GamesIndustry.biz: Microsoft Needs to Act Now on Hardware Failures Posted by XanTium | May 24 23:58 EST | News Category: Xbox360

From GamesIndustry.biz' Newsletter: [QUOTE] There is another problem which Microsoft faces at the moment - one which the company has shown even less sign of understanding, or addressing. It is the problem of hardware reliability and customer service, an area in which the Xbox 360 has a track record that is nothing short of utterly appalling - and an area which Microsoft absolutely must address, or risk handing the goodwill of the market back to its rivals. This problem hasn't gone away; in fact, from a consumer point of view, Microsoft appears to have done precisely nothing to address it. While the attention of the media may have turned to scrutiny of Sony's failings, the vast numbers of Xbox 360 owners who have been let down first by Microsoft's shoddy manufacturing, and subsequently by the company's arrogant and unfair policies with regard to customer service, have increased. Their voices are contributing to a groundswell of unrest and negative buzz which will hurt Microsoft very badly indeed if it is not addressed. To hardcore gamers, consoles are "special case" items; they are early adopters, generally have a large disposable income, and are willing to accept all manner of problems and flaws in order to enjoy the games they want to play. However, they are a small - if vocal - market. To everyone else, to the vast ocean of consumers to whom Microsoft must now appeal, if the PlayStation brand is to be unseated, a console is just another piece of consumer electronics, and it is subject to the same standards you would expect from your DVD player, your digital camera or your toaster. You wouldn't buy a specific DVD player, no matter how nice the feature-set, if a friend had told you that he bought one last year and had to return it to the manufacturer three times. Right now, those horror stories are proliferating; the word of mouth about Xbox 360 is that the games are great, but the hardware is a nightmare. If Microsoft is serious about reaching an audience with Xbox 360 which is bigger than the 20 million units achieved by Xbox, then that simply isn't good enough. It's time for Redmond to stop burying its head in the sand over this problem, and start coming up with solutions - before its unhappy customers become one of Sony's best assets. [/QUOTE] Full Story: gamesindustry.biz

agreed. My failure rate for my webshop and local biz has been about 30% as oppposed to M$'s "claimed" 3-5% failure rate........ yeah go ahead M$ keep fooling yourself.

^^ aren't you only going to hear from customers when their product isnt working right?

while i haven't had a broken console (still got a launch system), i'm guessing that there is still problems with others. i think a release from microsoft saying the percentage is being released.

i think one factor could be you never hear from the vast majority of people that never have problems, the same goes for the university of dayton, who gives the university laptops from compal. this specific laptop has great ratings from other users, but at the university all you hear is from the people with problems (even though most of the problems are caused by the user lol).

i do think that the percentage of return is high though, but not as high as other people are saying.

Well ive got to say, i think the intercooler has a lot to do with the freezing and all. my system froze maybe a handful of times with it on, and ive taken it off 6 months ago and have yet to see it freeze again. out of all seriousness i dont see anyone complaining about them breaking anymore (i have like 10 local friends who have a 360, and fifty online that play all the time), and i think they fixed that solder contact problem with the second wave of consoles. by the way, mine is either launch or second wave. i got it in january 2006. its a great machine!

Hi,

I'm in Canada and I was just confirmed by an 1-800-4MY-XBOX that I will indeed be getting a refurbished xbox... Now I normally would say ... great... in the order that they are fixing units, they go out to the next customer waiting for their functional unit.... thats pretty efficient...

BUT... with possible hardware failures pretty much a matter of time (I know.. open to debate... perhaps im bias as im staring at 3 red lights after 5 months of perfect operation) before the problems return....

I mean the biggest arguement is... how many people had super nintendo's they needed to bring back... or even cd drive systems... My Dreamcast boots up fine to this day... and my 360 costs hundreds more than that.....

I love my 360.... but my love will go down with each red light that I see.... I think the way things are heading.... its going to be a reocurring nightmare for alot of us.... and MS will need to wake us up if they want to keep us...

if you think about it, and it's been said before, the intercooler pulls on the already existing fans.

for most people, if you keep you 360 well ventilated, you are fine with the original fans.

i wonder why no one has developed faster replacement fans for it yet?

i gotta say from what i "hear" and my own experiences that the xbox360 seems alot less reliable than the original xbox was.

cause i got mine used (basically more or less new) from half.com and so far it's working BUT it does have a glitch in it and i do get a E74 from time to time.

basically if the system is cold (I.E. setting overnight) and i first power it up almost always (pretty much always) nothing shows up on the screen... but once i power it OFF and the back ON it almost always works perfectly fine then.

cause once it's working i basically have 0 problems with it (only had a freeze i think once or so in game, but that was before i bought the "Nyko Intercooler EX" for it, since it got this the system runs MUCH cooler!, i know this cause touching the side of the case is "noticeably" more colder to the touch vs without it)

but it's like someone said im SURE there is alot more failures of the system that microsoft is willing to admit. (they claim, what was it? 3-5percent?)

just some thoughts

I just wish that the warranty would reset itself upon reciept of a new/repaired console. My first died just under a year and MS replaced it with a new unit for free. I just sold it to a buddy to buy an elite and now it died on him only a week or so later. Even though that console is only 6 months old, it's out of warranty.

I totally agree that Microsoft must do something, this story is similar to the one of the PlayStation 2, too many lasers dying and stuff, but not nearly as many 3 red light cases we have seen. It feels like the Xbox 360 is disposable. I bought mine on December 18th (2nd shipment) and it lasted me until March this year. I really took care of it and out of no where, bam and you gotta pay 129$ for re-pairs, which is extremely unfair. Customer service makes you feel like you must spend extra money in order to play.

The only good thing about it is the compesation you get for a well thrown (excuse the language) bitch-fit. I had my brother call who's good at that and he got 50% off on the repair, 6 months of Xbox Live, and 2 years of warranty, which isnt bad. Still sucks you gotta pay 65$ but its better than 130$ + shipping.

I completely agree everybody i know having a xbox 360 had some hardware failure including myself this is my second xbox and i had failure issues many times with that one too(way too much errors)i've been a fan of xbox since the first one came out but now i'm really not sure if i'm gonna buy the xbox 3 if it comes out one day.

hmmm...... the games for it are really addicting but the console is a major problem.... my sig says it all

* and no, those are not replacements from M$

To be fair, you have to consider the type of technology used in the SNES and Dreamcast compared to the 360. Obviously when there's more stuff in a system, there's more room to go wrong. Sure MS could make a rock solid system if they made it like the Dreamcast, but then it wouldnt' be as functional as the 360 is would it?

Its true.. the word on the street.... If you want good games and a system that will breakdown get a 360. if u want crappy games and a perfect system get a Wii... if you want third degree burns and shotty physics get a PS3.

WORD.

i don't think ms will ever admit there is a problem because i think then they are liable and may need to replace the consoles. like replace them with a setup that doesn't have the issues, not just give you another box that more than likely just had some internal code reset, haha (purely speculation)

we all know what the problem is, and i am actually working on a copper gpu heatsink (i have the resources and the knowledge ), but i am still in alpha stages at best and basically am doing it more for proof of concept than anything else. to rectify the issue, follows RBJTechs tips on cooling down the box w/ his homebrew mods, and also do the xclamp/xbracket mod. also, once i get the copper heatsink done, i will probably send one over to RBJTech since he does have a lot of temperature data. if it is better, it is better, if not, than so be it. either way it is a fun way to learn solidworks

PlayStation 2, too many lasers and what did sony do fucking nothing the the new version sill
have shit lasers

i bought another 360 after i got banned and it died 3 hours later, got another one and it would not turn on.

Couldn't have put it better, and MS knows what the problems are, like what was MS' solution to the poorly designed Xclamps? Eproxy on the GPU in the elites.

DAMNNNNNNNN....you really are out of luck,they should give you atleast 1 free year of xbox live gold subsciption for that

Eh, when my launch 360 died (last nov/december I think, right after they extended the warrenties on early/launch units) they had it back to me in 2 weeks, during a busy shipping season. The phone process was quick and painless.

I have a mod'd xbox that still works fine to this day (mostly XBMC, some emu stuff, some old xbox games).

I had a PS2, that died a week after modding. The installer could find nothing wrong with it.. no blown fuses, nothing burnt, uninstalled the mod and still no good. I've gone through several dead PS2s trying to put together one from peices that works even w/o a modchip, and finally gave up. I should have just bought another new one, except you can't get ye olde big PS2s new already at the time I was trying to do this.. stupid slimlines.

I think I'll probably do like a friend of mine did, import a PS2 from Japan.. most of the ones on yahoo auctions aren't as abused as US consoles.. then mod that. I still haven't played MGS3, or God of War, and a few other titles.. plus there are several titles I'd like to play again. Most of the titles I want to play though, weren't even released in the US ...

My NES will probably work once I get off my ass and clean the contacts. SNES is fine, Dreamcast #2 is fine (the first one developed an overheating issue, after I opened it up out of curiosity.. funny thing is, nothing is visibly wrong with it).. Playstation (original) is fine after replacing the lens assembly.

My 360 has probably seen more hours of use than my PS2 did and probably more than my Playstation.. not as many yet as the NES or SNES, however.


So I guess there's a "problem" but part of it is, every single person goes online and whines when something happens, and there's no feedback from people who have zero problems. So it looks worse than it is. And in fact, MS is really great about replacing dead consoles (within warrenty) and will ship you a casket pretty quick, all you do is arrange pickup or take it into a UPS store once you have packaged your 360 according to the (simple) instructions. Wait a few weeks, and you're good.

Understandable, but still a cop out answer. I mean........... Come On!......... With all the technology available and cooling options on the market, coupled with Microsoft's virtually unlimited engineering resources and funding you mean to tell me that they could not create a decent cooling feature for a high powered gaming console???

My PC is more "functional" than my 360 and yet I never have to feel like I'm playing it on "borrowed time."

I dont know anything about system failures. Ive had my 360 since the beginning of February and I have no problems yet. The only problem I ever have is that sometimes it freezes when trying to search for games on UMK3. I pretty much think that problem is with the game though not the console.

To make it worse, I have the 360 sitting on top of my VCR, and I have a cable box on top of the 360 *about the size of a dvd case). That cable box gets damn hot and my 360 is running perfectly. Maybe its just my luck, I also have 2 ps2's, one of which is launch and the other is a V7 with DMS4. No problems with those either so... knock on wood!

Dont get me wrong, I love my 360 and it provides me with hours and hours of fun... I just hope they do actually do something for all those who have dead consoles....

I was even thinking, what if Sony came up with a replacement plan just to get you to switch over to Ps3, would you do it? You know... trade in your broken 360 and games for a PS3 and games? I dunno about you, but I would do it... seems like itd be a better idea than just doing nothing about it.

I purchased a deck 02/07/06 w/ manufacture date 12/31/05 did not buy an extended warranty. 04/03/06 console died w/ less than 60 hours on it. Well ventilated never hacked never even moved from where it was placed under my 50" TV after the first time I pulled it out of the box. I have 2 other friends that have purchased w/ similar stories. MS would not accept my return as I was 3 days outside the original 90 day warranty that has since been changed back to a year like the original xbox. I have since had my brother and one other friend tell me they won't buy a 360 because they are concerned about the lack of quality the console has demonstrated. These are people w/ lots of disposable income that have heard too many horror stories.

Did the article mention how horrible MS xbox customer support has gotten. W/ the original xbox MS was awesome. If something broke MS cross shipped no questions asked and sometimes included small freebies and generally paid for DHL shipping.

To get my 93 day old barely used 360 fixed 3 days outside of 90 day warranty I had to file a BBB complaint which got me an offer for a discounted repair price not including shipping. Upon faxing MS XBOX VP of customer support Richard Kaplan a letter of complaint showing interest in bringing his local TV news KIRO 7 to his office to discuss manufacturing and quality problems w/ the XBOX 360, his secretary suddenly called me and they decided to pay for my refurb if I covered shipping costs also giving me the option again to purchase the extended 2 year warranty which I did.

This is a true story and this process took approximately eight weeks last year. I am an XBOX fan boy. I bought an original XBOX w/in 3 mos. of its original release and purchased three of those decks. I was on LIVE w/in a month of its public availability. I will never buy a SONY product. I am old enough to remember BETA VCR's and DAT and a host of other SONY f/up's. BUT MS HAD BETTER GET THERE S TOGETHER CUZ PEOPLE WON'T PUT UP WITH CRAPPY PRODUCT FOREVER!!

That's what happens when you rush a product to market. If MS had spent another 6 months and charged a little more to get better quality components they would've launched with more reliable hardware and another 6 months worth of titles. Sony took their time (too long some might say) and the reported failures so far for the PS3 have been very low.

That said, my 360 is so far still going strong, which isn't bad considering it's been running without any casing for the past fortnight while I muck around painting it.

My flatmate bought a new 360 last weekend (which was manufactured almost a year ago). The HDD was faulty out of the box, took it back to the shop, got a replacement and it's ok. It shouldn't be a virtual necessity to purchase extended warranties to cover poor manufacturing.

Mine got the 3rlod about 2 month ago It lasted about 15 month,& been doing the towel overheating trick since to fix it temporary the fix usually lasts about 4 days before the 3rlod re-apear,I love the 360 but havent got the spare cash to go out & buy another even when i do get the spare cash I will be strongly thinking about a PS3 as i dont want to risk buying another xbox360 only to last another 12+ month,I wish i new someone locally who new how to do the x-clamp replacement,i wouldnt know the first thing what to do else i would try it myself,Its total bS that MS are denying theres a problem,I have got several consoles in my loft one nearly 15 years old & still plays perfectly,I have read on many forums about the 3rlod & know that there is a definat flaw with the xbox360 & come to the conclusion that MS havent done a damn thing yet to fix the problem in new consoles this is why i want to hold off buying a new one,I think this is going to hurt xbox360 in the long run as more & more people lose confidence In buying the console,If the PS3 reduces its price then I will go & buy one of them instead,try & make my current 3rlod last until this Autumn by doing the temp fix make my decision then,Its even banned as well but can't really argue with that I have had a good run on xboxlive

I have no idea what the fuck this guy is talking bout.

Okay, Microsoft gave everybody a year warranty because everybody bitched about 90 days not being enough. Electronics break. I know it sucks, but at least Microsoft actually does something about it.

Okay, then Microsoft extended everybody's warranty. They didn't have to. The law only says 90 days. So while a lot of people were on their second PS2 within less than a year, Microsoft still is doing warranty repairs.

I bet Sony's warranty repair is as good. Yeah I bet they shipped you a box with the overnight shipping pre-paid. I bet sony didn't charge any customers after 90 days.

I just don't get how these guys are claiming that service is a factor in becomming a "great shipper like ps2". Playstation 2 had an AWFUL service record, I know several people who have bought at least 3 Playstation 2s. THREE!!! Oh you want that DVD laser repaired? Give us 130 plus shipping. COME ON THEY HAD A CLASS ACTION LAWSUIT AGAINST THEM FOR REPAIRS! PLAYSTATION TWO HAD AN AWFUL SERVICE RECORD AND THEY SOLD OVER 100 MILLION!

Its funny that they have trolls writing for such a big news site.

Maybe that's why the Xbox 360 will sell more than the PS3. I'm already on my third console now and I'm not even a big user, just play like 2 hours a week. If this continues, I'll have had 8 consoles when the Xbox 360 retires...

Yes they will, it's called Windows. The only operating system that needs at least 3 different crutch applications just to keep it running.

Come on Bill! Make a little donation to the game division so they can replace the damn weak thin epoxy!!!
(just align quality on PC motherboards and that will do it)

I bought an xbox 360 last march and I am on my 4th xbox 360, after my third one broke I told microsoft that if they didn't give me an xbox 360 elite, I would never buy another microsoft product and they sent me a brand new elite in the box. Every person I know is on atleast there 2nd 360. I would say the failure rate is around 30%

ms was clearly so keen on getting a head start in the console war that they skipped the hardware testing and put these things straight on the shelf. I, being a big xbox1 fan, went straight out and handed over 300 odd quid for an untested piece of hardware. That alone is enough to piss me off. The fact that my 360 got the 3RLOD out of its warranty and MS wanted nothing to do with it was just the icing on the cake.

I've now bought a macbook and my pc is is running ubuntu. might get a ps3 when more games come out. MS = balls

Mine finally red-lighted on the 9th of May...I was a launch 360 built in October of 2005. It was the update that killed it.

I have 9 people in my buddy list. ALL 9 have had to send their units back. I don't care how you try to refute it, more than 2-3% have had problems. You can say all the "you only hear about those with problems", but it's beyond that, almost comical. How are we supposed to proliferate as a community and recoemmend these consoles to others when there is a problem like this? I've been telling people to wait for the 65nm CPU and definitely buy the $60 warranty.

I also find it rediculous the amount of time that you must wait to get the empty box, send it out and have it returned. 3-4 weeks for East Coast. This is a problem they created, not an abuse from the user - better service is a must.

I agree and think that Microsoft can never recover fully from these rumours and the repeated failures many people have had. I know about 6 people with 360's and mine is the only one to fail. Mine was one of the early UK ones they rushed to ship to get in before Christmas 2005, most of the others are at least 6 months newer.

After about 4 months of use mine died. Microsoft was very helpful on the phone and would have swapped it free but expected it to take 2 weeks so I returned it to the shop for an instant exchange. (UK law gives much better protection than US law so we have always had better than 90 days from the retailer although the law does not specify an exact time scale.)

Even if there were never any more failures there would be news reports repeating old news. Microsoft's only real hope is that the PS3 is just as unreliable in it's early days.

I never read PS3 forum's so I have no idea about Sony's reliability.

Faulty or not the xbox360 has the games I want to play and I like the controllers better than the Sony ones. I won't change and I suspect that comparing the reliability of consoles is also low down other gamers choices when they go to buy one.

Having all three new consoles, 360 (December 2005) + PS3 + Wii, and reading around on the web, I have to say the 360 is the one causing the most fear of a hardware failure. I have the extended warranty until spring 2008.
But a year after the PS# and Wii have been around and gotten some use, perhaps they will catch up to the 360's reputation.
I am dreading Halo3, I have a feeling the loads caused by extended playing and the newer AI will show any weakness present. Guess, I'll have to run through Oblivion again and see if anything breaks.

Well I own 2 360's ,one of which is a Launch Day console, and I have had no problems with mine.I have also bought one as a Birthday gift for a friend and they have had no problems as well.Compare that to my PS2 which I am now on my 4th one because of bad lasers.I bought a Launch Day Xbox 1 and it lasted 6 months before the crappy Thompson Drive died but it was an easy fix by replacing it with a Sammy.
I don't understand why everyone can't resist the urge to condemn a console manufacturer for problems that every game console released has had.The original Playstation suffered from overheating and DRE's,the SCPH-1001 model, but once again I had purchased a Launch Day system that everyone had complained about but I've never had a single problem with it and it is still working today.The same with the Dreamcast where there were many reports of overheating and some units even melting down,but once again my Launch Dreamcast is still going strong.A LOT of these problems are often caused by the end user whether they want to admit it or not and some may not even realize it,course I'm not defending MS..not all the blame rests with the end user...they do have some manufacturing problems they need to address.
As for my PS3 well....things haven't went smoothly.It crashed 3 times while I was trying to go thru the setup and still occasionally exhibits quirky behavior...the main problem being the Bluetooth sync problem with the controller,it will suddenly develop a mind of its own and thats not a good thing in the middle of a firefight,lost count how many times I got axed because the controller wouldn't respond.

I got a 360 at launch (manufacture date October 2005) and it died right after the most recent Spring 2007 update. It was working great as recently as the week before the update. All games just started freezing right away. No red lights but I assume that would have come eventually. Maybe my console just started freezing by coincidence after the update but I don't think so. I have read about too many other people where the same thing happened.
I emailed Microsoft support just for the heck of it (I am out of warranty obviously) but they're useless.

What I ended up doing was buying an 'open box' core 360 from BestBuy (in Canada) for $155 less than a new one but I was still able to get BestBuy's extended warranty on it. So for $50 canadian I have a 2 year warranty on my new (previously used) 360.
I noticed that the open box 360 I bought has a manufacture date of September 2005 so its even older than mine. So far it is working just fine but I did notice when I took off the faceplate that it's already been repaired once. There is a sticker where the Microsoft sticker used to be saying something like 'Repaired by MTC electronics'.

I would be willing to put money down that I will be using my BestBuy extended warranty within the next 2 years.

Anthony.

i had a red light 360 but sold it for parts on ebay

got another one and that got banned

i got a new motherboard but now i think the dvd drive is dying


might go pick up a wii

The fact is 90% of the problems are fixable via the X-Clamp removable method founded by RBJtech. Thanks to him I bought my 360 back to life with less an $5 worth of parts. However I can not blame my 3ROL issues totally on MS because

a) I used an intercooler for 3-4 weeks and started having 3ROL issues with it and had to rip it off
I open my 360 and accidentally unscrewed the 8 black screws holding the X-Clamps to the bottom of the case.

Anyway there obviously is a problem with many 360's. We have identified the problem and so has MS, the only thing they have to do is address the issue in their manufacturing process. The 65nm chips should also help reduce the failure rates.

I forgot to mention that I know only 2 other people personally who got a 360 at Launch (or near enough) and both of them have had their 360s fail on them. Luckily for them both were still under warranty.

I'd have to agree. Just last night, my friend who I would describe as an average consumer said something along these lines:

"360 has some great games, now and coming up but I heard the hardware is mad fucked up"


When someone like he knows that, it's not a good thing for MS.

http://forums.xbox.com/ShowPost.aspx?PageI...PostID=12716953
I love the 360 it's a brilliant idea, the practicality of the physical piece of hardware is now quesitonable. I've had to resort to using a towel to fix mine, the $200AUD price tag for MS to fix it is just ridiculous. Especially considering the console was only 2 months out of warranty, I work in IT and most places like HP will normally give you warranty if it's that close to it. 6 months out no way, 2 months maybe type stuff, I got told by the N00B on the xbox support phone that warranty is warranty and
I had to bight my tongue not to reply sh!t service is sh!t service.
What's this X clamp Removable method that I've heard mentioned in here?
Check out the three red light club on xbox.com, I'm telling people to not give them anymore money buy a 360 second hand if you have to, we need to make microsoft hurt here. Unfortunately the only way they're going to listen is if we hurt them where it hurts most, their wallets.
I'm thinking of going so far as to setup a boicot halo3 website until Microsoft acknowledge there terrible hardware and do something about it. I'm beyond reprive now, I think the towel trick should definitely render my warranty invalid but what about the poor mums and dads that have scraped to get their kids the latest in greatest, that's who I want Microsoft to help.
You're dodgy bastards Microsoft and I'm calling you liars, not salesman just dirty stinking filthy liars. I believed all your bullshit about 2-3% failure rate which I attributed to people not setting their consoles up in the best environment (tucked away in a tiny shelf etc), but I've treated my console with the upmost respect and it's never had a day where it's had any of it's vents blocked or anything like that, always good air flow and always kept clean (until having to resort to the towel trick that is). Anyway that's my spleen vented I'm off to bed.

MS has built an entire empire based on mediocre products that for whatever reason people continue buy. So why would they stop this winning formula now?

I am doubtful that they will do anything to fix this issue And really why should they? so long as we the consumer continue to reward them for shotty work buy buying consoles at rate that exceeds their competitor their is absolutely no reason for them to fix anything.

I agree there sevice contract is a joke. I sent my 360 in 3 times and Microsoft refuses to send me a new console. I requested one and they deny me every time. They keep sending me refurbished systems.

Whatever reason? No, its the best reason - at least from microsoft's standpoint.
They have exactly what any producer would want - completely free third party support - by the millions.

Most programs these days have a windows varient - if not windows dependent. They have a foothold which will no easily be broken - that would require software companies to retrain staff, costing time and money with little to no revenue comming in. All of this to support a product which has a minority of the market share, quite literally a fraction of it. Its not going to happen any time soon.

3 ring of death. I play on live all the time and I get message about once a month from people that say there box took a dump. Some have sent in there box and got a different one back and gone through this over 4 times.???? That is crazy.

I would say the fail rate is 40 percent over the lifetime of the box 30 percent has to be the 3 ring of death. All my friends have had there box replaced. One came out of the box from Best Buy and lasted a month... HAHA. I suggest you purchase the replacement warranty from Best Buy or Frys Electronics.

It’s a shame... I think they learned a lesson on this one. Maybe they will have higher standards when they build the next system. The last thing that should break on a system is the motherboard or components on the motherboard CPU/memory. The first thing to go should be the hard drive... That’s it...

I think we should start a class action law suit.

Just how feel m8

as mines broke think I'll end up resorting to scamiing a big chain store as they have some nice return policys here done it b4
what I'll end up doing is going out & buying a new xbox360 from say TESCO,get back home with my shiny new xbox360,then put my 3rlod Knackered xbox360 nicely back in the wrapping then a few hours later return to the store & just give them some bull about getting home & console is faulty not loading any games etc,& ask for a exchange (if i feel real cheeky may ask for a refund)show receipt that it was only purchased 3 hours earlier,99 times out of 100 they will just exchange there & then if they do look in the box very unlikely they will tell as most staff behind a big chain store wont know what there looking for anyway,dont know if any big chain stores have similar policys in AUS or US but in the UK ive done this times when somethings broke,do i feel guilty?,Do I F**K

Since when should a person be compelled to write feedback when a product is working as it is SUPPOSED to? I don't feel the need to "brag" that my TV powers on every day...well passed it's warranty period, I should add. (Ok, maybe I just did). I have repaired quite a number of these consoles now. Practically all of the ones that were repairable had the same issue outlined in RBJtech's tutorial. Even "IF" the numbers were as low as M$ claims...this many consoles with the same problem is not a coincidence. It IS a manufacturing defect, no matter what their claimed percentage of "bad apples" might be.



That's not "fair". You have to equate the "type of technology" with the period it was made, and the SNES, DC, or any other system was cutting edge for it's time, which could have been just as prone to as many problems as what the current generation seem to have. I still have my Dreamcast, and it works just fine, and component-wise, really isn't much different from any other optical drive based game console. In fact, I still have an Atari 2600...plays games fine. For the 70's..you wouldn't get much more technologically advanced than that for a consumer based product. I am planning on buying a quad core CPU in the near future. While I really don't know exactly how it would stack up against the "tri-core" IBM cpu in the 360, I would assume they are at least mildly similar. I believe the quad-core, and pretty much all of Intel's current core2duo line come with a 3year warranty, which tells me they are willing to stand by their product...even the most technologically advanced of their line. I don't believe it was "generous" of M$ to extend it's warranty from 90 days to 1 year. I believe it was the easiest way for them to suppress the outrage, while still being able to deny that a problem exists.

Remember the PSU soldering issue with some of the early xbox1s? M$'s solution was not a recall, but a new wall plug with a breaker attached. So, your power supply could still intially arc, because the problem itself wasn't fixed, but the breaker would throw itself to prevent any futher damage done AFTER the arc. M$'s solution to everything is a patch. They have grown up from a small 70's software company, to a corporation, and is very much taking the corporate approach to maximize profit, and minimize losses with this situation. If they are going to limit their liability from their manf. faults, they must accept a very vocal group of dissatisfied customers.

M$ should realize that their OS customers and their console customers aren't always the same. M$ has conditioned people to believe that an OS have a certain amount of flaws, that might need to be addressed later...(with yet more patches), and from the sounds of some people on here, they are conditioning people to accept shorter electronics life. M$'s corporate mentality might be acceptable for most users of M$'s OS, however, I don't think that the young adults they are marketing the 360 console to, care, understand, or are willing to accept why their consoles are dying prematurely. Isn't the point of a gaming console to just turn it on and play? I would think if people were expecting to have to deal with problems, they would just play games on their PC.

While a single consumer may not win against a corporation, the BEST one can do is speak out informing others of the problems they have had with a product. If M$ is arrogant enough to believe they have been building a reliable product since day one, it will be their dissolution...not the consumer's, and they will exodus those customers to a new brand.

You people denying it will shut your mouth 'when' it happens to you. I was a bit of a denyer until it happened to me at the beggining of the month. Mine was a June 26 2006 model and I bought it at the end of December so I only had it for 4 months. The issue is with manufacturing and likely affects every console. The issue varies on how long it takes to show up. Mine was taken care of extremely well so no, user error has nothing to do with it.

I'm not bitter anymore though because I fixed it by replacing the X-Clamps and screwing down the heatsinks. It's been going strong for a few weeks now with a lot of play.

im on my second one after my release day premium started to freeze and give the 3 red lights. fixed that and it went well for a while. then it started again... bought a core.

It has great games but when i start that thing its always stressful... you never now when its going to happen.

Making things worse they start to ban people. LOL

Well i have lots of friends with 360 and all of them had a problem with the console. some just gave up, and with this strict policy about bans, well more and more are starting to give up as well.

People are saying that its just stupid to go and buy a ps3 to replace the 360. Its not that stupid anymore and with the awesome 1.8 firmware on the ps3. well its just getting closer and closer to the functions of the 360.

I have the 3 "next gen". the one i most enjoy is the 360 but with all this in one year? i dont know but the ps3 is looking more and more like the machine sony promised. Let there be a killer app and bye bye 360. My friend list its starting to migrate from the 360 to the ps3. Slowly but steadly.

This is totally beside the point. I expect games consoles to be maintenance free for at least five years unlike my MR2 Turbo. For the lucky few of us who actually have the balls to do the X-Clamp fix, we can get our 360's working again but at what cost in time/money/stress? For the vast majority of 360 owners, the X-Clamp fix is not an option. These people rely entirely on the warranty which, if their 360 lasts longer than usual, will expire just before they get the 3RLOD.

and most users these days dont need any of that. All they need is a solid OS, with a word processor, an internet browser, and an email client. corporations have been fooled into thinking they need to buy these products from MS because there is nothing else out there or because of 3rd party support. While I do agree with you that windoze has great 3rd party support, I disagree with you that the average user and small company will ever take advantage of that past the point where it makes sense to not go with linux or a mac. This foothold is all in peoples heads.

the xbox 360 has had fantastic sales. there is no doubt about it. They continue to outsell sony by a fairly large margin. So why should MS change, or try to fix anything? We live in a market driven society, and they have a model that works well. Early adopters of anything MS are bound to feel pain. Its part of their MO, early adopters are the beta testers. We have known this for years. My guess is that MS will finally "fix" this issue, when it makes financial sense to move to 65nm simply by reducing heat output. The funnly thing is that they could easily implement something as simple as RBJTechs shroud mod for nearly nothing (its just molded plastic) and eliminate a good number of these cases all together. But why even do that until it hits them in their pocket book?