Report: New Xbox 360s More Reliable Than Ever
Are the Xbox 360's RROD woes now over?
The Xbox 360 will forever carry the stigma of being an unreliable console that's prone to a common failure known as the Red Ring of Death, or RROD for short.
The hardware malfunction is well known and publicized enough for Microsoft to acknowledge and extend its warranty coverage three fold to cover the design flaw. The warranty extension policy itself cost Microsoft a billion dollars – incentive enough to fix whatever was wrong with the Xbox 360.
While Microsoft will never divulge failure rates of consoles past and present, independent warranty provider SquareTrade has data suggesting that the latest revision of the Xbox 360 hardware, codenamed Jasper, has the RROD problem mostly solved. Check the graph below:
Overall, over the last couple of years, the Xbox 360 is still most prone to failures even when not taking the RROD defects into account.
Check out the full SquareTrade report here (PDF).
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"Overall, over the last couple of years, the Xbox 360 is still most prone to failures even when not taking the RROD defects into account." FAIL!
But does that graph also include the ones that were replaced and failed?
The headline is kind of a "no sh**" statement. Of coarse newer xbox's will be more reliable than their older generations. Thats the case with almost all products/sejavascript:%20void(0);rvices/goods.
"Overall, over the last couple of years, the Xbox 360 is still most prone to failures even when not taking the RROD defects into account."
Considering how the XBOX is the console being ran more often than the other consoles, that statistic is about right. If I don't turn on my PS3, how is it going to fail on me? Or has it already failed???
Woops, sorry bout the previous post, I accidentally dragged the submit button into the text box producing this javascript:%20void(0);
Wasn't it the president of RIM (makers of blackberry) who basically said hardware is going to follow software in the whole "release a beta, identify major issues, fix issues and re-release"? Microsoft is a software company, and the history of said software shows they rarely get things right on the first (or any) try. Microsoft saw how successful the PS2 was by releasing early, and wanted to scoop the PS3 and Wii. In the end they just rushed an un-finished product out the door that was outsold by the Wii anyway.
I wonder how much more money Microsoft plans to lose before they just give up on the home console market.
The PS3 has problems with the blue ray drive, but it's just not as common as the XBox 360's failure rate.
I probably say this to my near-future detriment, but I have not really had a problem with my Xbox 360. I have had a few games freeze(most being rented games, if I remember correctly), but a reset usually fixed this and it never occurred again(for that particular game).
I have had my Xbox since the early Fall of 2008 and have traveled with the Xbox quite a lot. I have used my Xbox at least 500 to 600 hours and used it for more than 12 hours at a time(playing games and watching DVDs/streaming video). While I may not be a "hardcore" user of this device, I must say that I have had a very enjoyable experience with the device thus far.
OF course, as I said, this is probably said to my detriment. I will probably turn it on tomorrow and get hit with the RRoD.
One thing I wanted to add: Have those failure rates been juxtaposed to the sales numbers of the devices? Could it be that there are higher recorded rates of failure for the Xbox 360 due to it being more popular? Could it also be that the Wii is a lower rate of failure due to it being a shit system and only gaming noobs use it enough to even approach the devices failure threshold?
I want to see all the numbers before a judgment is made on whether or not the Xbox 360 is truly a failure.
Xbox's only die when you play something other than Halo 3 and Gears, the moment you put in another game, BAM!
One thing I wanted to add: Have those failure rates been juxtaposed to the sales numbers of the devices? Could it be that there are higher recorded rates of failure for the Xbox 360 due to it being more popular? Could it also be that the Wii is a lower rate of failure due to it being a shit system and only gaming noobs use it enough to even approach the devices failure threshold?I want to see all the numbers before a judgment is made on whether or not the Xbox 360 is truly a failure.
umm nope. everyone i know who has a 360 has always said they have had to have it replaced or failed on them. the PS3 had only big blu-ray drive issues at launch and has now improved and has a very low failure rate and have rarely heard of any Nintendo wii failures
last gen the PS2 had a notably high failiure rate with its DVD drives but never heard about them in the news
the 360 is only popular because microsoft has the ability to give blank cheques to the developers so they get the exclusives.
I also have had a few game freezes (fable2) but nothing else significant. It does seem a little noisy though.
@montezuma
"Have those failure rates been juxtaposed to the sales numbers of the devices?"
Do you know the definition of rate? It is a percentage. The unofficial figure that MS isn't disputing for fear of disclosing a higher one is like 51%. Now you multiply that up by the number of machines.
At least MS learned a strong lesson here and the next XBOX will be rock solid, you can pretty much guarantee that. Like the Vista lesson, Win 7 and next XBOX will come and make up for all past sins.
Sometimes it takes a strong kick in the ass to wake a large company like MS up from it's relaxation. The Google competition will also wake MS the f**k up, I'd be afraid if I was Google. What MS did with Bing in little time was impressive, I don't even use Google anymore.
The PS3 has problems with the blue ray drive, but it's just not as common as the XBox 360's failure rate.
I don't think there is any comparison between the PS3 and the 360's 50% failure rate.
To Be frank i have never heard of anyone with a PS3 hardware issue...
Believe me, I am not a PS3 fanboy. There is no question the PS3 is built better then 360, these units are not comparable when referring to hardware.
Sure there are 30 million 360's and only 20mil PS3's but the ring of death affected 15 million units...1/2! How many PS3 hardware issues have there been?
thankfully none of my 360's have had an issue
i like my ps3 better than my 360
My Nintendo still works from 24 years ago, I just have to keep blowing on the cartridges...
so does mine, and my atari 2600, 4800, 5200, 7200, colecovision, intelivision, sega master system....they dont make em like they used to
all my consoles i have recieved from atari 2600 to now have not failed on me. my SNES even fell off of a high TV set and still worked even thought the front of it got a chip of plastic taken out of it
My NES still works but the spring is worn out so you have to stuff another cartrige on top of it when you click it down for it to work
My frst 360 lasted less than a year, but the refurbished one I got in exchange has now gone 2 years with no killer issues. It doesn't always boot properly but a restart always clears it up. Never scratched a disk because bumping it isn't easy to do on its shelf.
Too bad people still think a brand new 360 will die within days or something...
.I wonder how much more money Microsoft plans to lose before they just give up on the home console market.
Considering they run a profit on the console division I can't imagine them giving up anytime soon. Even if they were losing boatloads of money they still wouldn't give up. There is a market to be dominated and Microsoft rarely, if ever, backs out of a market where there is money to be made.
I can only say that I enjoy the content my XBOX 360 brings to my living room. After having a few failures, Microsoft has stood behind its product and replaced it every time. I cannot say the same for Sony. Will I ever go out and purchase a PS3, the answer is no, unless they are willing to match the price of a Magnovox Bluray player for $99.00. For everyone that loves their PS3, that's great. But my money is in Microsoft.
I am not surprised that the new Xbox360 are more reliable than before since it is what it is supporsed to be.
The question is... how much more relaibale it has became. Well... only time can tell.
Nice work MS... I just wish the beta tesing period for the 360 was not that long (how many "years" now since the first release?!... /sad)... >_<
But does that graph also include the ones that were replaced and failed?
Most likely yes. I have had two xbox's fail on me. The first, the DVD drive stopped spinning. Then I got one with a different serial number, which really did red ring. I got that one back (yay...) but it's been pretty stable since then. Besides very occasionally getting one blinking red light that's there until you reboot, so I never looked into that.
Now good for a whole two hours longer. Yay.
you can't believe what the report says. microsoft is all about marketing and that means selling.
I have 12 xbox360 in my shop to be repaired and zero ps3's only seen 2 so far for discs stuck in tray.
Okay, a week and a half ago toms did an article saying failure rates were at 54%. In the chart above the prod's max failure rate was at max 10%. So even if they fixed all of the prod failures, that still leaves 44% failure rates... ???????????????????????????????????
WHOOOP TEEE DOOOO
NEW consoles work great. What about the MILLIONS of older consoles that Microsoft never fixed? What are they doing about those?
Answer: NOTHING. They can sending you back faulty units to try and lure you into buying ANOTHER console.
No F'ing way.
This is why I simply will not buy a 360 I don't want the damn thing to die on me and go through the hassle of waiting for a repair/replacement. The failure rate on the console is inexcusable. I don't see why people have and continued to buy the console don't you realize your just telling MS that this is acceptable?
So ps3 guys have been all braggadocious about how reliable their system is all while enduring an unreasonably high 10% failure rate? Seems silly. To me even the WII's failure rate is unacceptably high. Someone needs to step up the quality control at these companies.