Xbox 360 Failure Rate 33%

[error_f0rce]

According to a poll taken by DailyTech.com, 1 in every 3 Xbox 360's fails. From EB Games salesmen to Best Buy store employees, workers under the condition of anonymity, are revealing a disturbing trend: the Xbox 360 is the least reliable gaming console in recent history.

One could speculate that Microsoft's recent announcement of a warranty extension for the Xbox 360 is a direct response to the increasing public awareness of this problem.

On the flip side, ProductReviews.net is stating the Sony PS3 and Nintendo Wii failure rates are under 1%.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[x2mA mPn]

1 in every 3! god that is huge but then again 33% dosent sound like much but still, i already knew from day 1 when they started red lighting this thing was going to break some kind of record

i bet 20% out of that 33% went to the guy who had 11 X360's break on him

 

[Dippyskoodlez]

Another EB Games manager, when asked if the store warranty was worth it, conceded that in the hundreds of Wii units sold at that location thus far, zero have come back as defective.

Nice.

PS3 was "sub 1%".


Have we seen any specific causes of deaths? Heat? Dead CPU? Ram? Firmware?

I'm more curious about WHAT is dieing in the 360's than the fact they're dieing.

 

[L|NK|N]

I read in some instances that overheating would cause the pcb to bend and then cause the gpu or cpu or both to seperate from the PCB. ouch

 

[Oo_Skyline_oO]

...

hahahahahahaha, as soon as I saw the words xbox and failure I started laughing. Did everyone forget?...........ITS MICROSOFT

 

[refujee]

Sounds like heat is the issue. The GPU heats up so much that it becomes desoldered from the BGA.

 

[15th Warlock]

MS just announced yesterday that they will increase the warranty of all 360s to three years!

Ppl who had their 360s RMA after their warranty period will get a full refund from MS.

MS stated that they are investing 1~1.05 billion dollars in refunds and support for the extended warranty, which is in line with a 33% failure figure if you take into account that almost 10 million units have been sold.

What was in MS mind when the 360 came with a three month warranty only at its release, is beyond me; I guess they finally heard the outrage, and are trying to prevent a multi-million class action suit by millions of 360 owners with dead consoles. At least the full refound will surely appease most angry consumers.

Have we seen any specific causes of deaths? Heat? Dead CPU? Ram? Firmware?

The CPU and GPU overheat too much, warping and bending the motherboard and breaking the BGA contact, MS tried to prevent this in the Elite model by gluing the GPU/CPU to the mobo with hard epoxy, and using a heatpipe and extra heatsinks on refurbished units...

 

[erocker]

Sounds to me like a console that was not thought out enough and rushed out. The only Microsoft hardware I buy are these cheap keyboards. M$ makes great cheap keyboards!

 

[Alcpone]

If its heat thats killing the 33% I bet the 360 is crammed into a cabinet with little airflow in the hotter countries! But offering a full refund after the end of the 3 year warranty is pretty sweet if you ask me, PS2's were known for dying aswel I bet Sony did'nt give there customers there money back after 3 years.

 

[jocksteeluk]

one thing it doenst say is the likelihood of much older consoles failing at a later date. It was pretty obvious the now 3 year warranty was to help limit the negative publicity which will no doubt effect sales of xbox 360's regardless of the modifications to the hardware specifications.

 

[newtekie1]

If its heat thats killing the 33% I bet the 360 is crammed into a cabinet with little airflow in the hotter countries! But offering a full refund after the end of the 3 year warranty is pretty sweet if you ask me, PS2's were known for dying aswel I bet Sony did'nt give there customers there money back after 3 years.

I don't see anywhere where it says they are giving full refunds after 3 years. You just send the unit in and they give you a refurbished one.

I don't know what is causing the problems, but it isn't happening to the other consoles, so my guess is it is Microsoft's fault, so they are only doing the right thing by extending the warranty.

 

[15th Warlock]

I don't see anywhere where it says they are giving full refunds after 3 years. You just send the unit in and they give you a refurbished one.

They are giving full refunds to ppl who already paid for having their 360s repaired and who were out of the original warranty period, thus having to pay for their RMAs. MS will return them their money.

 

[newtekie1]

They are giving full refunds of what they paid for the repair, not full refunds on the price of the console as Alcpone stated, and they certainly aren't doing it AFTER the end of the 3 year warranty.

 

[Easy Rhino]

Sounds to me like a console that was not thought out enough and rushed out. The only Microsoft hardware I buy are these cheap keyboards. M$ makes great cheap keyboards!

haha yup. ive been spilling crap on it and banging it against the wall for more years than i can count! perhaps the guy in charge of making the keyboards should be promoted to xbox360 quality control

 

[error_f0rce]

haha yup. ive been spilling crap on it and banging it against the wall for more years than i can count! perhaps the guy in charge of making the keyboards should be promoted to xbox360 quality control

hahahaha, oh man, the people here at work must think I'm crazy when I burst out laughing reading posts like that

It would be interesting to poll how many of the people who returned defective 360's have air conditioning in their homes, and if the number of failed units increases during hot weather.

 

[demonbrawn]

They're dropping like flies and they all seem to be happening at the same time, which is just funny. My bro just called me and said he just got the rrod.

 

[yogurt_21]

lol 1 in 3? everyone look to right, and now to your left, one of your xbox360's is going to fail. lol

 

[Dippyskoodlez]

The CPU and GPU overheat too much, warping and bending the motherboard and breaking the BGA contact, MS tried to prevent this in the Elite model by gluing the GPU/CPU to the mobo with hard epoxy, and using a heatpipe and extra heatsinks on refurbished units...

These engineers need shot for letting something like this run wild.

But I guess they did it to themselves.

 

[OnBoard]

Time to stick that xbox360 to a well ventilated PC case, with big heatpipe coolers and call it a Vista gaming platform

Wonder if these same issues pushed PS3 back (and they fixed them before sendig them to consumers)? Wii is so "slow" that it propably runs cooler than ambient, so it doesn't break

 

[JC316]

I read in some instances that overheating would cause the pcb to bend and then cause the gpu or cpu or both to seperate from the PCB. ouch

Which is preciesly why yours has that added fan . Help exaust that heat out of the case. Sucker does get insanely hot though, I am shocked that the failure rate isn't higher.

 

[SK-1]

I had two of the original XBox consoles FAIL on me within 1 flipping year so this is not a surprise
at all to me.

 

[15th Warlock]

They are giving full refunds of what they paid for the repair, not full refunds on the price of the console as Alcpone stated, and they certainly aren't doing it AFTER the end of the 3 year warranty.

Yes, of course you're right; it's only for the out of warranty repairs and/or refurbished units, why should they give a full refund for the price of the console? I don't think that would be a good business practice, not even for MS

 

[Wile E]

They're dropping like flies and they all seem to be happening at the same time, which is just funny. My bro just called me and said he just got the rrod.

Same here, my little bro just called me today to find out what the red lights mean. He worked hard for a year to save the money for (He's only 12). He just bought it in February.

If its heat thats killing the 33% I bet the 360 is crammed into a cabinet with little airflow in the hotter countries!

His was on top of his dresser, next to his TV, in the open air, in a central air-cooled home.

 

[wazzledoozle]

Whatever happened to the 360 being watercooled? At the end of the 360 viral advertising campaign there was a video with Peter Moore 'revealing' the 360, and he said it had watercooling.

 

[Benpi]

I have 3 360s, 1 one of them have failed with the 3ROD, and 1 has a malfunctioning disc tray. Still, I don't believe polls like this because they are not factual numbers. The only people who know the exact percentage are the people at microsoft. If you play on Xbox live, you RARELY EVER hear people talking about their broken 360s. If your 360 breaks, you're going to go online and bitch about it. If your 360 doesn't break you're not going to go online and tell everyone how much fun you're having, because you're having too much fun. Thus, it would seem like there is a 1/3 failure rate, but I really don't believe it.