360 Failure rate at 54.2%

[BenSkywalker]

I doubt the validity of this poll, quite a bit actually. The people most apt to fill out a survey about reliability are those that have had issues with it, not those that are content to go along with the flow. It honestly wouldn't surprise me if all the numbers were inflated a reasonable amount for all the systems, although the 360 I would assume is the most inflated in a GI poll just due to the nature of the magazine(it's major push for subs is GameSpot with used games, GS's number one profit generator is 360 used games).

For the record, I have a GI sub(comes with the GS discount card) and this is the first I have heard about this poll.

Edit- When it comes to people not 'learning'- what real options do they have? If someone has 20 games and their 360 dies, they get it fixed. They go another year or two, they have 40 games and it dies again, should they really dump their entire library instead of paying to get it fixed again? Is that the 'smart' thing to do?

I went through 6 PS2s, my XBox and GC were both tanks(both still work). If I 'learned' last generation I wouldn't have touched the PS3(which is looking to be a tank- Nin seems to always be that way) this gen and it seems to be as reliable as my XBox was last generation. Why did I go through 6 PS2s? A couple of them were the kids, but between us I really wasn't going to abandon a library that ended up in the ~100 games range because I didn't want to pay another ~$130 for a replacement console. I'm sure the 360 owners who have been through a comparable situation feel the same(my oldest sons 360 has RR a couple of times, so far the unplugging it for a bit and then hooking it back up has worked though).

 

[Dari]

Originally posted by: ObscureCaucasian

Originally posted by: Dari

Originally posted by: ChaoZ
It's crazy to read how many times some people have replaced their 360. I would jump ship after 2 failures; at most 3.

These are Americans we're talking about...

It's really not THAT big of a deal if all the replacements are free you know....

I buy things to work, not to constantly replace them. I simply don't have the patience to replace electronics every two weeks. I have a life and I'm sure my fiancee will be asking why we still have that piece of junk in the house.

 

[Fingolfin269]

Originally posted by: Dari

Originally posted by: ObscureCaucasian

Originally posted by: Dari

Originally posted by: ChaoZ
It's crazy to read how many times some people have replaced their 360. I would jump ship after 2 failures; at most 3.

These are Americans we're talking about...

It's really not THAT big of a deal if all the replacements are free you know....

I buy things to work, not to constantly replace them. I simply don't have the patience to replace electronics every two weeks. I have a life and I'm sure my fiancee will be asking why we still have that piece of junk in the house.

That's awesome that you buy things to work. It's such a RARE trait!!!! Oh, by the way, how is it that people who bought the 360 at launch were to know the failure rates?

 

[Dari]

Originally posted by: Fingolfin269

Originally posted by: Dari

Originally posted by: ObscureCaucasian

Originally posted by: Dari

Originally posted by: ChaoZ
It's crazy to read how many times some people have replaced their 360. I would jump ship after 2 failures; at most 3.

These are Americans we're talking about...

It's really not THAT big of a deal if all the replacements are free you know....

I buy things to work, not to constantly replace them. I simply don't have the patience to replace electronics every two weeks. I have a life and I'm sure my fiancee will be asking why we still have that piece of junk in the house.

That's awesome that you buy things to work. It's such a RARE trait!!!! Oh, by the way, how is it that people who bought the 360 at launch were to know the failure rates?

Damn, you're telling me people don't do research before they buy? Caveat Emptor. That's been around since Jesus H. Christ. Live it, love it.

I want an XBOX 360 but I'm waiting until MS makes something fit enough to go into my living room.

 

[mugs]

Originally posted by: ObscureCaucasian

Originally posted by: mugs
I've owned 4 Xbox 360s, and 2 have died... so that's 50% for me.

When you say "owned" does that count refurbs/repairs? Ex. I've purchased 2, however I've had 4 failures, however that's across 5 total xboxes. I could say a 200% failure rate, but I could also call that 80%.

Bought one, it died. Replacement also died. 2nd replacement is still running.

Bought a second 360 (Arcade), also still running.

Not that my personal experience matters.

 

[Trader05]

360 failure rate isn't anything new before the Jasper build. I actually just fixed a 360 that a coworker gave to me, and its pretty simple. The hardest thing was getting the case open and cleaning the old heatsink paste without artic cleaner.

I had 2 Wii's go bad. The first was the video issue from launch and my 2nd wii had a dvd drive vibrating issue, both fixed under warranty.

My launch 60gb PS3 is still going strong, fingers crossed!

 

[ivan2]

i must be one of the lucky few, but damn it will suck if it dies now since im out of warranty.

 

[jdport]

I've had my falcon since the falcon's were just coming out... going on 2 years now I guess that would be... and I have never had a problem. The problem with these polls, and with all of the stuff you read on the internet, etc, is that ONLY THE PEOPLE WHO HAVE PROBLEMS POST. The rest of us are not posting, we are playing. Also, one thing Microsoft should stop doing because it's making their numbers look worse is that they keep replacing broken units with refurbished units which then just fail again. They should replace them with new ones.. because right now people are counting all these failing refurbs in the failure numbers and skewing things even worse. The new XBox's are way better than the original ones, and there is no way that they are failing at a 50+% rate off the shelf. Looking at the units that were in the original release that are failing now and being refurbished and failing again... MAYBE you're getting up near 50% then.

I don't doubt the failure rate is higher than ps3 or Wii, but there is no way in hell 50+% is accurate.

 

[Trader05]

Originally posted by: jdport
I've had my falcon since the falcon's were just coming out... going on 2 years now I guess that would be... and I have never had a problem. The problem with these polls, and with all of the stuff you read on the internet, etc, is that ONLY THE PEOPLE WHO HAVE PROBLEMS POST. The rest of us are not posting, we are playing. Also, one thing Microsoft should stop doing because it's making their numbers look worse is that they keep replacing broken units with refurbished units which then just fail again. They should replace them with new ones.. because right now people are counting all these failing refurbs in the failure numbers and skewing things even worse. The new XBox's are way better than the original ones, and there is no way that they are failing at a 50+% rate off the shelf. Looking at the units that were in the original release that are failing now and being refurbished and failing again... MAYBE you're getting up near 50% then.

I don't doubt the failure rate is higher than ps3 or Wii, but there is no way in hell 50+% is accurate.

Thats so you can buy the newer version and get M$'s numbers up! At least 5 of my friends went out and bought Arcades to replace their RMA units because they were on their 3rd or 4th replacements. I remember a while ago that before the falcon version, the failure rate was reported in the mid 60% range. I also did a RROD poll in April here.

 

[TheVrolok]

Originally posted by: Dari

Originally posted by: Fingolfin269

Originally posted by: Dari

Originally posted by: ObscureCaucasian

Originally posted by: Dari

Originally posted by: ChaoZ
It's crazy to read how many times some people have replaced their 360. I would jump ship after 2 failures; at most 3.

These are Americans we're talking about...

It's really not THAT big of a deal if all the replacements are free you know....

I buy things to work, not to constantly replace them. I simply don't have the patience to replace electronics every two weeks. I have a life and I'm sure my fiancee will be asking why we still have that piece of junk in the house.

That's awesome that you buy things to work. It's such a RARE trait!!!! Oh, by the way, how is it that people who bought the 360 at launch were to know the failure rates?

Damn, you're telling me people don't do research before they buy? Caveat Emptor. That's been around since Jesus H. Christ. Live it, love it.

I want an XBOX 360 but I'm waiting until MS makes something fit enough to go into my living room.

Now I've never purchased an Xbox in any form, but exactly how were those who purchased one at launch supposed to know about the future failure rates? I didn't realize that caveat emptor also involved seeing the future.

 

[IndyColtsFan]

Originally posted by: Pheran
This survey is also lacking the most useful piece of Xbox information - which revision failed. I would assume the bulk of the failures are from the original revisions.

Yeah, that would be good to know. I am on my third Xbox -- the first was purchased in early 2007 and was the standard model with the 20 GB drive. It died in August of that year and since I had the Best Buy replacement warranty and Microsoft had recently dropped the price of the Elite, I upgraded to the Elite for about $50 out of pocket. It lasted until December, when I swapped it out at the local Best Buy due to the DVD acting weird and the system randomly crashing. My current one has lasted me since then. I guess it isn't the lastest revision, but the one before that -- a Jasper maybe? Or would that be a Zephyr?

 

[BlahBlahYouToo]

Originally posted by: ShawnD1

Originally posted by: TecHNooB
My PS3 froze during an update. It is now a giant paperweight.

That sucks. I'm surprised the PS3 doesn't have some kind of reset button or switch. I've had both my graphing calculator and my ipod brick during an update but both were fixed by doing some stuff to reset the bios. Whenever I screw up an overclock and the computer is totally useless, the bad settings can be undone by pulling the motherboard battery.

nice analogy.
can you undo a bad bios update by pulling the cmos battery?

 

[Queasy]

Originally posted by: blanghorst
I guess it isn't the lastest revision, but the one before that -- a Jasper maybe? Or would that be a Zephyr?

Falcon

 

[flashbacck]

Originally posted by: ShawnD1

The only thing I can think of that would cause a 54% fail stat would be if they just asked "have you had an xbox failure" and not ask how many...

That's a decent question. We're kinda missing important details here, like what were the questions asked. There's also no margin of error or confidence % reported (at least in the IGN post).

 

[mmntech]

I think the failure rates do seem a little exaggerated. I remember hearing the original 360s failed about a third of the time, much lower than 54%. PS3 and Wii failures are rare, and most often its the disc drive that goes. The general industry target is a 1% failure rate. You really don't want it any higher than that when selling items in large volumes as the costs add up.

Then again, I wounder how they calculated it. If this includes fan, hard drive, and optical drive failures, I can see it getting up there but still not to those numbers. It would explain why Wii failures are so low though as it has the fewest moving parts. To me a "failure" is when the system becomes bricked and cannot be repaired.

 

[BW86]

not surprised at all

 

[SunnyD]

Does it count that the 360 I bought was DOA? (Used, was expecting working but it was RROD)

 

[Industrial]

I had always rolled my eyes when I see MS talking about how many units they sold and how well they sell. I always chopped about 1/4 off those numbers, since I figured it's the same people buying another 360 to replace their broken ones.

 

[Queasy]

Originally posted by: Industrial
I had always rolled my eyes when I see MS talking about how many units they sold and how well they sell. I always chopped about 1/4 off those numbers, since I figured it's the same people buying another 360 to replace their broken ones.

I can't imagine that 1/4 of the sales were to replace broken 360s when the most common failure is the RROD and MS fixes it for free.

 

[Fingolfin269]

Originally posted by: Dari

Originally posted by: Fingolfin269

Originally posted by: Dari

Originally posted by: ObscureCaucasian

Originally posted by: Dari

Originally posted by: ChaoZ
It's crazy to read how many times some people have replaced their 360. I would jump ship after 2 failures; at most 3.

These are Americans we're talking about...

It's really not THAT big of a deal if all the replacements are free you know....

I buy things to work, not to constantly replace them. I simply don't have the patience to replace electronics every two weeks. I have a life and I'm sure my fiancee will be asking why we still have that piece of junk in the house.

That's awesome that you buy things to work. It's such a RARE trait!!!! Oh, by the way, how is it that people who bought the 360 at launch were to know the failure rates?

Damn, you're telling me people don't do research before they buy? Caveat Emptor. That's been around since Jesus H. Christ. Live it, love it.

I want an XBOX 360 but I'm waiting until MS makes something fit enough to go into my living room.

Tell me, how would one have researched RROD at launch?

 

[Industrial]

Originally posted by: Queasy

Originally posted by: Industrial
I had always rolled my eyes when I see MS talking about how many units they sold and how well they sell. I always chopped about 1/4 off those numbers, since I figured it's the same people buying another 360 to replace their broken ones.

I can't imagine that 1/4 of the sales were to replace broken 360s when the most common failure is the RROD and MS fixes it for free.

that's true the RROD is the common failure, but reading all these replies how some people are fed up with it, or they don't want to wait for the replacement...etc. so they buy another one. I noticed a few people here did mentioned they have already bought their 2nd or 3rd xbox already.

 

[Xylitol]

no one i know who owns a 360 (5+2(guy has 2)) has had theirs break down yet. 3 of them are launches

 

[bl4ckfl4g]

My dad, 3 brothers, and myself all have Falcons and have had no problems. I had a 1st gen that RROD.

 

[Queasy]

Originally posted by: Industrial

Originally posted by: Queasy

Originally posted by: Industrial
I had always rolled my eyes when I see MS talking about how many units they sold and how well they sell. I always chopped about 1/4 off those numbers, since I figured it's the same people buying another 360 to replace their broken ones.

I can't imagine that 1/4 of the sales were to replace broken 360s when the most common failure is the RROD and MS fixes it for free.

that's true the RROD is the common failure, but reading all these replies how some people are fed up with it, or they don't want to wait for the replacement...etc. so they buy another one. I noticed a few people here did mentioned they have already bought their 2nd or 3rd xbox already.

I didn't notice that at all. Reading through the thread again, I still don't notice that. The only person I see mentioning buying a 2nd 360 is mugs and he was just buying a 2nd 360...not replacing a broken 360.

 

[magomago]

I guess the main lesson is that , for the console industry, you can sell broken hardware to consumers without too much of a backlash so as long as you fix it....again, and again, and again