper to make, and dropping in price to $299 so that's not going to help the Xbox sales or reduce losses. Are Microsoft investors getting their moneys worth when Microsoft keeps spending billions in profits on perpetual money losers?
It makes one wonder who would, from a business point of view, or even could continue _selling_ such a poorly performing product? The emphasis on "selling" is because when you're having to pay out so much in losses for so long, is the word "selling" really the right word.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
I'm not saying this is a good thing, but most of the people I know have resigned themselves to treat the hardware as more of a service with a recurring cost. They know that they will be purchasing another in another 10-18 months and they enjoy the games/community/experience enough that they are willing to tolerate the crappy hardware (and by "crappy hardware" I'm referring to workmanship... from a gaming/development perspective most people love the hardware). Or at least it seems that way.
What I'd like know, however, is whether the failure rate gets figured into market penetration numbers. When Microsoft says 30 million units have been sold, does this mean that only around 14 million are actually in use?
It's no wonder that Microsoft's sales figures for the Xbox 360 have always been suspiciously high: most likely 54.2% of all Xbox 360's purchased were replacements to broken Xbox 360s, thus reducing the overall sales of Microsoft's consoles...
where exactly is the ps3 a top seller? not here: http://media.arstechnica.com/news.media/npd-1108-a.png
total collapse of the used console market. Suddenly the only rational choice for someone wanting a 360 is to buy it new at retail; Microsoft wins.
How many of these 360 failures are from the original poorly-soldered issue, and how many are from later issues? I'm betting most of the magazine's readers were early adopters, and have units from that first issue. Not to excuse Microsoft for their mistakes, but I think they've since fixed the problem; I'd be willing to bet that their failure rate on later issues is comparable to their competitors.
Those who fail to understand communication protocols, are doomed to repeat them over port 80.
I won't buy a game console. If it can't be played on my computer it's not worth playing.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
As somebody who has a recently RROD'ed 360, I think I have a decent perspective on this:
In regards to buying a new console, it's a weight of costs. I have plenty of games for the 360 , as well as controllers etc. They won't work on different consoles, so I'm either stuck with a bunch of useless games/controllers, or replacing a 360.
That being said, the other option is to fix the damn thing (or get it fixed). I fixed mine - though I'm not sure how long that will hold up - and was pretty disgusted to see how MS puts these things together.
There are only two fans in the unit, both at the back, which blow through a wind-tunnel. Neither the CPU/GPU heatsinks have an actual fan on the heatsink. The CPU gets most of the wind from the wind-tunnel fans. The CPU is covered by the DVD-ROM which traps heat, and has a heat-pipe to a small frontal GPU that gets little air-flow after the CPU. This design is SHIT, and it's no wonder they have high failure rates.
What's a fix? Well, basically you can replace a bunch of the heatsinks etc. If you have an existing RROD it appears to be due to some bad soldering around the overheating GPU, and of-times forcibly causing the GPU to heat up (blocking air-flow from the fan), while keeping the CPU cooled can give it enough re-flow to - at least for awhile - get the solder back in the proper place. For mine I've also added some extra internal fans to keep the bugger cooler.
My understanding is that later models (falcon/jasper) handle heat better, though I'm not sure if this is due to better solder design, fans, or a more efficient CPU/GPU combination. If my existing 360 goes tits-up again I will *NOT* replace it with a new one, but might consider getting a used version of the newer model so my collection of 360 games will not become coasters.
One major result of this though. I can understand people replacing boned 360's because they have existing games. However, I would hope that they would follow my thoughts and NOT buy any future MS consoles. Between the major RROD issues, as well as the other reported issues such as disc scratching it seems that MS is all too willing to cut corners and screw the consumer, as usual.
microsoft fails over half the time
I'm seeing a lot of different opinions about why Xbox 360 users are experiencing such a high rate of failure and yet still want to stick with the platform. Most of these opinions are from people who don't seem to have any first hand experience though so I'll share my thoughts on the matter since I'm on my 3rd 360.
There are 2 primary reasons why people still would buy another one and they are
1: People don't have much trouble getting them fixed. No manufacturer of any product that I'm aware of has ever responded to hardware failure this way. You call a number and tell them your 360 got the RRoD and they will pay shipping both ways and repair or replace your console, no questions asked. They shipped me an empty box and I put my 360 in it and shipped it back. I was on hold for about 2 minutes, the total phone call didn't take more than 5 and from the time the 360 broke until I had a replacement unit in my hands was a total of 10 days.
But even with that great experience it still sucks that we had to do it at all to be honest, and it wouldn't be good enough except...
2: It's a great gaming platform. I have owned and played nearly every major gaming platform and many of those I played into the ground and I have never logged this many hours on any other console, not even close. The game library is tremendous and blows the competition out of the water, the Xbox Live experience is top notch, the Xbox Live Arcade downloads are awesome and frequent and the media capabilities of the platform are just short of a htpc. This is why when my replacement Xbox went out 2 years later I decided to just buy another 360 (I wanted the new Jasper board) and try to fix the first one myself so I would have two. (which worked btw)
So when looking at the 360 platform, yes the hardware issues suck and despite what everyone in these threads seem to think Xbox owners know this, it's just that everything else about the platform is so damned excellent it doesn't matter.
Sigs are awesome huh?
Never? MS is not knowingly selling a defective product, their product just has a high failure rate. That's something for the consumer to look into. MS warrantee's it for a certain amount of time, which the consumer is informed of. So the consumer is agreeing to purchase a product that will only certainly work for whatever that time is. After that, they're on their own.
-Daniel
-1 Frothing at the Mouth.
Support the EFF and Creative Commons. The war is coming, and they're supporting you...
What kind of ridiculous trolling is this?
Xbox is also a top-selling game console. Last I checked it had sold better than PS3, in fact (that was some time ago). There were (and are) many reasons to buy an Xbox. Namely, PS3 and Wii came late to the party, the PS3 was way overpriced and underproduced, and the Wii didn't have the games people wanted. As for your bizarre hospital segue... you don't 'deploy' C#, you program in it, and nobody is going to give someone the gas chamber for picking C#. Also, your sig line is grossly inaccurate.
Jesus, we need someone to follow you around and clean up your mess.
It just proves how idiotic most gamers are. The reliability of the XBOX 360 was in question because of the RROD over a year ago (at least), but people keep buying them and complaining when they break. Do you need to play games that fucking badly that you will buy a well known piece of junk to play them on? Make Microsoft fix it or quit buying them already!
Look there's no question that XBOX's fail more then the other systems. We've heard about Xbox RRoD (Red Ring of Death) sense the very beginning.
People can argue that it's due to over use or poor ventilation whatever. Fact is my first Xbox lasted nearly 3 years of being played hours upon hours everyday by me and my friends, it just recently had RRoD, microsoft fixed it for free... and now it's still on for hours and hours everyday.
The most intresting part of this article is "HOW MANY PEOPLE WOULD BUY ANOTHER ONE" because of how dominate and because of the impact of XBox live.
Lets face it.. Xbox live is THE most robust and most well made online gaming console platform of any home console. I did buy another Xbox when mine died, just like the article says, MS fixed my old one.. now I have 2. I could care less that it failed to begin with.
Yes there are hardware issues with them. Big deal... There are recalls on vehicles all the time. Extend warranties take care of your customers and it will reward your company, GO MICROSOFT!
I've had 2 units replaced under warranty for the ring of death, and the service for the repair/replacement was excellent.
Yes it did suck that I was without my console for a month. But, I didn't have to spend a dime, and it was very painless to deal with.
This is why I would still buy one (and Xbox Live is definitely excellent.)
At least on this one, M$ has done exactly the right thing, at least for me.
I've heard about units that get so hot they catch fire. Dear Microsoft: if you're reading this, please send me one of those faulty units. I owe more on my house than it's worth, so you could help me solve some of my problems.
I think I figured it out! this is a scheme against the home-brew scene!
Think about it, with such a High failure rate nobody would risk to void their warranty, which means no modding, which means no home-brew games!
But... the future refused to change.
you're all so negative, I say grats to microsoft for going that extra mile and almost breaking the 50% barrier for a product.
The previous 2 were replaced without cost to me. If this one dies and they don't fix it under warranty I'd buy another one. I have no interest in PS3 or the Wii and I have a lot invested in arcade games, rock band songs, etc. on the 360.
If that's not deserving of a bigass class-action lawsuit, I don't know what is.
Table-ized A.I.
I guess it is hard to say too much since I don't own any game system like this. But I have seen the general trend with tech gadgets in general, and the trend is not an encouraging one. Things like sloppy Q/A, tech support in some faroff country where they don't speak English very well, half-implemented features (probably caused by a rush to get something out the door), lots of gadgets really seem to be more aggravation than anything else. For many of them these days, I really don't *need* it in the first place. And if I don't buy it, then I have more money to spend on something else, and more time to do something else which is more likely to be fun.
It's good business for MS then, release an unreliable console knowing that most of your customers will buy a replacement if it dies.
With the price of games, after you've invested in a few the price of a machine isn't so high... It would be extremely annoying to have a big stack of games that you can't play.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
When you want to use statistics you have to use a truly random sample if you want your results to be interpreted as valuable.
The sample has to be a truly* random subset of which set, though?
Maybe you want to know stuff about the xbox brokenness experience of heavy gamers, as opposed to that of the general population.
Why might you want that? Well, if you're trying to sell research to a crowd of heavy gamers, you want to sell them something that's says something about them specifically (since heavy usage probably predicts increased breakage level, i.e. what makes that group special actually influences the numbers). It narrows the applicability of the statistics, but also makes it more useful for the narrower set of people. Better or worse? Depends.
Consider this: if you wanted to know how likely you were to get hit with lung cancer, would you look at its prevalence among a random subset of the population, or would you want to look at smokers or non-smokers only (depending on whether or not you smoke)?
* By the way, I assume that in your dictionary "truly random" implies a uniform distribution, which happens to maximize the shannon entropy of the stochastic variable (i.e. the uniform distribution is the "most" random one).
When you feel the temptation to say "your numbers don't mean anything", consider whether you really should be saying "your numbers don't prove that" instead.
In this particular case, self-selection and sample bias for heavy users probably increases the breakage numbers. One should adjust the conclusion accordingly.
We'd never hear the end of it.
-- Boycott Shell
Most of my friends have opted for PS3s but out of 4 people I know with Xbox 360s 3 of them hav had the RROD. (two within the last week)
One of them is a very big game player.
He was the first one to have his 360 die on him.
He has played the PS3 at least as much and watched both bluray and other media on it.
The PS3 so far hasn't had an ounce of trouble.
Because you always need a smart fox!
Too bad the article didn't include a comparison of the failure rates for Jasper versions vs. earlier ones. From what I've been able to glean from other forums, it sounds like Jasper fail rates might be on par with the PS3 or Wii rates, or maybe even lower.
I think you're confused on that bit, the 3.8% refers to as this summary says "only 4% of respondents said they wouldn't buy a new 360 because of hardware failures". That doesn't at all mean 3.8% of people said they would buy a new 360. That means that 3.8% said they would be put off buying another one because their old one failed. 96% said that the hardware failure wouldn't put them off buying another one. It doesnt mean that theres not other reasons that they wouldnt buy an xbox, but just that 96% of them wouldn't avoid an xbox because of past problems - which is actually hugely positive for microsoft. They'll take from this the silver lining that even if the hardware eventually dies on people more than half the time they'll come back for more and not necessarily jump ship and quit the console itself.
jaymz
The only reason for buying an XBOX 360 I can think of is when they include a year's worth of crack or meth. You know that two thirds of those consoles die within a year or two. You know that after three years, the thing is out of warranty and you're out of luck. You know that it's damn loud. You know there's a few consoles out there that last much longer, make less noise, cost less money and don't require a serverfarm-sized air condition to not overheat. And you know there's a tremendous array of laptop and desktop computers that can run PC versions of most console games and much much more, including every piece of USB equipment ever made in the last decade.
Now, what's the kicker on the 360 to throw all that aside?
Refurbishers, refurbishers, refurbishers, refurbishers!
... lies, damned lies, and statistics.
I prefer rogues to imbeciles because they sometimes take a rest.
Wow, what a level headed assesment. I'm glad you're totally not a fanboy...
Write your representatives! Repeal the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics!
Umm, it's the ratio of Xbox to PS3 failures that matters. The selection selection bias should affect both Xbox and PS3 users in the same way, because presumably Xbox and PS3 users are equally likely to subscribe to this magazines. Therefore, we can reasonably conclude that the Xbox fails fives times more frequently than the PS3, whatever those failure rates are. Now if this weren't a generic gaming magazine, but an "Xbox 360 Gamer" magazine, then the ratio would obviously no longer be meaningful, because it would be biased towards more Xbox owners than PS3 owners.
I bought my 360 Elite long after the RRoD problems had become a well-known problem, so I've always been very careful to baby it by making sure it was extremely well-ventilated, only having it powered on when it was actually in use, etc. My AC is set to 68 degrees, the 360 was in the open air and not in sunlight, and I really don't play many graphically-intensive games (I use it mainly as a media streamer) so overheating should not have been an issue.
Nevertheless, my 360 Elite (Falcon) failed with an E74 about 10 days after the 1-year warranty ran out. To top it off, this took place about 2 weeks prior to MS extending the 3-year RRoD warranty to the E74 problems, so I was sweating it a bit there for a few days trying to decide if I actually wanted to give MS any more of my money and reward their shoddy workmanship by buying a new console. I never did make up my mind on that one because they announced that they would extend the warranty and fix E74 problems for free. At the time, though, I was strongly leaning toward saying "Screw you, MS."
So I sent my pampered unit in for its free repair and a few days later got back an obvious refurb unit whose fan and CD-drive are both loud enough to wake the dead. Sigh. I just wanted my well-treated unit fixed and returned, not to be saddled with some random stranger's nasty old box which had been subject to who knows what kind of abuse, towel tricks, etc.
If you're one of the lucky ones who hasn't [yet] experienced a critical failure on your 360, you'll likely think that the 50% failure rate is an exaggeration. I can't blame you one bit -- I used to feel the same way myself and thought that the bulk of the failure stories were just coming from MS-haters or PS3 fanboys, because there were just so many failure stories out there that it seemed kind of ridiculous, like an urban legend or something. After my experience, though, I have little doubt that the horrifying numbers are accurate.
Moral of the story: don't bother taking special care of your 360 because that apparently has no bearing on whether or not it will fail, and you'll just get a different unit if you ever have to have it repaired.
Microsoft has discounted the entry-level Doesn't-Do-Much Xbox 360 to $200 from Friday, $50 cheaper than the Nintendo Wii. (This will translate to a GBP250 price point in the UK.)
"We are thrilled to be the first next-generation console on the market with a big 'Microsoft' logo on it to reach $199, a price that invites everyone to enjoy Xbox 360," said Aaron Greenberg, marketing marketer for Xbox. He says this will cause a "smash and grabâ mentality amongst consumers. "And not 'grab and smash' as they throw it out the window when it gets a red ring of death again."
The models that actually play anything worth playing will, of course, stay at $300 and $400. "But history shows that more than 75 percent of all console sales happen after the price falls below the $200 mark. Which would be the PS2, PSP and DS ... uh, forget I said that."
Greenberg assures consumers that the new cheap Xbox 360s will not be refurbished red ring of death casualties. "Not all of them. Honest. However, twenty Xbox lifts every morning will be much better exercise than Wii Fit."
Microsoft Japan is already actually paying people to take the machines, with little success. "We hope more people will be able to enjoy Xbox 360," said marketing marketer Takashi Sensui, "and we can stop enjoying quite so many of them. We also have this fine pile of HD-DVD drives ... Wait! Come back!"
Greenberg further assured consumers that "the Xbox 360 will kick the PS3's ass every way from Friday, you wait and see." Nintendo were unable to comment in time for this story as they were still too busy trying to make Wiis fast enough to keep them in the shops.
Illustration: the new official Xbox 360 logo.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
So somehow between the title/summary and your post, you managed to translate "54.2%" to 2/3?
Better work on that math.
Many people will choose to buy another 360, especially if someone on the help hotline leads them to believe they can't repair their system under warranty. As some with RRoD issues have noted, it can be difficult to convince the person on the other end that your console falls under extended coverage.
If you own a library of 10 or so favorite games, it can be difficult to part with the platform. If your console breaks, it's probably cheaper to buy another one of the same kind than to buy another brand, trade in your games, and buy the same games for the new console. It can be a harder choice to make if you have downloaded games or expansion packs that are tied to the platform. You can't trade those in to get the equivalent on another system, you've lost your investment in that case.
Twinstiq, game news
I love that the remote turns on the PS3. Mine is two rooms away with a long HDMI cable - the kids can turn on the PS3 through the walls.
Seeing as we have a toddler, the PS3 is safely ensconced in the 19" rack and little grubby fingers and cheese sandwiches can't get to it.
... I don't know what to tell you. I guarantee most of the people I know have never had any of these problems. Maybe you live in a houseboat on a salty bog in an area where humidity is regularly through the roof? I'm sure there is a reason why you are an abberation, but rest assured that you are an abberation, and in a serious way.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
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And you're NOT seeing the insanity of your actions?
Boiling frog indeed...
You sir, are a gentleman and a scholar. I salute you.
:)
I too enjoy not having to fork out $2000 every two years, then play musical drivers to make it all work. Of course I still play strategy games and other complex monstrosities on the PC, but for almost anything else; lounging on my sofa in front of a massive TV sipping a beer is much more enjoyable
http://www.zombieapocalypse.tv/
WHY DO THEY CALL IT XBOX 360
BECAUSE WHEN YOU SEE IT YOU TURN 360 DEGREES AND WALK AWAY
And now it's already broken, you won't have to worry about it failing later.
Easy, innit :)
---
XBox Games Feed @ Feed Distiller
... anyone here needed more reasons not to support Microsoft products.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Let's rename the XBox 360 the XBox +50.
Yup, look at what happened to American Auto manufacturers in the 70's and 80's - near complete monopoly, 3 big players, quality went to shit and their finally made inroads with quality products. Dunno how well this applies though, since new cars are ~$20,000 and new consoles are ~$150-300
The problem is that those non-US countries had years to improve quality but remain at the level of shoddy junk/knockoff.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
I don't know who makes their keyboards and mice, but they're not bad at all. However, an Xbox is more complex, and it appears that's where they became unstuck. And, of course, this uses an OS, and MS could not possible let the OS be at fault for so many failures.
I bet the breakdowns are simply camouflaged BSoDs :-).
Insert
I don't know about the gp poster, but I bought it for the year's supply of meth.
where exactly is the ps3 a top seller? not here: http://media.arstechnica.com/news.media/npd-1108-a.png
M$ "me-too" entry in the console market continues in last place, sixth out of six as of August 2009:
PS2, PSP, and PS3 fluctuate a bit, but Wii keeps climbing albeit not steadily.
The Red Ring o Death we all passed in the stores whenever Xbox was on display is only minor compared to the quality and duration of the eipc failure. The M$ console hardware failures have been around forever, on about as long as the unit has been on the market. It's not just bricked units and years of scotched discs. It's been four or five years of property damage and even occasional injury and death, with fires in many countries.
But, hey, if defective M$ hardware burns down your family, it's your fautlt. To be fair M$ is right about that: The buyers were warned in prior to purchase by the M$ brand clearly marked on the packaging. C'mon, M$ hardware is as poor as M$ software. The fault lies with those who decided to deploy xbox instead of one of the top-selling game consoles like Wii, PS2, or PS3.
Games are optional. Other activities are not. At some point families will ask the courts to ask how hospitals decided to deploy M$ products like C#-based gewgaws or for-novelty-purposes-only systems like XP on the desktop or server instead of functinal Java- or Python-based applications or systems actually designed for a networked environemnt, such as Solaris and Linux. The Microsofot brand is a warning, those who ignore that warning and deploy the product anyway are in the wrong. Multiple counts of { voluntary | criminally negligent } manslaughter. Who goes to the gas chamber, the techs deploying the known defective technology or the administrators who bullied them into doing so? "Just following orders" is not a valid defense for any politically motivated group, even one with heavy marketing and lobbying.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
"A.) Not quite 2/3 of people never have a problem with thier 360. Of the unfortunate 39% who do ...",
Your maths are still way off. 2/3 + 39% ~ 106%. 2/3 is not the same as 61% and it seems like your extremely inaccurate "rounding" to 2/3 is to trivialise the problem.
Also 39% is still an extremely high rate. It means that if you and four other friends buy an X-Box it is only around 8.5% chance that none of you will have an error. This is rather unheard of. You might as well use "fortunate" to describe the people that DON'T have hardware failures.
"B.) True, the warranty is only good for 3 years, but that's three times better than the PS3's and the Wii's one year warranty. That's right, one year and you're out of luck for the competition."
This was only to avoid loads of class action lawsuits and the 3 year warranty only covers a known design flaw in the XBox.
"So, PS3 for $300, or XBOX 360 for $250? Which is cheaper again?"
First, the XBox 360 Pro is $299. Buying the arcade and separate hard drive means you don't get component HD cables and you don't get the head set. Also if you play online you need to purchase the XBox live membership for $45 a year (online play is free on the PS3). Meaning over a year, the XBox is now the most expensive of these two consoles.
"Which has more games, including all of the best ones? Thought so."
I own an XBox 360, which I'm so far happy with. I am the only one among three friends who has yet to have a hardware problem.
You really are trying very hard to defend the inexcusable here. That is the true mark of a fanboy.
...look at the date on your picture AC.
Stupidity only gets you so far, then you've gotta try
Microsoft dont want Xbox720 to compete with previous hardware.
That's why i'm only on PC. I'm allowed to play new games at lower
settings.
There's PS2-controller USB adapters, for those games that benefit
from hand-controller.
NEWSFLASH: Xboxes are _designed_ to fail. Just like cars and so on.
And you know there's a tremendous array of laptop and desktop computers that can run PC versions of most console games
Several things put me off PC gaming
1: the activation requirements in newer games
2: the fun of trying to figure out what the real requirements for a game under your conditions are and upgrading the system
There is also the issue that which many games are multi-platform many are exclusives so if you want to play them you have to buy the console in question. Most games I find are just too hard so when I find a series I enjoy and have at least some chance of completing I will buy the consoles I need to continue following it.
Now, what's the kicker on the 360 to throw all that aside?
Two exclusive GTA episodes (which thankfully are also being released together in a standalone form) are the reason i'll probablly end up buying one once i've played out the main game of GTA 4.
P.S. There are a lot of people who will spend more than the cost of an xbox 360 on one day out!
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
I know this is Slashdot, and people rarely go further than the summary, but if you look at the actual source of the numbers this becomes ridiculous.
This was a survey in a printed magazine. There is no proof that any of the respondents even owned a 360, and one of the survey questions was "Do you know anyone who has had a hardware failure?", of which they seemed to have added the final numbers to.
This could have been a bunch of people sending in replys like "I have a 360, and so do all my friends, and they all broke. Take that Microsoft! PS3 forever!"
This is a non-story getting more publicity than it should.
And a similar "scientific" poll on MSNBC revealed that 2% of American voters in the 2008 elections really were named Mickey Mouse, and every vote for left wing candidates was valid! (I suspect ACORN was watching).
Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it.
I don't know if it is very scholarly to first criticise my rounding of mid-50-something percent to 2/3 and then round off the other way around.
I don't know if it is very scholarly to assume that it is user error when the situation "utter thermal failure" is occuring in more than half of every given sample and the situation "no problems at all within the stated MTBF" is rare to the point that it is almost unheard of.
Scholarly assumed, where do we need to spend 2000 bucks every two years for on a PC to play games on? I mean, I play games on Thinkpad T-Series notebooks and even they don't cost much more than a single grand.
But since you stated you love lounging on a couch in front of your bigscreen TV, sipping beer and playing games that are shallow enough to have a few buttons suffice for input, we're probably not in the same target demographic.
Scholarly viewed, the PC vs. console is an ongoing debate that has raged for years with no clear winner and I doubt we will get to a consensus here in any given timeframe.
What surprises me is that no XBOX-defendant really defended the XBOX360 against its real competitors, Wii and Playstation. The tradeoffs between PC vs. console are well documented, but I specifically asked why people who buy consoles at all would out of all alternatives still choose the XBOX despite more than half of all purchased units fail within the first two years.
I wasn't talking apples to oranges here, but XBOX to Playstation. But judging from the responses, the XBOX advantage really seems to be the supply of iCrack in the box.
It's not level-headed because XBOX is not on the same level as other consoles. Regard hard parameters like
-price
-noise
-permanent hardware fail rates
-ongoing payment required for any multiplayer game
XBOX 360 lost in every department to its direct competitors like PS or Wii, yet people buy the thing even if they had half a dozen units died upon them.
Either these people are stupid, which is admittedly unrealistic for the large buyer demographic of the thing - or we are missing THE one and only, all-important advantage of the XBOX over everything else. That would probably be trivial to point out to us from XBOX fanbois, but they just can't be bothered to bring anything substantial just yet because they're still busy playing Halo. Or doing iCrack.
Or, you know, they bought their XBox back when it was over $100 cheaper than the PS3 and there were more must-have titles. Things have since leveled out, but that gap made at the start of the generation has remained.
I've also always enjoyed the irony of a fanboy complaining about other fanboys, though. So delicious.
Write your representatives! Repeal the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics!
Wow, you really take this stuff personally don't you.
Not sure what I've personally done to you to deserve sweeping generalisations about my intelligence, but oh well.
Firstly that's $2000 Australian, and that's how much it usually costs me to be able to play some of the more recent titles. I don't upgrade, I replace. That way my dad gets my hand-me-down comp and can play the games he likes (which are usually bargain bin titles by the time he gets around to them).
Secondly, what exactly do you mean by my choice in games being 'shallow enough'? What criteria are you using? Games that I consider cerebral aren't really made for any platform anymore (like the 90's which gave us Fallout, Civ 2, Thief and Daggerfall), except for perhaps a few gems on the PC, like the STALKER series.
Do you consider Fallout 3, Mass Effect and Bioshock shallow?
http://www.zombieapocalypse.tv/