Xbox 360 Failure Rate Is 54.2% 607
Colonel Korn writes "The Seattle PI Blog is reporting that a soon to be published Game Informer survey finally shows the failure rate of XBOX 360s: 54%! The survey also shows the rates of failure for the PS3 (11%) and Wii (7%). Impressively, only 4% of respondents said they wouldn't buy a new 360 because of hardware failures."
Re:Missing Details (Score:2, Interesting)
Even worse news for Microsoft is that only 3.8% said they would buy another Xbox (due to failures) and the survey found they had rather shoddy customer service.
Is the worse news for Microsoft the fact that even when burned customers continue to buy the console, or that they have crappy customer service?
Re:Missing Details (Score:3, Interesting)
Seeing as how heat is the predominate cause of these machines giving up the ghost (whether it be heat killing components, heat changes warping solder, or cheap solder being affected by predictable heat), it would be interesting to compare the failure rate of small form factor computers, laptops, or pre-built gaming computers.
We've all known for a long time what happens when you let a computer run for 3 years and let the case fans get caked up...
Re:Leave it to Microsoft (Score:3, Interesting)
Chinese manufactured products are only a problem if you're not enforcing the "produce the parts to the specified quality or I'll go elsewhere" clause in the contract. The problem is MS' mentality toward quality not the origin of the parts. If MS wanted to enforce a quality standard on Chinese corps I doubt they would jeopardise a contract with a buyer in these quantities just like everyone else.
Re:Missing Details (Score:3, Interesting)
EldavoJohn - the summary Slashdot posted here states 4% wouldn't buy a new Xbox due to failure rates.
Your summary states that only 4% would buy a new Xbox due to the failure rates
I think the posted summary is correct. What gives?
Re:Missing Details (Score:4, Interesting)
So it should be noted that a potential skew is that from the surveyed five thousand, Xbox users play their console more than Wii or PS3 users. While this certainly wouldn't explain the skewed percentages, it indicates the consoles are in higher use causing potentially more wear and tear.
One might indeed think this at first glance, but there's a problem with it. What actually fails most of the time on 360s -the cause of the infamous Red Ring of Death- is the graphics card, which isn't a moving part. Because of that, the concept of wear and tear doesn't apply to it, yet it fails before the wear and tear on the console's moving parts ever becomes a factor. Thus, while your statistic might be interesting if true, it isn't relevant.
The study was poorly done anyway, not so much because of the methods as the measurement used: lifetime failure rates, which will over time hit 100% on any console it's applied to. A more useful approach would have been to study how many consoles failed within specific time periods after purchase: 0-6 months, 7-12 months, 13-18 months, and so on. However, while this particular set of numbers is pretty meaningless, it doesn't change what we already knew: that the 360's failure rate is abysmally high.
Re:Now we just need to know (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't have an XBox, but I do have a PS3. I wouldn't say I play it a whole lot, but it's in a fairly small cabinet in my entertainment center, and we close the glass door when we're not using it. So every once in a while, my wife leaves the remote on the coffee table overnight, and somehow, the cat frequently managed to step on the remote, which for some idiotic reason powers up the PS3. I think at least on 10-20 occasions, it has sat in the cabinet with the door closed all night long. In the morning, it's literally like an oven in the cabinet, and the fans are screaming so loud you can hear them almost through the whole house.
I don't say this because I'm proud of how the poor thing gets treated, but I'll admit I'm amazed every time it happens that it still functions at all. By all rights, it should be dead dozens of times over. I don't have an XBox 360, so I can't really make any comparisons, but the PS3 I have in my entertainment center is no fragile piece of machinery.
Re:Warranty (Score:2, Interesting)
Last month my 2.5 year old 360 started freezing intermittently, but wouldn't red ring. I had to keep playing games and letting it die until it would finally red ring every time I started it. Its brutal that you have to do that in order to qualify for a replacement 360, but at least it only took 9 days from the day I shipped it to receive my replacement. If my 360 dies after the 3 year warranty is up I would rather spend the warranty money on a new 360 that runs cooler, draws less power, etc.
I shudder to think what the warranty process was like a few months after the 360 was released, which is why I would never buy a launch Playstation or Xbox. My 5 Nintendo based systems have never failed once (Well the NES can be a bit of pain sometimes, ha ha).
Re:Missing Details (Score:2, Interesting)
are you all forgetting that MS will send you a new XBOX if yours breaks?
They came clean (after a while) with the ring of death, and said that they would replace XBOX's within warranty that had the issues.
As long as your XBOX is within warranty, you can just ship it to MS and get a new one without buying a new one.
Maybe that 3.8% is of the group that had it long enough to be out of warranty and thus had to buy a new one when it failed.
You don't buy a 360, you lease it. (Score:3, Interesting)
Oddly, the only reason I bought a 360 in the first place was because the DVD drive on my original XBox went bad, and I wanted to get a new console and continue playing my original XBox games. Before that, I only bought a new console when I wanted to upgrade to the latest technology. These days, I only buy a new console to replace a broken one (like the PS2 I bought the first time I had to send my 360 in for service).
Re:Why no Xbox 360 Slim? (Score:3, Interesting)
The PS3 integrates the PSU, and isn't that large. Now it integrates the PSU and is smaller.
The 360 is an abomination in the world of consumer electronics, less reliable than Panaphonic and Matsashitty and Shoney knock-off brands.
But because it was a little cheaper, the fanboys will rush to covet it. Even as they rue their HD-DVD player purchase, the Plug-n-Charge kit, the Wireless dongle, ... and then you get the RROD, which for my 360 owning friends, has occurred always just as they got the big game they had been looking forward to for ages.
Admittedly if the hardware didn't have such appalling reliability, there wouldn't be a problem, I think more people would own them than they do right now. It's taken three years for the PS3 to become reasonable in terms of price, firmware and game library, I'm impressed they sold over 20m of the expensive model. Still, it is a device that was engineered better, despite that weak GPU they stuck in quite late in the design cycle.
And the Wii, well, it doesn't get played much, but if there's more than one person around it's what is being played.
Re:Now we just need to know (Score:3, Interesting)
why don't you have an exhaust fan cut into the back of the cabinet to solve the problem?
that's the first thing I do to any furniture that houses electronics. Take the saw to the back to add in ventilation or at least mount an exhaust fan that goes on and off with the gear to actively vent it.
Re:Flawed Statistically (Score:4, Interesting)
54% fail for 360
11% fail for PS3
7% fail for Wii
Caveat:
Sample may be biased to frequent gamers
But then... They've likely used the machines the hardest. If it doesn't fail for them... Kind of like those automatic chair testers in Ikea.
Re:Missing Details (Score:5, Interesting)
With those numbers, I see an average of 0.7 failures per purchase.
So each customer would get 1.7 machines on average (including the final non-failing one). That means that if they all go through their warranty, Microsoft needs to produce 70% more devices than demand requires (assuming they don't simply repair them). Leading to a 70% production loss due to failures. That is a SERIOUS loss!
Re:Missing Details (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah but the difference they noted between the PS3 and 360 for playability was 3%, while the difference in failure rate is about 40%. That's huge.
Actually, the difference between play time between 360 and PS3 is more like 8%, while the difference between failure rates is more like 500%. You don't just subtract when you're talking percentage difference. So there's way more of a differential than even you're saying. There's no way wear and tear even comes close to explaining these different failure rates. This is a design issue.
I posited after MS first started to come clean about their quality issues that, given the statements MS was making about why these failures were occuring, the 360 failure rate would eventually approach 100%. (Obviously this is true of anything given enough time, but I meant within the expected timeframe before obsolescence.) The original system suffered from a "series of flaws" (MS's words) in its design that led to various potential failures, not just one. Given that all 360's suffered from these same flaws, and that by MS's admission it did not matter what steps you took to "protect" your system, it did not seem logical to me that the failures would be confined to only a few systems.
Simply put, MS designed and sold a defective product that should not have been on the market. Even a 54% failure rate is completely unacceptable, but my bet is that this will continue to inch higher over the next few years as whatever initial-design systems remaining out there fail. I'm also not convinced that the new systems have solved every problem (remember, MS themselves said it was "a series of flaws"), although they may have solved a few so the failure rate of the new systems may be lower, though probably still pretty unacceptable by any reasonable standard.
I personally care about quality, and the lack of such is pretty much the only reason I haven't bought a 360 at this point, nor do I plan to. Even since the supposed internal redesign, there are still reports and surveys like this being released seemingly on a monthly basis. I keep waiting for the day when it seems like MS has this stuff finally solved, but that day just never seems to come.
Re:Missing Details (Score:3, Interesting)
I thought the way they sell so many is mainly due to the up-front cost. Most people apparently [arstechnica.com] want a PS3 with its bluray, easy going attitude to upgrades, free online play etc. If it was cheaper - and it now is - then more than twice as many would prefer it.
Amazon has restricted supply of the PS3 slim already, Marketshare [tgdaily.com] for the PS is surely going to rise at the expense of the Xbox now.
Re:Missing Details (Score:5, Interesting)
Yup, look at what happened to American Auto manufacturers in the 70's and 80's - near complete monopoly, 3 big players, quality went to shit and their competitors finally made inroads with quality products. Dunno how well this applies though, since new cars are ~$20,000 and new consoles are ~$150-300
Re:Reason for Xbox failures: Its Design is flawed (Score:2, Interesting)
The stupid part about all of this is that the XBOX is just a PC. They could have used off-the-shelf parts and built the damn thing for a fraction of the cost using high reliability proven parts.
Re:Missing Details (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd say that's a perfect example. 50+ % failure should be unacceptible. Its why back in the days of choosing between a SNES and a Sega Genesis, I went with the genesis: years of NES cartiges and units that would perpetually fail turned me off to their entire franchise all the way to the Wii.
And even now, they are SELLING an attachment that attempts to fix the crap motion sensor in the WiiMote.
And it's why I'll not buy a Ford or a Dodge product anytime soon.
Re:Which is it? (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm not sure where you live. But in Iceland, if you buy and it breaks. We get a new one for free, if it is within two years of purchase, as long as we have done nothing to fault the warranty.
So an Xbox failing for me 18months after purchase, just causes me the hassle of going to argue with some store clerks, and then again to pick up my new one.
Why is it flawed? (Score:3, Interesting)
When you want to use statistics you have to use a truly random sample if you want your results to be interpreted as valuable.
The sample has to be a truly* random subset of which set, though?
Maybe you want to know stuff about the xbox brokenness experience of heavy gamers, as opposed to that of the general population.
Why might you want that? Well, if you're trying to sell research to a crowd of heavy gamers, you want to sell them something that's says something about them specifically (since heavy usage probably predicts increased breakage level, i.e. what makes that group special actually influences the numbers). It narrows the applicability of the statistics, but also makes it more useful for the narrower set of people. Better or worse? Depends.
Consider this: if you wanted to know how likely you were to get hit with lung cancer, would you look at its prevalence among a random subset of the population, or would you want to look at smokers or non-smokers only (depending on whether or not you smoke)?
* By the way, I assume that in your dictionary "truly random" implies a uniform distribution, which happens to maximize the shannon entropy of the stochastic variable (i.e. the uniform distribution is the "most" random one).
When you feel the temptation to say "your numbers don't mean anything", consider whether you really should be saying "your numbers don't prove that" instead.
In this particular case, self-selection and sample bias for heavy users probably increases the breakage numbers. One should adjust the conclusion accordingly.
Re:Missing Details (Score:3, Interesting)
The first day of owning a Wii you end up spending more on controllers and games than the console cost.
I don't understand this comment. Are you saying this because the Wii only comes with one controller and one nunchuk, and you have to buy four, whereas the 360 is different? Or are you saying that the cost of the Wiimote ($40) plus nunchuk ($20) plus Wii motion plus ($10 with a game) is too high?
I admit if you bought EVERY controller piece you possibly could right up front it would be a lot of money, but who does that? And is it so different for any other console?
Re:Missing Details (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm calling bullshit.
Wiimote + Nunchuk = $53 ($38 for Wiimote alone)
Dualshock 3 = $43 (Includes rechargeable batteries)
Xbox 360 Wireless controller = $28
The Wii has - by far - the most expensive controllers of the current set of consoles.
Re:Missing Details (Score:3, Interesting)
My math gives me 45.8% (or 46%), not 61%. I didn't see 61% in the article, so I'm curious as to where you got that number.