Xbox 360 failure rate at 16 percent?
By Paul Miller 
posted February 14th 2008 1:32PM
posted February 14th 2008 1:32PM
Warranty seller SquareTrade, sampling from a pool of over 1,000 claims, says that it's seeing an Xbox 360 failure rate at around 16 percent. Most Xbox 360 owners -- at least the early adopters -- don't just fear the RRoD, they've come to expect it, and compared to projected failure rates of 3% for the Wii and PS3 (a stat Microsoft claimed initially), it's obvious that this continues to be a spendy problem for Microsoft and a headache for its customers. As 1UP points out, the 16% stat might be a little high, since the type of user that would seek out a separate warranty is probably more of a power user, and the majority of problems are heat-related, but whatever the true number is, it'll probably continue to rise in the immediate future as we all CoD4 our gen one 360s to death, and then eventually fall as the 65nm and eventually 45nm Xboxes fill the market.[Via Joystiq]
16%??! Yea freaking right...
I'd estimate the failure rate at about 30-40%
They are being way too generous,
I still think MS is not handling this in a good way for me as a customer. Having a bad design (or bad parts) originally can happen, and this can be really tough to fix, so I don't blame them for that. Same for extended warranty; this is not something I am thankful for, it is simply something they must do, and they do it.
The bad thing is what happens when you get a replacement unit since this means any titles you've bought from XBLA now requires a network connection to function since MS can't fully move a title due to DRM reasons. So internet down -> no XBLA gaming for you. And this is completely unacceptable: I bought titles with certain capabilities, and now through no fault of mine, they have fewer capabilities. It is not super-important but I honestly think MS is way wrong here on principle.
exactly, 16% is very generous
I'd guess the failure rate at 30-40%, no joke
I know about 10 people with 360's, every single one of them has had their Xbox360 go bad. Some only went through 1, most went through 2or3 but my buddy went through 6!
This is just my side, and talking to them they also know of people who are in the same situation...the RROD is bad, very bad, and I highly doubt its 16%
Are they just trying to throw a generous number out there hoping gullable people will be 'oh its 16% thats not bad at all and it must be true i read it on engadget. now ill tell everyone its only 16% and they will tell ppl and those ppl will tell ppl, and hopefully everyone will think its only 16%!
exactly, 16% is very generous
I'd guess the failure rate at 30-40%, no joke
I know about 10 people with 360's, every single one of them has had their Xbox360 go bad. Some only went through 1, most went through 2or3 but my buddy went through 6!
This is just my side, and talking to them they also know of people who are in the same situation...the RROD is bad, very bad, and I highly doubt its 16%
Are they just trying to throw a generous number out there hoping gullable people will be 'oh its 16% thats not bad at all and it must be true i read it on engadget. now ill tell everyone its only 16% and they will tell ppl and those ppl will tell ppl, and hopefully everyone will think its only 16%!
shouldn't hang out with people who have "born to lose" tattoos.
I bought a 360 elite last year not long after they launched (march 07 i think) the first one died within 1hr of it being opened, the graphics were all corrupted. Took it back and the replacement has been fine up until a month ago when i'd get random rrod's nothing a reboot wouldnt fix but annoying anyway.
I thought for sure ms had gotten these issues resolved by the time they launched the elite, either way i'm ready to submit a claim on mine. It rrod once every 8-10 times i use it
I have the first gen XBOX 360. I go the red ring of death after playing fight night rd3 during a hot summer night. We got the ring for over a week before we contacted microsoft. This was prior to their admission that here was indeed a problem. They told us to send it in a pay the repair charges.
We laid it flat and placed the brick on a different axis. We have never seen the lights again. Our 360 works fine. Plays all night and day.
Can you imagine the wailing and gnashing of teeth if there was an Apple product with such a high failure rate. Sure every product has failures due to margin cutting and rushed production schedules but this is an amazingly high figure.
Doesn't SquareTrade specialize in eBay transactions? I'd say that skews the 16% fairly significantly since a large portion of 360s on eBay are dead already.
I am on my third. One was RRoD and the other was a defective DVD-ROM.
My 360 just brick-boxed the other night. The colors started getting wonky (losing blue/green component channel) while playing. After disconnecting/reconnecting the cables, the box stopped outputting video, though audio still works. I picked up a new component cable to test it out and confirmed that it's not the cable or my TV, but definitely the console. Based on another blog post here from July, it seems to be a widespread problem.
Warranty in this case is inapplicable since there's no RRoD. Thanks, M$ >.>
Times like this I'm happy that my 360 has the gpu heatsink w/ falcon chipset.
I have several friends that bought XBOX 360's and after only a few months had them die. They got replaced by used units. What a ripoff!
I will not be buying one of these POS.
I've had an Xbox 360 since nearly it's launch. I've had three RRoDs. I still have an older model w/o HDMI. The older ones are faulty, just give me a new one so I don't have to replace the thing all the time.
You might be better off with some plug-and-play games: http://lowtechtimes.com/2007/12/20/classic-video-games/
I'm sorry, but saying that the 360 has a great warranty program DOES NOT make up for a horrible failure rate. I would not put up with a third (or even second) return on the system. It would go back to the store for a refund or under the hammer if I couldn't get my money back. I'm amazed at how patient and supportive people are being to Microsoft on this. (And how much they are thus validating Microsoft's poor response to a very serious problem.)
Seriously. Think about it. Would you put up with multiple failures like this on a TV? A microwave oven? A desktop or laptop computer? I don't think so. I for sure would not. One failure, OK, maybe, failures sometimes happen even with the best products. Two? Three? More?!? NO!!!
I was seriously thinking about buying a 360--the games look like a ton of fun. But I will not put up with that sort of aggravation and product shoddiness for any reason. It is completely unacceptable.
Come on, 360 owners! Grow some spines! Be proactive consumers! Take those failed boxes back to the store, get your refunds, and don't look back.
I just got replacement #2... and within 2 days, it's already RROD'ed!!! That means I'll be on my fourth console (original + 3 replacements) soon! I can't believe they sent me one that only lasted 2 days!!!! That's not even a total of 2 hours of play time before it died on me.
ive had mine repaired twice, once cause my disk drive was clicking louder than every sound system turned all the way up in my house and the second for having just turned my 360 on for 10 minutes of CoD4 in campaign and pausing it and having it go crazy and then RRoDin, and now its on its last leg and getting ready for its 3rd trip cause once agian the graphics are fed up and with the fact that it has almost no heat even after 6 hours i pretty sure im on the 45nm
This is one gadget that we have not had any problems with! My boys use it pretty heavily, and it is fine. A few cheap controllers have gone by the wayside, but the device itself has never failed. Sorry to hear about all of the other problems people are having. J
I just got my Red Ring o' Death after a year.. :(
@zeus Wrong...Sony has said that PSN is and will always remain free...good try my friend, good try indeed.
I just got my XBOX back 2 weeks ago for the RRoD. Now the DVD stops spinning on the referbed one. I am sending this one back as well...Siiigh.
16% seems low to me. I've been through 5 XBoxes in the last year. 3 with ring of death, 2 with mechanical failures in the DVD. I'm not ever all that much of a gamer, I just must have terrible luck. In fact, the DVD drive on my my current console is making the same grinding noises that the last 2 did just before they stopped working.
With all the servicing, which is in no means a quick process (takes a few weeks), I've actually had my Xbox out to service more than I have been able to play it.
What I HATE about the replacement process is that when I sent them my (original) RROD machine, it was perfect other than the RROD...I took really good care of it. The unit I got back was totally scratched-up and scuffed-up and had a really noisy fan, like an old/cheap computer will get. I called them back and told them it was unacceptable, they need to replace my unit with something as good or better, not worse!
While I love my 360 and think its awesome, I am a retailer of 360's. Its sux that they break but Microsoft is repairing them free of charge and they are excellent about it.
The number of 360's that break must exceed 50% in my opinion. EVERYONE that i know has had theirs break at least 1 time except for one person. Some have broken 2 times.
I have many customers come to me to fix them and I just send them to Microsoft.
16% sounds low based on my experience.
No I'm not a basher ... I got my 360 on launch day and have personally had *no* problems. Of the 25 people I know well w/ 360s, 17 (68%) have experienced failures (mostly RROD). While I know that the scientific rigor of my method my be lacking here, nonetheless, I fear that the reality's more in the 20%s, at the least ...
Nonetheless, I'd still buy (again) ... the warranty's covered the (others') issues, and the 1000s of hours of gaming love aren't to be sold short.
I had my 360 for almost exactally one year. I got the red-ring of death last week. I'm currently waiting for the box from Microsoft so I can send it back.
16 percent is a shit-ton of people.
Don't buy one!! they are defective!! check xboxlive.com and read the hardware posts, almost all of these crap systems will fail. I bought an Elite 360 ($458.00) and the disk reader failed after less than four months of use and it was manufactured on 6/13/2007!! M$ has not fixed it, when you send it in for repairs they send you a refurbished unit and most of those break too. The junkbox 360 is a POS waste of money and completely unreliable, I warned you!! BUYER BEWARE!!!
higher than 16%
If you are having problems like the "Red Ring of Death" error, or other
problems with overheating consoles, graphic errors, and freeze ups, no audio/no video, error E73, E74, E65 or any other errors, please get in touch with me.
www.fix360guy.com
Microsoft should be having these problems in the first place. They expect to low pass the gaming industry with problems like this? And how much money are you willing to spend to keep getting an XBox replaced? And what happens when that three year warrenty runs out?
I am currently on my third repair this year. It would not be so bad if they could fix it the first time. But three times is absolute incompotents. I am very pissed at MS right now and I have been one of their biggest fans.