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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."
To combine the expandability of a game console with the reliability of a PC stuffed with chinese manufactured expansion cards!
Focused significantly more on quality control and then simply shipped every second 360 casing with packing peanuts and achieved the same result?
Seeing as how heat is the predominate cause of these machines giving up the ghost (whether it be heat killing components, heat changes warping solder, or cheap solder being affected by predictable heat), it would be interesting to compare the failure rate of small form factor computers, laptops, or pre-built gaming computers.
We've all known for a long time what happens when you let a computer run for 3 years and let the case fans get caked up...
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.
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."
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.
You made a little mistake with one of your details. The article says that only 3.8% of people would NOT buy another xbox due to hardware failures. That's GREAT news for Microsoft - the message is that people love the 360 regardless of failure. I find that surprising and just downright weird, but that's what the respondents said. It might be that this is a result of how they asked their question, however. If they said "Have hardware failures of Xboxes led you to decide not to buy a new Xbox?" and they might have asked that of all 5000, not just the Xbox owners. In that case, all the people who never even wanted an Xbox wouldn't answer yes. For all we know, 3.8% of respondents said that hardware failure made them decide not to buy an Xbox but only 10% ever considered buying an Xbox in the first place.
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
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.
I think that's lower than some of Microsoft's other products. Redmond must be celebrating...
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.
Whoa, horsie! You've got that backwards.
So even though only 37.7% found the customer service 'very helpful' (how many found it to be 'helpful'?), 96.2% still would buy another XBox.
That said, these are also lifetime numbers. I would be very surprised if the failure rate of the remaining consoles in households is still 50%, or even anywhere close.
Write your representatives! Repeal the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics!
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.
One might indeed think this at first glance, but there's a problem with it. What actually fails most of the time on 360s -the cause of the infamous Red Ring of Death- is the graphics card, which isn't a moving part. Because of that, the concept of wear and tear doesn't apply to it, yet it fails before the wear and tear on the console's moving parts ever becomes a factor. Thus, while your statistic might be interesting if true, it isn't relevant.
The study was poorly done anyway, not so much because of the methods as the measurement used: lifetime failure rates, which will over time hit 100% on any console it's applied to. A more useful approach would have been to study how many consoles failed within specific time periods after purchase: 0-6 months, 7-12 months, 13-18 months, and so on. However, while this particular set of numbers is pretty meaningless, it doesn't change what we already knew: that the 360's failure rate is abysmally high.
Note the giant typo in the slashdot summary versus eldavojohn's (emphasis added). From Slashdot:
only 4% of respondents said they wouldn't buy a new 360 because of hardware failures.
From eldavojohn
only 3.8% said they would buy another Xbox
This is a pretty significant difference, and owing to Slashdot's frequent editorial errors, I'd say trust eldavojohn.
Or you could RTFA! My summary is correct.
"Regardless of everything above, people still love their Xbox 360s. Just 3.8 percent of respondents said they wouldn't buy another Xbox because of system failures, according to Game Informer. And 36.4 percent of people who had an Xbox 360 fail have purchased more than one Xbox."
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
Note the giant typo in the slashdot summary versus eldavojohn's (emphasis added). From Slashdot:
only 4% of respondents said they wouldn't buy a new 360 because of hardware failures.
From eldavojohn
only 3.8% said they would buy another Xbox
This is a pretty significant difference, and owing to Slashdot's frequent editorial errors, I'd say trust eldavojohn.
Nix that. I didn't RTFA. The slashdot summary is correct. Who knew?
But the 54.2% failure rate is controlled by the failure rate for other consoles in the same survey. You claim that being sealed in cabinets killed a large number of Xbox360s. Presumably the same should be true of PS3s, but their failure rate is almost exactly a fifth that of the 360. This survey is just further evidence that Microsoft have extremely poor quality control WRT the Xbox.
This is a pretty significant difference, and owing to Slashdot's frequent editorial errors, I'd say trust eldavojohn.
And I'm going to assume that eldavojohn is mistaken. If only there were some published reference we could consult to clear this up...
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.
I think that mostly has to do with the fact that
a)Very little console competition (3 major players + two handheld units) and
b)huge sunk costs. your xbox goes belly up. do you a) buy all your games all over again for PS3/Wii? buy new drums/guitars for guitar hero/rock band etc? buy 3 new wireless controllers for the new console? or b) buy a new/used/refurb 360 and keep playing?
If you think about it, the average player probably has $300 in sunk costs in 360-specific accessories or games that they'd have to rebuy.
moox. for a new generation.
Actually MS has released later revisions of the 360 that fix a lot of the problems with the first gen consoles. I've had a 360 for years now and other than a PSU failure and the HD-DVD drive cutting in and out, I've had no problems. And this is a first gen.
Readers of Game Informer are obviously heavier users of their XBOX360s than the average owner who is casual and does not read any gaming magazines.
When you want to use statistics you have to use a truly random sample if you want your results to be interpreted as valuable.
What we have here is known as a sample of convenience. It was easy for Game Informer to simply poll its loyal readers rather than get a truly random sample of XBOX360 owners.
Might as well ask people at the STD clinic if they have ever had an STD, then extrapolate these results to an entire campus or area. (Yes , unbelievably this has been done before... lol)
Microsoft has made the CPU smaller and redesigned the power supply over the last couple of years, has that helped at all? I picked up my first 360 last Christmas, and it's been working fine, but the RROD is always on the back of my mind.
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
Pray tell, why? A gaming console is merely a dedicated computer. Millions of servers run constantly for years without failing. If the typical failure rate was anywhere near this for a given companies' server, laptop, or desktop computers they would quickly lose market share, yet many people run those at near 100% uptime. Such a number is absurd regardless of usage statistics. Luckily for M$, 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
I would be willing to be even more than 300 on average. Rockband and a couple of other games plus extra controllers puts you easily above that mark.
The Wii is the worst though. The first day of owning a Wii you end up spending more on controllers and games than the console cost.
You fail at reading comprehension. These two statements:
"Even worse news for Microsoft is that only 3.8% said they would buy another Xbox"
"Impressively, only 4% of respondents said they wouldn't buy a new 360 because of hardware failures."
..mean the opposite of each other. It's not about 3.8% vs 4%, it's about whether the 4% of people would or would not buy another console.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
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.
More critically, these results are from a survey and as far as I can tell, the magazine has made little to no effort to account for self-selection bias. That makes this figure pretty much worthless. For those who don't know, self-selection bias is, in this instance, the fact that people who have had failed consoles are more likely to respond to a survey about console failures, than those who have no problems. Thus the sample is not actually representative.
The smoking gun is that the failure rate in this report, for the PS3 is above 10%. Previous reports have put the PS3 failure rate at less than 1%, in which case these numbers are out by an order of magnitude or more.
Xbox users play their console more than Wii or PS3 users
My computer is on 24/7. It hasn't failed yet. I expect the same performance out of a game console. 50% failure is unacceptable any way you slice it, and is the reason I have not, and will not buy an Xbox360.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
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).
Except for two problems, you've had no problems?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
"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."
What the hell are you talking about? It's an entertainment console, not a pacemaker. Their liability ends at repairing the consoles - which they have, to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.
On what grounds could they possibly be "sued into oblivion"? It's not burning down houses or causing incorrect medical diagnoses.
"Instead they just say "nothing to see here... move along. Here's a free repair!" and appease the masses."
I would call that "owning up to the problem". In fact, so would most people. Let's face it - the reason that owners of defective units would buy another one is because Microsoft clearly stood behind their product.
We'll see whether or not Sony will do the same if the PS3 Blu-ray drive failure rates keep climbing.
The PS3 integrates the PSU, and isn't that large. Now it integrates the PSU and is smaller.
The 360 is an abomination in the world of consumer electronics, less reliable than Panaphonic and Matsashitty and Shoney knock-off brands.
But because it was a little cheaper, the fanboys will rush to covet it. Even as they rue their HD-DVD player purchase, the Plug-n-Charge kit, the Wireless dongle, ... and then you get the RROD, which for my 360 owning friends, has occurred always just as they got the big game they had been looking forward to for ages.
Admittedly if the hardware didn't have such appalling reliability, there wouldn't be a problem, I think more people would own them than they do right now. It's taken three years for the PS3 to become reasonable in terms of price, firmware and game library, I'm impressed they sold over 20m of the expensive model. Still, it is a device that was engineered better, despite that weak GPU they stuck in quite late in the design cycle.
And the Wii, well, it doesn't get played much, but if there's more than one person around it's what is being played.
That's just nonsense. Seriously. Maybe you're too young to remember the NES, SNES or Genesis (or older consoles still), but I'm sure many slashdotters are not: who can forget throwing
I'm 27 and I've got a 5-year-old son who is still playing my NES. My brother and I played the hell out of it when we were kids - everything from ripped cables to over-mashed buttons on the controllers. But the console and the controllers still work (with a little electrical tape and cartridge fiddling). I've never heard of an NES failing. I had mine crash once or twice while being left on overnight so we could continue in the morning (no 'save' feature in game), but that's about it!
Now, I can somewhat understand if the failures are due to optical or hard drive failures. Sorta. But 54%? I can see 20% in the first year, sure. But 54% is absurd, especially when you consider that the other game systems (Wii, PS2) have the same device types - and the Wii is likely played by the more abusive "child" player set. (Were they audited in this survey?)
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
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.
CmdrTaco, that's who!
well when you get suckered into buying several hundred dollars of games for that single defective console. your choice to is lose all that money or buy another damn console and try to continue.
Me? I have mine in a location that is forced ventilated and I have a screaming pack on the bacl of it sucking out all the heat.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
As long as your XBOX is within warranty, you can just ship it to MS and get a new one without buying a new one.
So after 3 years, what do you do when your console inevitably dies? I'm still playing consoles over 30 years old, there's no way in hell I'm investing in a console that stands a 50% chance of being worthless after 3 years.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
They also then extended the warranty to 10 years. I have had one replaced, and it was the easiest thing I have ever done. I called them, they sent me a box, I put my 360 in the box and shipped it back. Two weeks later...new XBox! Total cost: about $4.00 for the phone call to claim the warranty, no questions asked.
Do not argue with an idiot. He will drag you down to his level and beat you with experience.
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.
My 5 Nintendo based systems have never failed once (Well the NES can be a bit of pain sometimes, ha ha).
*Pffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff*
*Pffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff*
Godammit!
ppffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff*
Not true! They will only send you a refurbished Xbox 360 if yours RRoD's (and ONLY RRoD's) within 3 years of purchase, 1 year for all other problems. They changed their repair policy to exclude anything not RRoD from the 3 year warranty. If you think this doesn't affect anything, you should look into the growing number of DVD drive failures that 360's are experiencing.
My last refurbished console I received had a broken DVD drive out of the box, but I have to pay to have it fixed. I'm stuck helping the drive door open and close. I also periodically get disk wobble that scratches the disks and causes games to have "disk read errors" during games with a lot of disk access. Luckily, the ability to rip games to the HD have helped work around the second issue, but it'd be nice to not have to manually pull the drive tray out to change games.
With those numbers, I see an average of 0.7 failures per purchase.
So each customer would get 1.7 machines on average (including the final non-failing one). That means that if they all go through their warranty, Microsoft needs to produce 70% more devices than demand requires (assuming they don't simply repair them). Leading to a 70% production loss due to failures. That is a SERIOUS loss!
I put my 360 in the box and shipped it back. Two weeks later...new XBox! Total cost: about $1.05 to $1.15 billion.
there, fixed that.. or not, for you :)
You paid 4$ for a phone call?
I'll be modded down for saying this (I don't care, my karma is excellent and I have no need to whore) but it looks to me like their hardware isn't much better than their software.
They call it "bugs" in software, and "product defects" in hardware. But it's the same thing -- a shoddy product. You can get away with that when you have a virtual monopoly.
Free Martian Whores!
Not to mention the cost of the equipment you had to replace and the clinic bills because of the Wiimote's destructive powers (impact damage to plasma TVs, black-eyes, etc.). That's easily several extra hundred dollars.
Views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the author.
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 competitors finally made inroads with quality products. Dunno how well this applies though, since new cars are ~$20,000 and new consoles are ~$150-300
moox. for a new generation.
The study was poorly done anyway, not so much because of the methods as the measurement used: lifetime failure rates, which will over time hit 100% on any console it's applied to.
I mentioned this in another reply, but the time scale you'd need for a normal console to reach a 100% failure rate would be something like 100-200 years. Seriously. I mean, I have every single major game console of the last 30 years in my house right now, and every single one of them works. The only system that has ever failed on me is the Dreamcast. And yes, I still play them all. (Ok, not equally, but they all get some play.) And I know I'm not alone - there are still many tens of thousands of working Atari 2600's, Coleco Visions, Intellivisions, etc. out there - and the ones that no longer exist are gone not because they broke, but because they just ended up in a landfill somewhere due to perceived obsolescence.
Most game consoles are going to work until they literally begin turning back to dust. If your system is failing due to dry rot, I think you can be pretty sure it's not a design issue that's at fault.
For the Xbox 360 to reach 54% failure in the span of 3 years is pretty unbelievable. I can't think of another product in the history of, well, products to reach that high a percentage. Even when Nintendo did its massive recall of Japanese Famicoms due to a design flaw, the actual failure rate to that point was quite low - under 10%. In most industries, a 54% failure rate would lead to involuntary recall, much less voluntary action. (I'm sure that MS's warranty extension was a bid to head this off. It was done out of fear, not kindness.)
The smoking gun is that the failure rate in this report, for the PS3 is above 10%. Previous reports have put the PS3 failure rate at less than 1%
1% is just as ridiculous a number as 54%, if not moreso, because we've all seen widespread reports of 360's failing. But a 1% failure rate of any electronic product is almost unheard-of, especially one with moving parts.
Generally speaking, a failure rate of 5-10% is considered normal. So the PS3's failure rate is slightly high, but I actually wouldn't expect different from a system that was so bleeding-edge at the time it was launched, and that generated such a massive amount of heat and had an unproven cooling system design.
Both the Wii and PS3 have numbers that are basically in the expected range. So those serve as your "control", and any self selection bias would be apparent in those numbers as well. The fact is the 360 numbers are coming from the same survey and are 5 times higher than the PS3 and about 8 times higher than the Wii. And this is not a small sample here either. This is meaningful.
Except for a broken leg, a shattered skull and a gunshot to the heart, I'm completely uninjured!
That's his point! They don't need servicing. I have several 30 year old consoles myself. They all work and are rock solid.
-1 Frothing at the Mouth.
Support the EFF and Creative Commons. The war is coming, and they're supporting you...
It's strange how it has become acceptable for 360 to behave like this. I don't know any other hardware that people would tolerate 2 major issues within 3 years of the purchase.
I have had one replaced, and it was the easiest thing I have ever done.
Unless your life in unimaginably suckish or you have severe OCD, I have a hard time believing that's the easiest thing you've ever done.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Not to mention the cost of the equipment you had to replace and the clinic bills because of the Wiimote's destructive powers (impact damage to plasma TVs, black-eyes, etc.). That's easily several extra hundred dollars.
Hah, that's what you get for not having socialised health care, us Brits can hit each other with our Wiimotes with callous disregard for the true cost!
I'm calling bullshit.
Wiimote + Nunchuk = $53 ($38 for Wiimote alone)
Dualshock 3 = $43 (Includes rechargeable batteries)
Xbox 360 Wireless controller = $28
The Wii has - by far - the most expensive controllers of the current set of consoles.
You paid a large sum for the 360, voided your warranty only hoping it's going to help but being sure that if it dies, you are out on 300 bucks or more?
Can anyone tell me what exactly makes these games for the 360 so extremely appealing? Are they as addictive as it seems, on par with the most addictive MMORPGs? Is it worse than weed or what?
I dick around with software for a living - when I get home I just want to relax.
Which totally explains all the work you put into your XBox 360... :)
The difference between PC software and console software is that console software is tailored EXTREMELY closely to the hardware. Just getting another machine to run the same OS won't cut it. Even changing the speed at which the discs load can completely break a game and render it unplayable.
Using the Playstation as an example, Even the PS2 couldn't run all Ps1 games 100% and that had Ps1 hardware IN it, and was (roughly) 10x more powerful. Original PS3's couldn't run all PS2 games 100% either, and they had copies of the PS2 CPU and GPU inside them. Current PS3's cut the parts for cost reasons, and can't run PS2 software at all. And this is SONY trying to get their own software working on vastly more powerful machines.
And emulators? Forget about it. PCSX2 is the best PS2 emulator available, and you need at least dual core processor running at 3.0+ ghz to attempt to run anything at a decent speed, and it STILL chokes on games like Shadow of the Colossus and MGS3. Keep in mind the PS2 is a ten year old console with a 300mhz processor.
So as you can see, Current PCs don't have a prayer of running current console software for a billion reasons, some of which are technical but not all of them.
Have you played the Halo franchise?
Yep. Still don't understand the hype.
The single-player campaigns were pretty good, but arguably not the best of the genre (an honor which the Half Life franchise seems to have held onto)
Multiplayer was pretty good too, but never really seemed to stand out from Unreal Tournament, or any of the other 5,000 FPS games on the market.
The other problem was that there were *very* few other games worth having that were XBox-only. I'm told that the 360 has a decent collection, which I don't doubt, although Halo always seemed to be the *only* reason you'd want to own a 1st-gen XBox.
I still wonder why it was so successful. Perhaps it was a combination of good timing and good marketing that brought all of the goodies that PC FPS gamers had enjoyed for so many years to a wide audience of adolescent teenagers.* I won't deny that Halo was a good FPS....but it's certainly not everything it's been hyped up to be, and there are definitely good FPSes elsewhere.
*Given Microsoft's apparent target audience, the inclusion of voice chat is particularly inexcusable.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose