The Video Game Critic

Topic inspired by recent rumors/speculation that 360's failure rates are at 30%. I find that to be nearly beyond belief. So name any and all nextgen (or past systems) you own, and if any have died on you. I don't know if we will have enough participation to get meaninful data, but what the heck.

I own a Nintendo Wii, no problems so far. Briefly had an issue with an unresponsive remote, but a hard slap on the back fixed it.

I've owned NES, SNES, Nintendo Gens, GBA, GBC, Nintendo DS, Sony PSP, Playstation 1, Playstation 2, Dreamcast, Xbox, Wii, and Xbox 360.



Out of those systems, I had a NES, so I bought a new one.  I also had a dreamcast die, 6 months after I bought it, just out of warrenty.  So I went to Wal Mart and bought a new one, then "returned" it with the broken one in the box.  I guess I could say I feel guilty about that now, but I was 13 at the time. 

I broke a Coleco Gemini when I was younger by breaking off the power plug on the system. Thats been it so far thankfully.

I've owned too many systems to be listed, I have pretty much everything that was fairly popular (Besides junk like a RCA Studio II), and I've yet to purchase a Wii or PS3.

I personally have never had ANY system "go" on me while I owned it, despite owning dozens of consoles and handhelds. In testing systems, I've only found two to be consistatly-100%- unreliable. I've yet to find a working"toaster" NES and The Gamegear- the screen fades out after years of play. But most GBA's, SNES, Genesis, Gameboys, Supervisions and others I've tested worked fine.

Shockingly, I've had no issues with my 360. I've had one friend who bought one that was DOA a month ago (so much for later batches of systems being better!).

Of all the systems I've owned (NES, SNES, N64, PS1, PS2, Gamecube, Xbox, 360, Wii), only the Wii has actually failed. My system was one of the "lucky" few to have that dreaded graphics chip overheating problem (the graphics begin to distort over time). Nintendo replaced it (well within warranty) and I haven't had any problem with it since.

-Rob

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.  Reading this alone is enough to keep me from wanting to get a 360 even if I were interested in buying one.
Copied from the "dubious quality" blog:

Dean Takahashi had an interview with Todd Todd Holmdahl, Microsoft’s corporate vice president of Gaming and Xbox Products Group.

In it, Holmdahl managed to singlehandedly create a giant Hadron collider of stupid, with stupid smashing into stupid at incredibly high speed.

Let's take a look. Stupid particles, in this case, has a telltale "A" marker.

Q: I’m sure you’ve seen some of these complaints that we’ve written about from the guy who went through seven machines... There is a lot of anecdotal evidence that the quality of the Xbox 360 isn’t there. How can you paint the bigger picture for me there?
A: We’re very proud of the box. We think the vast majority of people are having just a great experience...They love the box. They continue to buy the box.

Q: Do you still say that is a normal return rate for the console?
A: We continue to say the vast majority of the people are really happy with it.

Q: I’ve heard varying accounts of what is considered a normal return rate. Some people say that 2 percent is normal. Sometimes 3 percent to 5 percent is considered normal. Back to that question, can you address whether you are within those rates or within a normal rate.
A: We don’t disclose the actual number.

Q: What explains this anecodotal evidence that it’s out of whack, compared to the Wii or the PlayStation 3 or other consoles.
A: I would go back and say the vast majority of people love their experience.

Q: If you have a high defect rate, won’t that ruin the business model? Won’t that ruin the profit?
A: I would say we don’t have a high defect rate. The vast majority of people are really excited about their product, and that we are targeting profitability for next year.

Q: Your returns as a category. Is there any No. 1 reason for a return?
A: There are no systematic issues. The vast majority of the people just love the product, have a great experience with it.

Q: Was there any issue here where I didn’t ask it the right way but you could say something.
A: The overriding thing, Dean, is that people have the product, they love the product, it continues to sell well.

Hey, I don't know where I got this idea, but the vast majority of people seem to love the product.

For God's sake, does Holmdahl have some sort of alien creature inside him, systematically eating his brain? And with the pecan-sized mass he has left, all he can do is mumble "the vast majority of people seem to love the product" as drool runs off his chin?

Even as I make fun of Holmdahl, though, I know it's not really his fault. He's just parroting the talking points given to him.

I respect how hard Takahashi tried to get Holmdahl to answer the question about failure rates. And after Holmdahl refuses to answer the question six times, Takahashi's point is made: clearly, the 360 is a reliability disaster.

This issue has turned into a PR nightmare for Microsoft. At this point, I wouldn't be surprised at all if the real failure turns out to be 15% or higher. That's an incredible number for a console, far higher than any console in history, but Microsoft's spectacular stonewalling seems to be pointing in the direction of a very high percentage.

Plus, and I think this is very telling, Microsoft isn't using the obvious answer. The obvious thing to do would be to admit that there were issues at launch, but that reliability was no longer a problem. That they're not saying that means the reliability for systems made last Tuesday must not be significantly different than the launch systems.

Here's some irony for you: the switch to a 65nm verion of the CPU and GPU may go a long way toward solving Microsoft's problems, but most consumers won't understand that. Once this "unreliable" tag sticks, it's going to be very, very difficult to make it go away.

When people are talking about your reliability instead of your games, it is very, very bad news.

I own over 15 systems and I have never had one of them die on me...

That being said I am scared to death about my 360.  I actually play it less because I fear that one day I'll go to play it and the red ring of death will happen.  I have a warranty on it, but I don't want to go through the hassle of replacing it.

Here is what I can give you as a personal failure rate for people I know...My friend's broke without warning, my cousin's sounds like its on the cusp of doom and mine works fine.  So I'll give that a 1/3 = 33% failure rate which is just about what the rumors speculate.

The 360 is one of the most shoddy consoles ever made.  People can complain about crappy PS2 systems, but when you strech a 3% failure rate over 115 million systems it equals 3,450,000 broken PS2 machines...it seems like a ton but when you figure that over 110 million systems didn't have a problem at all its not that bad.  I've read that anywhere from 0-5% is considered normal for electronics failure rates.  I just picked 3% because it was in the middle...I don't know the actual failure rates of the PS2.

Microsoft needs to get their act together and fix whatever is wrong with the 360.  Even if the failure rate is only 15-20% its still too high. 

I've never had a system fail on me. PS1,PS2 snes, nes , Atari VCS , genesis or gbc. My CD drives for other electronics sure do fail a lot for me though. Year old laptop and cd's don't work in the dvd burner anymore.