Xbox 360 52.4% failure rate

Article.

I knew the 360 was badly-made, but I didn\'t know it was that bad! Still, it\'s not really a surprise. I got my first 360 (Elite, if it matters) in November of 2008, and it RRoD\'d on me in five months. My second one has been alright thus far, but yeah, pretty unforgivable statistic if it\'s really accurate. The figure was arrived at via a survey of 5000 Xbox 360 owners.

Maybe MS should just properly redesign the console? Maybe make it a bit smaller or something (like PS2/3 slim), but mainly to kill these reliability issues.

( Edited 26.08.2009 05:48 by Martin_ )

This has always been the biggest flaw on the 360, I'm not surprised Microsoft haven't been sued dry yet. I don't think i've ever seen a more successful faulty piece of merchandise valued over $400 (200 pounds is it?)

That's a pretty staggering statistic.
I got my first (and only) Xbox (also an Elite) about the same time, Christmas '08. So far it's been fine. I've had worse luck with Wii's, I'm on my third. I am rather nervous that my Elite will die on me at some point though. Don't make 'em like they used to, eh? *pats SNES*

Well, it depends what SKU you buy. My Elite with two games and an extra control pad came to £240. The reason MS introduced the retrograde three year warranty covering RRoD (and later also the E74 fault) was probably just so they couldn't be sued. Now if someone acts all butt-hurt and cmplains about the reliability, MS can just point out their very robust warranty and repair/replacement scheme.

Not surprised at all really, all of my friends have had to replace their 360's at some point. It's the main reason I won't buy the system. Doesn't matter if they'll replace it for free, it shouldn't happen in the first place.

A redesign is well overdue.

I've had a 360 since April last year. It's a regular premium model. Now it doesn't get much use compared to my DS, PSP or even my Wii, but I've still played it a lot and it hasn't RRoD'd yet.

I can't believe they haven't fixed it though. No wonder they can sell it for so cheap! If this were Nintendo they'd have ben sued to bankruptcy by now.

I don't get it. Nobody took this shit from Sony. There was a lawsuit filed over it and Sony was forced to pay restitution AND repair PS2 consoles for free.

Meanwhile, Xbox 360's have been known to destroy optical media, faulty disc drives which do not open or close properly, and in general suffer hardware failures; sometimes errors are caused by Microsoft's own updates. Yet, what I don't understand is that people seem perfectly willing - with the exception of one or two stand-alone lawsuits which failed to reach or maintain class action status - to bend over and take it in the ass.

I still have a working 360 Elite, so I've dodged the bullet for the time being. Grant it, I barely ever play on it, but it still works.

I don\'t think it\'s quite as simple as all that, Nami. If I remember rightly, there was a massive class-action lawsuit mounting against Microsoft, which led them to announce the afore-mentioned retrograde three year warranty for every Xbox 360 that has ever been sold and will ever be sold. Sony made no such voluntary moves, and so lost their case (as MS would surely have done, had it gone all the way). Sony were unwilling to compensate gamers who had suffered a faulty PS2 outside of the year warranty, and so the courts made them.

Also, Xbox 360s DO NOT destroy discs. This is completely absurd. The thing you\'re referring to is when an Xbox 360-owner swaps the orientation (horizontal/vertical) of their console when the console is in operation and specifically when a disc is spinning in the drive. During the change of orientation, the disc can come into contact with the disc drive assembly inside the console, and when spinning disc meets a component it\'s not supposed to meet - huge circular gauges.

Personally, I have always thought it was common sense not to do that while a disc was spinning in any piece of hardware. The disc drive may be designed to operate horizontally or vertically, but that does not make all the orientations in between safe, does it? I imagine a similar thing could also happen to my PS2 (and probably PS3). I\'m not going to try it, though.

I have not encountered problems with faulty disc drives etc (or heard anything of that nature). I don\'t doubt it, though.

( Edited 26.08.2009 05:08 by Martin_ )

Mine also had the RROD problem, just before I bought it off my brother, but it has been fine thus far. Mind you, I hardly ever use it.

I think a redesign is on the cards, but it would make more sense for Microsoft to release it alongside Natal as a 'new' console, kinda like what Nintendo did with Wii.

Martin_ that orientation is mainly to do with tye type of drives the consoles use. It\'s unheard of for Wii and PS3 to scratch discs while changing the orientation, why? This is because they use the same type of drives car stereos use.
Cars go over bumps all the time and they never scratch the disc because it\'s in a solid state they\'re designed that way.
I change the orientation of my Wii and PS3 while the moving the disc alot of times don\'t ask why but I\'ve done it.

Edit, blu ray is scratch resistant anyway and MS are using an old sliding type shitty drive. Scratched many PS2 discs cause of that.

( Edited 26.08.2009 08:43 by Simez )

That's interesting to know. Regardless, it's not something I've ever done to any piece of optical disc hardware I've had, and thus it has never happened on my 360. Are you sure about your terminology? The term 'solid-state' refers to a variety of things, but I've never heard it used for anything mechanical. I've only heard it for amplifiers and computer chips.

good to see it come down from 70%

Well not solid state per-se more like a more solid environment. The Wii takes dinky gamecube discs so the environment it's kept in must be more secure right?

It's like you said, if you move the orientation of the 360, the disc drive and DVD surface have the possibility of touching each other in order to create that ring effect that occurs.

My theory isn't 100% but I feel it sound reasonable enough.

My 360 always lays flat anyway so the lessens the risk.

Jump I don't remember it being 70%, before 54% it was 33% IIRC.

My Elite broke awhile back now, I still haven't got round to sending it in to be fixed. They asked me to pay £80 for the repair (because it was two red rings instead of three) and I told them to fuck off. When I do eventually send it in, I'm going to lie and say it has three.

It's completely unreasonable for the three-year warranty to only cover one specific fault. There are various problems with the 360 which are well-documented and clearly Microsoft's fault - it's criminal that they're asking customers to pay up.

A refined 360 makes sense. I'd definently get one.

Simez said:
Well not solid state per-se more like a more solid environment. The Wii takes dinky gamecube discs so the environment it's kept in must be more secure right?

No. Compatibility with those little 8cm discs (GC games, MiniDVDs, etc) has nothing to do with how secure/solid the mechanism inside is. You can put a GameCube disc into an Xbox 360 and no harm will come to it at all. In fact, pretty much all disc-drives have been completely compatible with 8cm discs for donkey's years, as well as regular-sized ones.

If it's a spindle design, then that's all you need. GameCube discs go into a PS2 slim just like a PS2 game. Disc drives that are designed with a tray mechanism will incorporate an indent that accommodates 8cm discs, in the centre of the bigger 12cm indent for normal size discs.

There's my Xbox with the tray out. Notice the smaller indent?

That's where teh 8cm discs go

Both trays on my PC have the 8cm indent (only one is pictured).

Even my old CD player from the late 90s has the indent for 8cm discs. The original Xbox also had it, and I'm pretty sure the tray on the fat PS2 had it, too.

Simez said:
It's like you said, if you move the orientation of the 360, the disc drive and DVD surface have the possibility of touching each other in order to create that ring effect that occurs.

That's exactly it.

Simez said:
My theory isn't 100% but I feel it sound reasonable enough.

The solid-state stuff? I don't think that holds any water, really.

Simez said:
My 360 always lays flat anyway so the lessens the risk.

Let's be clear about this - if you don't change the orientation of your 360 will it is running a disc, the console will never harm any of your discs. It's as simple as that. To me, this 'issue' has always been a bit of a stupid one.

Simez said:
Jump I don't remember it being 70%, before 54% it was 33% IIRC.

Nah, Jump just loves to exaggerate because he h8s EGGBAWKS TREE SIDDY. And yeah, the 33% figure rings a bell. However, the accuracy of either that old 33% figure or this new 54.2% one is dubious, because the older 360s were definitely worse.

Where did my reply go?

Basically I said I was wrong about the solid state bit and you were right Martin_

Plus Jumps not neutral on this so I had to call him out on that one to be fair.

I thought i'd add my 2p to this and say everybody i know who has had one has been absolutely fine. I guess they were just lucky like that

Do they play it? Everyone I know is not fine, mine sits there waiting for Splinter Cell Conviction, nothing else worth doing with it till then.

I could see what you were getting at with mentioning car CD players. You were wrong, though. The reason why a good CD deck for a car doesn\'t skip over moderate bumps is nothing to do with the drive being more solid and the disc not getting shaken about inside the mechanism. The reason they don\'t skip is because they have a buffer, onto which upcoming data is streamed, and then is put out to the speakers as and when that part of the track is played.

The better the car stereo/CD player, the bigger the buffer, and the less chance for hearing any skips. Rather than just simply streaming data, it streams it into the buffer, and then out to the speakers. So when the CD skips it doesn\'t matter, as the buffer has the data that\'s needed, and the disc drive can work to correct the skip before the music reaches the end of the buffer.

( Edited 27.08.2009 06:00 by Martin_ )