100% Xbox 360 Failure Rate - Says Small Time Retailer Options

[homelesschicken]

i could understand having to replace your 360 at least once, but 3+ times? what are the odds? i think it really comes down to the environment you keep it in and way to take care of it.

[bobinator]

i used to say the same things about the 360 before, how reliables mine was and that it never died. well, when it did finally die i was pissed and i have lost all hope in the 360's reliability. the worst thing is that my refurb sounds worse than my previous unit, i originally got my 360 jan 1st a little bit after they launched that November. it is just a shame that such a great console has such a bad track record with reliability. i give my refurb another 2-3 months and it will be dead also. and what really pisses me off is when people say you should only play it for 8 hours, no i will play it for 25 hours if i please. my ps2 never overheated, and i would play gta3 for 15 hours at a time. if i do that with my 360 it feels like it will have a thermal meltdown. if M$ could not figure out a good way to keep it cool, then all they had to do was go back, spend some more time and money on development that to rush a half assed product onto the market.

[dokworm]

I seriously have never seen a product before where multiple people get multiple faulty units.

You could go, OK, 4 xboxes all failing at the same location is either just a statistical blip or a problem at the site. But with page after page of people on their 3rd (or more) unit, it is looking well above the norm as far as failure rates.

I live in a small town and have fixed 23! 360s. Now the town only has 8000 population, I'd wager that there probably aren't more than 50 360s in the entire place. Talking to the guys at blockbuster they have only rented their 360 titles to a dozen or so people. To get that level of failure and *all* of them having the same problem (the connections to the GPU or CPU failing because of board warping) points to a design or manufacturing problem to me. I don't have a single friend with a 360 over 6 months old that *hasn't* failed, now that is really unusual.

Really, I haven't seen this many failure reports on a forum before and I've been around since the Atari 400 days, and have been online since 300baud modems and Compuserve. There just hasn't been this situation with lots of people getting multiple failed units. You used to hear of the occasional single user who had the bad luck to get a dead unit to replace his faulty one, but not so many people getting units that keep failing like this.

Sure there are millions of 360s out there, but I wonder how many people are really getting issues. MS will only be counting ones that fail within warranty (and they won't give out numbers) and many people will have theirs fail outside of warranty and never know about forums like this one.
Looking at the design, the heat the suckers run at, I would not be surprised if the failure rates are really really high compared to other consoles.

[canfan05]

I seriously have never seen a product before where multiple people get multiple faulty units.

You could go, OK, 4 xboxes all failing at the same location is either just a statistical blip or a problem at the site. But with page after page of people on their 3rd (or more) unit, it is looking well above the norm as far as failure rates.

I live in a small town and have fixed 23! 360s. Now the town only has 8000 population, I'd wager that there probably aren't more than 50 360s in the entire place. Talking to the guys at blockbuster they have only rented their 360 titles to a dozen or so people. To get that level of failure and *all* of them having the same problem (the connections to the GPU or CPU failing because of board warping) points to a design or manufacturing problem to me. I don't have a single friend with a 360 over 6 months old that *hasn't* failed, now that is really unusual.

Really, I haven't seen this many failure reports on a forum before and I've been around since the Atari 400 days, and have been online since 300baud modems and Compuserve. There just hasn't been this situation with lots of people getting multiple failed units. You used to hear of the occasional single user who had the bad luck to get a dead unit to replace his faulty one, but not so many people getting units that keep failing like this.

Sure there are millions of 360s out there, but I wonder how many people are really getting issues. MS will only be counting ones that fail within warranty (and they won't give out numbers) and many people will have theirs fail outside of warranty and never know about forums like this one.
Looking at the design, the heat the suckers run at, I would not be surprised if the failure rates are really really high compared to other consoles.

When I called M$ to get mine repaired, the rep told me I could buy an extended warranty for 25$ before the first year expires and do it as long as i wanted to have a warranty...might be a good thing to do for those who want to protect their soon to be expired investments. (I live in Canada by the way, don't know if it's the same thing in the US.

Hope this helps...

[spinr34]

I'd love to do some checking on the voltages these "defective" systems were getting from the outlet or the surge suppressors being used. You guys do know that you're supposed to plug your 360 straight into the wall, not into a power strip or surge protector?

it isn't a power problem. if it was, the psu would prolly fry before the console. also, a heat gun wouldn't fix it if it was caused by spikes in electricity.

[tirri313]

how many people actually go on an article and say that their 360 works perfectly?

their are an excess of 9million 360's that are owned.
so lets say that their are 12 posts a day about 360 problems that arent user created problems.
now compare that number to the number of people that havent reported that their 360 works perfectly

A couple of weeks ago I was an M$ advocate like you, explaining to my 2 friends with bricked 360´s the EXACT same thing. Last week, BYE BYE my 360 as well. (launch version, with media remote) THAT IS 3 BROKEN 360´s out of 5 of us total! So in my sample, i could conclude a 60% failure rate! That is completely unacceptable, the failure rate sould be <1%. STOP KIDDING YOURSELF

[dabigdilla]

I too am on my 4th console.
1st: Launch xbox, 3RL after 4 months. Returned to Best Buy
2nd: lasted a good 11 months, but after only 6 months many new games would not play, would just freeze after only 5 minutes. Returne to Best Buy.
3rd: Lasted 1 WEEK! Console froze just out of the blue. No 3RL, no weird display, just frozen at startup and never would boot again.
4th: Currently (crosses fingers) working fine. All games play perfectly.

I say there is definitely something up with the consoles, and no its not the way I play them or where they are located. Mine has plenty of breathing room, gets used sometimes for 8 hours, sometimes for an hour at a time. The last one that only lasted a week barely got any playing time, so go figure.

The best thing to do is get that replacement plan or ext warranty from the retailer, and return it if ANYTHING is wrong with it. Hey, I have a brand new xbox now, its working great, and i'm covered still for one year with my current replacement plan. In another year, i'll just return it again and get another brand new one and another replacement plan so I'm covered for another 2 years. its worth the extra $50 for peace of mind.

Also, what's with the new xbox power cords not being 3 pronged and grounded? I found that very odd.....

[Havok]

A couple of weeks ago I was an M$ advocate like you, explaining to my 2 friends with bricked 360´s the EXACT same thing. Last week, BYE BYE my 360 as well. (launch version, with media remote) THAT IS 3 BROKEN 360´s out of 5 of us total! So in my sample, i could conclude a 60% failure rate! That is completely unacceptable, the failure rate sould be <1%. STOP KIDDING YOURSELF

Yes but your sample size is not statistically significant so your 60% means nothing.

I have 5 friends with launch 360 and none of them have had a problem. So my failure rate is 0%.

Out of 12,000,000 consoles sold if the failure rate is 5% (which is high but acceptable for electronics.. not less than 1% like you state) means that 600,000 consoles are bad. That is assuming you don't open it up and mess with it. Once you do that who the hell knows what you do to it, you have to run it with the cover off to flash the DVD drive, meaning you are overheating the console because the airflow is designed with the case intact, etc, etc.

This post has been edited by Havok: Mar 15 2007, 06:58 PM