xbox 360 failure rate is currently 54.2%

[gh4chiefs]

When I saw this thread title, I thought to myself, "Oh yeah, THIS is going to end well."

 

[Timby]

Dean Takahashi, formerly of the San Jose Mercury News and now of Venture Beat (and the writer of Opening the Xbox and The Xbox 360 Uncloaked, said last year, after interviewing Microsoft employees and contractors, that the failure rate for the initial Xbox 360s coming off the production lines in China had a failure rate of 68 out of every 100. (And that Microsoft and contractors ignored a senior engineer who, at the beginning of production, repeatedly said, "Stop. You have to shut down the line.")

I think 54.2% is a high number, but I don't think it's terribly off. I have an Elite that I bought in July 2007, the night before my wedding, and it's worked perfectly so far, so I hope that if it IS going to red-ring, it does so in the next ten months.

 

[DarkHelmet]

Anecdotally, I believe that the 54% failure rate on original consoles would be that high.

Newer models, including the Elite, I believe to have a far lower failure rate.

 

[Timby]

According to Dean Takahashi, elements of the 360 such as the external hard drive (which blocked off the air flow on one side, a critical problem) and the wireless receiver unit (originally the plan was for wired controllers) came long after the industrial design of the box itself had been approved and locked in. That, right there, is a huge part of the 360's failure rate, as suddenly an entire significant part of the heat dissipation system had been removed.

 

[Haggis and tatties]

Anybody who has ever thrown a PC together will hear alarm bells go off when they open the 360 and see that heat producing monster that is a DVD drive sitting right on top of the GPU passive heat-sink and there is nothing pulling out the heat produced from the DVD drive, i think this is why MS actually gave people the option to install games onto the HDD, it the only way i ever play games on the 360, i would never run them from the DVD now, in my view thats asking for the RROD.

 

[Rii]

The failure rates are higher because the system is actually used.

 

[Hermiod]

^The PS3 is currently besieged and under our poundings.

 

[Spiderpope]

Given that i have owned two 360's (so far) and one has died on me, i'd say 54.2% failure sounds about right.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Oh, I guess I forgot NES, which I will call unreliable on account of the 'ya gotta blow in it' connection issues.

Well, that was a design flaw, I suppose. But you can fix it yourself without much trouble.

 

[Canadave]

With something like this RROD you cannot take 5,000 readers and make that 30 million+ consoles.

Actually you could, if it was a properly conducted survey. This doesn't sound like it was, but given appropriately random sampling, 5,000 people would be more than representative of the 30,000,000 360 owners, within a few percentage points of accuracy.

 

[bigdaddy]

The PS2 had tens of millions of defective issues that Sony knew about and didn't care. The console breaks you buy a new one and they get more money.

And the blowing your NES is what makes playing it so much fun!

 

[Cap'n Crunch]

I'm on my fourth 360 now. The first one RROD'd right out of the box, so I returned it. Then the new RROD'd about 2 years ago, so I got it replaced. The next RROD'd again last year, so I got it replaced. So now I'm expecting the current one to go sometime within the next year.

 

[Reverend]

Now see, this is part of the reason why I generally stick to PC gaming and build my own damn machines.

 

[Aragorn]

^The PS3 is currently besieged and under our poundings.

I'd say some people here are too busy pounding their 360 (in a different way) to pound the PS3.

 

[RobertScorpio]

The failure rates are higher because the system is actually used.

I am on my third X360 consol. I wish you could send the F'd up ones back for a $100 coupon or something.

Rob

 

[Kirk's_Tights]

I don't understand how people have so many issues with their consoles. Even my atari still works.


Do you all throw it around or what? I've never had a system that has died on me and I play games daily.

 

[Lookingglassman]

Mine is still good. My warranty runs out in Dec so I figure it will probably fail after the New Year. Thats okay, at least I will have played the new Modern Warfare 2 on it by then!

 

[Rii]

^The PS3 is currently besieged and under our poundings.

Well, that much is true.

 

[-Brett-]

I don't understand how people have so many issues with their consoles. Even my atari still works.


Do you all throw it around or what? I've never had a system that has died on me and I play games daily.

That your atari still works has nothing to do with the Xbox 360's failure rate.

No one's throwing their Xbox's around. The things are just poorly designed.

 

[Kirk's_Tights]

I don't understand how people have so many issues with their consoles. Even my atari still works.


Do you all throw it around or what? I've never had a system that has died on me and I play games daily.

That your atari still works has nothing to do with the Xbox 360's failure rate.

No one's throwing their Xbox's around. The things are just poorly designed.

I have an X-Box and an X360. Neither have failed me and both were purchased when the consoles were first released and played half to death.

Also, thank you for the 'lesson' about an atari having nothing to do with a 360's failure rate, even though I was making a comment about consoles in GENERAL, seeing as to how a number of people had complaints about other consoles in this thread, and taking the 'throwing around' part seriously, as if everyone literally does it.