Rumor: Xbox 360 Failure Rates Still Around 10%
Posted by William on Sunday, January 20th, 2008 at 10:40 am under Game Companies, Game Consoles, Game Platforms, Microsoft, Microsoft
A recent interview on 8Bit Joystick reveals that the Xbox 360 is still having some serious hardware issues. The interview was with an anonymous Xbox 360 hardware designer. According to the new interview, the Xbox 360 still has some serious hardware issues that have not been properly addressed by Microsoft:
Q: How much more reliable are the current generation of Xbox 360 than the previous designs? Original Xenon, Zypher and Falcon. I’ve heard that the failure rates for the current design is sub 10%. Much much better, but still too high imoh. And those designs haven’t seen much life yet, so no one knows if that failure rate will hold.
If the new failure rate is close to 10%, that’s a victory for Microsoft in the fact that they have obviously fixed some things, but it’s still an extremely high failure rate for consumer electronics. The older generation of 360s had a 30 to 33 percent failure rate by most estimations. At least it’s not that bad anymore. Although the 360 continues to sell well, I have to wonder how many people will risk buying their next console in it’s early stages.
Via Gizmodo
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January 20th, 2008 at 10:50 am
[...] post by William and software by Elliott [...]
January 20th, 2008 at 11:06 am
The bit I found really funny about that interview was when he spoke about the system of returns where they basically take your faulty console and send you straight out a working one of the same model regardless of whether its a Xenon, Zephyr or Falcon meaning someone who has waited to buy one of the new Falcons could send it in and get a Xenon as a replacement
William said: "Although the 360 continues to sell well,"
Its the worst selling console in the world so far this year;
Nintendo DS - 1,194,285
Nintendo Wii - 785,919
Sony PSP - 603,655
Sony PS3 - 421,129
Sony PS2 - 346,977
Xbox 360 - 339,928
January 20th, 2008 at 11:30 am
I didn't say it continues to sell the highest.
339,928 is still "well" in my opinion for something with such a high failure rate.
January 20th, 2008 at 11:35 am
well ofcourse the 360 is gonna run into problems if they update their Firmware stuff see Nintendo and Sony do Firmwares but I bet Microsoft doesnt. haha
January 20th, 2008 at 11:39 am
My 360 elite failed yesterday
January 20th, 2008 at 11:58 am
[...] post by William [...]
January 20th, 2008 at 12:44 pm
[...] Rumor: Xbox 360 Failure Rates Still Around 10% By William A recent interview on 8Bit Joystick reveals that the Xbox 360 is still having some serious hardware issues. The interview was with an anonymous Xbox 360 hardware designer. According to the new interview, the Xbox 360 still has some … Gaming Today - http://news.filefront.com [...]
January 20th, 2008 at 12:56 pm
William said; "I didn't say it continues to sell the highest.
339,928 is still "well" in my opinion for something with such a high failure rate."
You say it continues to sell well but compared to what? Its being outsold on a weekly basis by every other console including Sonys 8 year old PS2 so it is clearly not selling well at the moment. When the PS3 was in last place in weekly sales last year I dont recall you or anyone else on this site saying it was selling well and to ignore the fact that all the other consoles are outselling it. I seem to recall you seeing being bottom of the sales charts as being indicitive of poor sales. Strange double standards being shown here.
Do you seriously believe that not being above the PS2 in weekly sales over 2 years after release is where the 360 should be right now if it were selling well especially when they have recently released the biggest exclusive it has?
The 360 is not selling well. Last year the 360 outsold the PS3 in the States by 2.5m units but outside the States the PS3 sold 1.8m more than the 360 and that's when the PS3 was way more expensive and only on sale in the EU for 9 months of the year.
If you divide up each consoles total sales by length of time released in each region it works out that the 360 has sold an average of 659k a month since launch while the PS3 has shifted 840k.
January 20th, 2008 at 1:21 pm
this 10% claim would be easier to accept if the source wasnt anonymous.
although it does show microsoft are starting to get their act together, if it is true.
January 20th, 2008 at 2:50 pm
Well the offical figures are in for 2007 and the ps3 sold……2.56 million consoles! Ha ha ha ha ha! Look it up for yourself, it will be so much sweeter! And as for the blu ray? Hmmm do I want a massive george foreman on top of my TV where I have the pleasure of paying $20-$30 for a single disk or download them for a fraction of that? Bringing out these expensive disks is only going to speed up the process of the extinction of dvds just like cds
January 20th, 2008 at 2:56 pm
I was just looking that up, why are they doing so badly? It looks like the better console, what happened to all the ps2 users? The figures for nintendo are unbelievable, they beat sony and xbox put together!!!
January 20th, 2008 at 3:28 pm
xbox has 18 million users with 10 million on LIVE ($400 000 000 revenue alone) and a string of triple A titles with some like GOW still in the top 10. Even if every ps3 user buys the 5 or so exclusives coming out this year that won't even scratch the surface of the vast amount of xbox games being sold. It's the games sales revenue xbox is making that is destroying ps3 who are yet to even turn a profit.
January 20th, 2008 at 3:39 pm
My sex organ is bigger than your sex organ, or, I can pee farther than you can pee.
If you're selling three hundred thousand of anything in one month, that usually means well in my book. Ignore the foolishness.
January 20th, 2008 at 3:51 pm
Yes ps3 only sold a couple million last year but that's only because xbox is cheaper and was out a year earlier. It's also the developers fault for not giving sony exclusives and sony should get extra stuff on multi format games. ps3 is out for another 10 years so people are just waiting because there is no rush. All those 18 million xbox users are ps2 traitors anyway who cares about them
January 20th, 2008 at 4:23 pm
Why does everything have to be a fucking console war?
January 20th, 2008 at 4:25 pm
Well it must be if they are failing in stores…
http://www.gametrailers.com/player/usermovies/158071.html
January 20th, 2008 at 4:37 pm
This wasn't really intended to be a system comparison piece.
January 20th, 2008 at 4:45 pm
Grand theft auto will be a console seller and the episodes are exclusive to xbox. Sonys 3 million users compared to xbox's 18 million for a single game like that means xbox could easily afford another price cut! Even if metal gear solid sold to every ps3 user this would be considered a failure to xbox with their massive user base.
January 20th, 2008 at 5:00 pm
Hey my PS3 has failed for the second time and I'm getting pi**ed hearing about how bad the xbox is while I'm still waiting for my PS3 to get repaired. the first time it took nearly six weeks to get it back. And if it fails again I'll have no warranty, at least you guys have 3 years. Is anybody else getting PS3 failures or am I the only one? I'm starting to think there's a sony conspiracy and the PS3 is failing as much as the xbox. They're so frikkin rude on the phone when you tell them it's busted and I was literally on hold for 45 minutes. If the thing's so reliable then whay arn't they sitting waiting for the call like the matag repairman?
January 20th, 2008 at 5:10 pm
I'm on my 14th xbox, 8 of them were elites
January 20th, 2008 at 5:24 pm
nuclearfox - My PS3 was replaced once due to disk error. I replaced my PS2 three times (once under warranty). My gamecube is still going strong since 2001…
January 20th, 2008 at 6:35 pm
does anyone else not believe those last two responses?
if not then ive had 63 Wiis all of them failed within eight minuts of being turned on not to mention the 153 360s i've had fail. one of them burned my house down and another ate my hamster. the ps3 is the worst culpret though. i have had well over a thousand, each of which exploded when i asked where the exclusives were and one of them ate my leg!
why are thease consoles so crap? at least i have my virtual boy…
January 20th, 2008 at 6:58 pm
I think nuclearfox is onto something here. Of course Markson is full of shit and the other sony fanboys who fan the flames of xbox failures. But my cousin's PS3 failed while my 360 has been solid since the day I got it in almost 2 years ago. When you filter through the fanboy bullshit I wonder how different the failure rates really are.
January 20th, 2008 at 8:28 pm
According to sony the PS3 failure rate is less than 0.3%, but that is misleading or an outright lie. Having worked in an electronics warranty department (a lousy job) there is always a couple of percent of people who abuse the product and then want it replaced, and then there's covered accidents, and then genuine defects in parts and workmanship. For a high performance device like the PS3 the replacement rate is likely around 5% of sales after the first year on the market. A 30% failure rate is abnormal and indicates a design defect. Personally I have an Xbox 360 and haven't had any problems with it at all. I'm careful to keep it well ventilated but I'm reassured by the 3-year warranty which should have me covered until the price to replace it is less than $150. Microsoft's reaction to the failure rate is a whole lot better than the company that I worked for and that's reassuring also. You have to give them credit for standing by their customer base, I hope that sony would do the same in the same circumstances (they did replace all those defective batteries for somewhere around a billion dollars).
January 20th, 2008 at 9:20 pm
it's hard to say what the difference between the failure rates really are. I've seen the Sony statistics and I also find them a little hard to believe. Wii failure is obviously low because I am willing to bet the farm that a Wii on average gets used for far less time than a 360 or PS3.
People who complain about Xbox 360 failure rates have a right to do so. I firmly believe that the 360 was a defective product. When you get above 30% in failure rates, it's almost time for a recall, not a warranty extension.
At the same time, this really shouldn't be about fanboy BS. Each system has legitimate reasons to purchase and legitimate reasons to not purchase. I don't see it going away, but all this fanboy nonsense does nothing but cause drama where there is no drama. Fanboys to me are kind of like drama queens.
I really dislike the fact that most arguments or debates on a game related subject get morphed into a system vs. system battle fanboy style.
January 21st, 2008 at 10:24 am
Hey my 360 got rrod and i fed it to my ps3 which in turn got sick and threw up a psp with ipod features.
January 21st, 2008 at 2:58 pm
ps3 has a cell and gta4!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
January 21st, 2008 at 11:41 pm
@ William: I know, its just people must make it into one nomatter what.
@ Console Warz people: Its news, not war. Damn.
February 15th, 2008 at 7:29 am
A lot of fanboys do warp the truth to some extent. It's almost impossible to obtain the exact statistics as far as console failure rates are concerned. Fanboys or "flamers" as I'd like to call them, obviously have an immature mindset indicating that they're either:
A. Poorly educated
B. Highly obsessed
C. Don't have a day job or anything productive to do and play day-in and day-out and live in the basement of their parents house.
I've never had an electronic device that's conked out on me before. My PS2, PS3 and 360 work just fine. I usually play 2-4 hours on weekends. Anything beyond 6 hours of playing is unhealthy for anyone.(No such thing as a "professional gamer" unless you make games for a living)
February 15th, 2008 at 5:08 pm
I'll go as far back as my first console units in terms of failures (for no real reason, just that I am no some fanboy for any particular unit):
A) Atari 2600 - still going strong, though some carts no longer work.
B) Commodore 64 - I had to replace this unit once back in 1986 - The CPU died on the first one.
C) Colecovision - Still working. Only 3 carts no longer work
C) Nintendo NES - This one died after 5 years of use. Cartridges no longer play on the machine. Inspected the cartridge port and all the connectors are still aligned.
D) Sega Genesis - Had to replace this unit once after the original stopped powering up.
E) SNES - still works fine. Only two cartridges stopped working.
F) Sony PS1 - The original had the laser lens problem. Stopped reading discs. Had it replaced one time after about 9 months of use.
G) Nintendo 64 - Still working, only 2 cartridges have failed.
H) PS2 - Had to replace this unit twice. Once for a power-up failure (first model). the replacement was a second gen unit and had the laser lens failure. Third unit worked for 4 years - still going strong.
I) X-Box - Still works
J) X-BOX 360 (20GB Premium) - had to replace the original because of the Red-Ring-Of-Death. Second unit I sold when the improved HDMI units came out in the fall of 2007. Still using the new generation 360.
H) PS3 (20GB model) - Power failure on the unit. Replacement unit I ended up selling just before it was discontinued. Now own 60GB unit with no problems.