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Anecdotal: Red Ring of Death rate is 33% says DailyTech
Ever hear the song that doesn't end? We have our own rendition for the continuing Red Ring of Death debacle: This Red Ring mess just doesn't end. Yes it goes on and on my friend. Xbox owners started getting it not knowing what it was. And we'll keep on reporting it 'til someone fesses up. (And now just keep repeating.) The latest news comes from DailyTech who says that the failure rate is somewhere around 33%. Now let's just slow it down and take a step back. DailyTech came to the conclusion with the use of unnamed sources and no documentation. The Microsoft version of the Pentagon Papers this is not.But, they did put some effort into the work, which although being anecdotal, does give a better picture to the situation. DailyTech contacted retail outlets that offer in-store extended warranties and found the Xbox 360 to be the least reliable. They also mention conference calls for EB Games stores which led to warranty policy changes due to the failure rate. A former EB Games employee by the name of Matthieu G. says, "The real numbers were between 30 to 33 percent ... We had 35 Xbox 360s at launch I know more than half of them broke within the first six months (red lights or making circles under the game discs). Two of them were dead on arrival." Of course, this is referring to launch Xbox 360s, an issue Microsoft has already addressed.The rest of the article beyond that is just a chronology of everything that's been covered before, culminating in the cringe inducing Holmdahl interview with the Mercury Times. As more and more media outlets join the bandwagon, it's amazing that Microsoft hasn't just released the numbers regarding the failure rate, which they say is less than 5%. If you were a corporation with the evidence to make this all go away and you were telling the truth, why wouldn't you just do it at this point? And the next media outlet to report on the Red Ring of Death is?
UK repair service Micromart refuses Xbox 360
UK repair service Micromart is refusing to service any more Xbox 360s due to a "base manufacturing problem that potentially affects all 360s" they tell Joystiq. Before they stopped repairing Xbox 360s, which they are not an authorized repair center for, they were getting in "around 30 a week." Customers who are looking for the quick service of Micromart are suggested to "contact Microsoft for a motherboard replacement" as it's the only guaranteed fix according to Micromart. Jeff Croft of Micromart says, "We saw it over a period of several months and it was just getting worse. It began towards the end of last year. Once the twelve month warranty finished then we started to see more and more machines being sent in to be looked at ... The problem with three red lights was there fairly regularly, but over two or three months it became a real issue." Croft goes on to say that even after the repairs that Micromart had done they were not happy with the result. They believe it is a problem with the motherboard and weren't comfortable charging customers for labor on a product for a problem they believed wasn't going to go away. Croft sent a letter to Microsoft with their concerns, but says they've received no response.[Thanks, ktchong, CR, Jem]Read - Micromart homepageRead - Repair Firm Won't Service Ring of Death 360s (Next-Gen)Read - Repair Specialist Refuses to Take Further Xbox 360s (GI.biz)
Audio proof of one man's 11 dead Xbox 360s
As Microsoft dances around the Xbox 360 hardware failure class action lawsuit just begging to happen, 1UP has one more piece of "anecdotal" evidence to throw on the pyre. They offer up the tale of Justin Lowe and his 11 failed Xbox 360s. "No, that's impossible!" scream the fanboys in their best Luke Skywalker impression. Ah, but Lowe went ahead and got audio evidence to prove it's true. The recording (found below) covers his conversation with Xbox India support as they walk through every single one of his failed consoles. Although the recording is long and just goes through the motions, evidence isn't always sexy, sometimes it just proves a point.Now, we're sure that Lowe keeps his Xbox 360 wrapped in an old shag carpet, standing vertically, in a room that has the humidity of the Amazon rainforest ... oh, and the electrical system in his house consistently causes spikes. Did we cover everything there? 1UP went through the motions, like every media outlet pretty much has done at this point, and received the standard wall of there being nothing wrong and that the newly installed heatsinks are merely part of the regular updating of components in consoles. As Microsoft previously asserted, they "do not provide details on these updates." Lowe, who is on console number 12 now, says, "I still like Microsoft, as much as that may astound people. There's no real hate towards the company for what I have experienced." And we just keep telling ourselves: Don't focus on failure, focus on repair.Lowe Recording:
A valiant attempt to get Xbox 360 failure rate answers
Dean Takahashi from the San Jose Mercury News recently sat down with Todd Holmdahl, Microsoft's man in charge of the quality for the Xbox 360. Takahashi is another reporter trying to get Microsoft fessing up to the actual failure rate of the Xbox 360, a machine that many enjoy and continues to show its worth, but has an anecdotally tragic failure rate. It would probably make a great chapter if Takahashi ever follows up his book Xbox 360 Uncloaked. Takahashi does his best get answers in the interview to what's really going on with the system's failure rate, but if you've ever wondered what corporate stonewalling looks like, make sure to read the full interview.Highlights from the interview after the break
Moore: Don't focus on Xbox 360 failure, focus on repair
In a recent interview with Microsoft's Peter Moore, Mike Antonucci of the Mercury News had a portion of his interview dedicated to reader questions. The topic of the Xbox 360's failure rate was bound to come up. In a stunning display of spin typically reserved for only the best bad Sony news, Moore says consumers should focus on their treatment once their Xbox 360 fails, not the failure itself. Moore says, "I can't comment on failure rates, because it's just not something -- it's a moving target. What this consumer should worry about is the way that we've treated him. Y'know, things break, and if we've treated him well and fixed his problem, that's something that we're focused on right now. I'm not going to comment on individual failure rates because I'm shipping in 36 countries and it's a complex business."It's a moving target? It may be an ever increasing target (or decreasing target), but it's hardly moving. All it takes is the number of defective units sent in for repair, divided by units sold and voila ... a clear number. Nobody is screaming recall and owners have come to expect the Xbox 360's failure as part of the console's lore, but they're sticking to that 3% figure ... which works out to over 300K units, no small number.[Via 1UP]
GayGamer visited by the Red Ring of Death
Another month, another media outlet visited by the Xbox 360's Red Ring of Death. Two weeks ago we told the story of The Weekly Geek show. Now the gentlemen of GayGamer castle were visited and have lifted the drawbridge to keep the Xbox Reaper (pictured) from wandering around to the rest of their consoles. Timsy over at GayGamer gave a good sob story when he called to declare the death of his console and by the grace of Microsoft he'll pay $70, instead of the $140, for the repair. Of course, he'll be documenting the process for their readers, a story we are all too familiar with.Microsoft just recently expanded their repair policy again. After increasing the warranty to a year, now if your Xbox 360 is visited by the Xbox Reaper, after paying for the repair you'll receive another year of warranty. Typically this is the part where we'd go over Microsoft fibbing greatly about the 3 percent failure rate, especially when you take the great fanboy story of seven deaths into the equation, but we'll just let all that go for once. Just tell your Xbox 360 you love it every night, because you never know when the Xbox Reaper will pay her a visit.
