System Census, Failure Rates.

[Alienblue]

That interveiw with the 360 guy was hysterical .

I would hazzard a guess that he is NOT telling the 100% truth,
but it's a longshot.

It also brought up memories of other systems that had problems early on; in the golden era I recall early ASTROCADES and INTELLIVISIONS had high failure rates, yet after a few years they were considered almost 100% reliable. I have two INTV's that work perfectly. I also recall When the DSLITE was released, there was a problem with burned out pixels. I myself had a "red spot" on the touch screen and had to return it. But those problems were FIXED. The 360 has been out HOW long now!? Why in the world is it still having problems? The Wii and PS3 are relatively new, yet have had few reliability issues. This is NOT good!

[m0zart1]

[QUOTE=Sudz]Ok this is a bit long to read but well worth the time - it is AMAZING how poorly this Microsoft PR guy (I don't care what his official title is, his functional title is obviously 'damage control') handled this interview regarding failure rates for the 360.[/QUOTE]

The link didn't work for me, but I found another one with the same interview:

http://blogs.mercurynews.com/aei/2007/06/a_qa_with_todd_holmdahl_the_hardware_guy_at_microsoft_about_xbox_360_failures.html

I love the second comment that was made:
 
]So just to be clear, do people love the box? Do they have a great experience with it? I can’t really tell from the article.[/QUOTE]


Anyway, have you guys seen this?  It's a company that does many 360 console repairs that has bascially just given up fixing 360 consoles with a red ring of death due to the high volume:

http://www.micromartltd.co.uk/

Their statement is on the front page, but to list it here:

XBOX 360 - Micromart has now withdrawn from offering a Repair Service for the dreaded 3 Red Lights fault.

This problem is endemic on the XBox 360 console and the volume has made this repair non-viable.

Other repairs to the XBox 360 are still being supported.

[ActRaiser1]

I'm on my second 360.  Possibly third though soon.  The image on my TV started going all nuts with shaky/warbly/bad sync like a bad videocard or something.  A power off and power back on took care of it. 

I've got a friend that's got 4 360s for lan gaming and out of those he's replaced 2 of them so far.  So out of 6 360s I've played, half have needed to be replaced.  You know MS isn't making any money on these things as fast as they're breaking and being repaired.

I've got a Japanese Duo-R that's got a loose video connector that works half the time and must jiggled just right to get a proper display.  My SNES has stopped working altogether, which I'm not sure if it's the AC adapter or the system itself.  In either case it's a no go. 

Bud

[Paul Campbell]

I guess it depends on what we mean by "failure".  It seems like all of my older CD based systems are just about unplayable because of how often the game either won't work or stops working right in the middle.  My Saturn and Dreamcast, while I love them, really piss me off.  The Dreamcast only works when I hold my mouth a certain way, and the Saturn only works when the moon is in its seventh hour, so I have to plan ahead.  My PS1 had the same issues, except much worse to the point that I literally chucked it one day to teach it a lesson that it, wherever it is, has not forgotten.  I hope it accidentally got thrown into a vehicle that was heading to the place where they smash them into little cubes.  I hope it thinks about what it did to me as it hears the moaning of the car as it is slowly crushed.

Of course, the Sega systems DO technically work, it's just a matter of whether or not I have the time to get them to work.

[Cody]

Heres a link to IGN stating that Microsoft is now offering a 3 year warranty for all purchased xbox 360 systems and this includes those systems bought at launch.
  http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/801/801684p1.html
I think an extended warranty is really great, but they need to fix the problems when manufacturing the systems and then they won't need to fix them when they stop working when consumers are playing them.

[Steerfforth]

Wow, this story is really starting to blow up. This link is from my browser homepage:

http://money.aol.com/news/articles/_a/xbox-woes-cost-microsoft-1-billion/20070705164909990001?ncid=NWS00010000000001

is planning to spend at least $1 billion to repair serious problems with its Xbox 360

 Microsoft's entertainment and devices division has lost more than $6 billion since 2002.

At least they ared doing the right thing and extending the warranty, but so much for 360 seeing any black ink now, as they had been hoping. Still haven't heard the failure rate #, this will make for a real interesting console review for the 360.

[BigOldCar]

The only system I've had go on me was the original GameBoy.  Freakin' screen got those dead lines in it.  My sister's went out the same way.  Of course, today I don't really care anymore, and the game cartridges work on the GBA, but at the time I was a little pissed.

My Playstations still work, but sometimes they freeze mid-game or fail to load.  However, as these problems are intermittent,  I can't call that a "failed" system.

[Lumina83]

I've had three systems fail on me: The Mega-CD, my old Amiga 500 computer, and most recently the Dreamcast.

One day, the Mega-CD just up and stopped reading discs. It wasn't disc read errors or anything like that, it just simply refused to recognise there was a disc in the drive.

Similar problem with the Amiga 500; the floppy drive stopped working completely, although it had intermittently been on the blink for ages before.

Finally, the Dreamcast developed the annoying habit of resetting during gameplay. Apparently, this is a common fault among PAL Dreamcasts.

Ironically, for all the flak the PS2's copped over reliability or lack thereof, my PS2 is five years old and still going strong; I've had nary a problem with it. It's frozen on a couple of occasions, but I blame that on scratched discs.

Also, as an aside, my uncle's Xbox (the original, not the 360) failed on him a while back; kept overheating during gameplay (power light kept flashing orange).

[Superjay]

Lets see. I've had 3 ps1's eventually stop working right. Never returned them. Just bought a new one. 2 xbox's fail on me. I returned one and I bought a Halo Xbox. After that I found out how to fix the original xbox so I had 2 working xbox's. My 360 broke I paid like$150 but because of this new warranty I am going to be reimbursed.

[Carl1]

Ive had an odd problem on my XBOX (not 360)...at times when it is normally plugged in and NOT playing a game...the CD drive opens itself and the only way to close it is via the power button on the bottom...has anyone heard of this? I find it odd....it plays games fine...but I always unplug the power cord so it doesnt open itself up which annoys me when I try to sleep and the xbox is making noise opening itself up...if anyone has ANY idea what the heck is going on that would be great....