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Print 26 comment(s) - last by foolsgambit11.. on Sep 7 at 10:00 PM
Microsoft's console customers have been along a rough ride

Many Xbox 360 fans stay steadfastly faithful to their next generation console of choice.  However, even the majority of the most die-hard fans would admit that Microsoft's quality track record left something to be desired.  The console launched with a 90 nm CPU that tended to run hot and fail -- resulting in an iconic three red LEDs ringing the power light activating, in what is known as the "Red Ring of Death" (RROD).

Microsoft set aside over $1B USD to deal with the defects and has raced to deploy its Falcon 65 nm update in 2007 in hopes of remedying the issues. 

So just how badly hit was Microsoft?  According to a recent survey by Game Informer of 5,000 readers, since the late 2005 launch of the Xbox 360, over 54.2 percent of purchasers experienced a failure.  After sending their console in for repair, a whopping 41.2 percent became acquainted with failure once again.  With 30 million consoles shipped, these numbers would indicate 16.3 million failures and 6.7 second failures.

In comparison, only 10.6 percent of Sony PS3's and 6.8 percent of Nintendo Wii's experienced failure.  And for those who sent their consoles in for repair only 14.7 percent of PS3 owners and 11 percent of Nintendo Wii owners reported failure. 

Some insist the numbers are too low.  Griffin McElroy of Joystiq, a gaming blog that has extensively chronicled the console's issues, comments, "We're not sure what future techno-utopia this poll was conducted in, but a 54.2 percent Xbox 360 failure rate sounds awfully low. Had the survey's participants been comprised entirely of Joystiq staffers, it would have been a bone-chilling 100 percent."

The survey also showed that while Sony and Nintendo completed repairs in a week or two, Microsoft took a month or more.  One bright spot was that 37.7 percent of respondents said that Microsoft's support was "very helpful".  Another promising sign for Microsoft is that only 3.8 percent vowed not to buy future Xbox's due to the failures.  Conversely, 36.4 percent bought more than one Xbox 360 to replace a failing unit.

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really jason?
By omnicronx on 8/20/2009 1:25:55 PM , Rating: 2
How were these '5000 readers picked'? You do realize that someone will be far more likely to take part in a study if they have a good reason too.. such as maybe.. if they xbox has died?

If I went to a mall and started asking random people if they would like to be part of a survey regarding broken 360's it is far more likely that people whose 360's have died will take part. This is not rocket science, this is one of the first things learned in statistics.

In fact reading the story it really makes me laugh, ""We're not sure what future techno-utopia this poll was conducted in," wrote Griffin McElroy of Joystiq, "but a 54.2 percent Xbox 360 failure rate sounds awfully low. Had the survey's participants been comprised entirely of Joystiq staffers, it would have been a bone-chilling 100 percent ."

Bias much? Sounds like they went into the study with a pretty bias opinion.

Even 10.6% PS3 failure rate seems pretty high, which leads me to believe that my first statement is most likely true.

This is not a credible story, so why you write an article based on one source whose facts definitely has some holes is beyond me.




RE: really jason?
By Hakuryu on 8/20/2009 1:39:34 PM , Rating: 2
This story has been all over the net for a couple of days now, on sites like Gamespy and even the Seattle Post website. While not a perfect study, it does give some insight into the problem. Small population studies are a good start for any survey, but need to be followed up by bigger ones.

You are right though - someone who has experienced a failure is almost sure to reply to the survey in order to rant, while those without problems might just disregard the survey. I'd like to see how many of the 5000 readers actually responded, rather then percentages based on who did respond.


RE: really jason?
By omnicronx on 8/20/09, Rating: -1
RE: really jason?
By Flunk on 8/20/2009 4:44:42 PM , Rating: 5
You never know, my Super Nintendo is 18 years old and still works perfectly. There are exceptional units.


RE: really jason?
By bighairycamel on 8/20/2009 5:32:58 PM , Rating: 2
While I can't defend the credability of the survey, you can't judge failure rates based on personal experience either. Opposite of you, every single person that I know who owns or has owned a 360 (including myself) has sent their unit in at least once, except for one guy who bought his 3 months ago...

Responding to someone else's post, I'm not convinced on the manufacturer provided failure rates either. 50+% is obviously higher than Microsoft claims, but I think 10% is also higher than what Sony claims so who can you believe?


RE: really jason?
By Trisped on 8/20/2009 6:54:39 PM , Rating: 2
As I remember launch consoles had an 84% fail rating, with latter consoles coming in at 33%. Those numbers are a few years old though. It would make sense that all the enthusiast who bought the console in the first year have had at least one RROD.
Also, the first year or more not even Microsoft seemed to know how to fix the problem. I am sure that many of those consoles were just re-soldered and sent back, so many early fixes would have to be redone.

Personally I have been very lucky. I bought mine in Jan of 2006 and it only died a few days ago.


RE: really jason?
By omnicronx on 8/21/2009 11:29:01 AM , Rating: 2
quote:
As I remember launch consoles had an 84% fail rating, with latter consoles coming in at 33%.

Remember from what? Nobody except Microsoft knows the real failure rate of the 360. I'm not trying to defend MS here, their failure rate is pretty much unforgivable. That being said, nobody knows the true results of any consoles failure rate, so why do these articles and news stories keep popping up? 5000 people is not a big enough sample, nor do I think their methodology and intepretation of the results paint a very good picture. It is very easy to sway stats to make a point, and it seems this is what was done here. No way in hell the PS3 failure rate is 10%. My PS3 even died on me less than 2 months in and I don't believe this number.


RE: really jason?
By tallcool1 on 8/21/2009 12:06:57 PM , Rating: 5
I think everyone can agree that the XBOX 360 has a failure rate that is way too high in general. You can argue over the percentage. Any consumer that would have purchased any other product would find this unexceptable and would never buy the product again, let alone defend it (fanboy) or recommend it to a friend due to such flaws.


RE: really jason?
By uvacom on 8/21/2009 2:29:05 PM , Rating: 2
I agree that the failure rate is too high. However, whether this is acceptable or not has a lot to do with consumer attitudes. Apparently for most people, a console being prone to failure is an annoying trait, but not a condemnable one (as long as it can be replaced at little or no cost to the consumer within a reasonable timeframe). This makes sense because a game console is not an essential device, and the market demographics indicate that most 360 owners probably know other 360 owners and/or own other video game platforms. Since the owner can still play other games and will eventually recover the use of a 360, the temporary loss of a 360 is usually perceived as a minor inconvenience. The real loss is on Microsoft's side, as it is very difficult to make money on a cutting edge piece of hardware if they effectively have to make two (or maybe just 1.5 or so) for every one they sell, plus customer service, shipping, technician labor costs, etc.


RE: really jason?
By ajfink on 8/22/2009 3:22:38 AM , Rating: 3
The failure rate IS unacceptably high, but that hasn't stopped me from recommending the console with (generally) better games to friends and other people online.

What am most interested in is comparisons of failure rates for different generations of Xbox 360s. Maybe someday Microsoft will release these numbers, because I'm sure they're the only ones who can accumulate perfectly accurate statistics on failures.

When my Xbox 360 died, it was an inconvenience, not a tragedy.


RE: really jason?
By foolsgambit11 on 9/7/2009 10:00:41 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
The failure rate IS unacceptably high, but that hasn't stopped me from recommending the console with (generally) better games to friends and other people online.
Wouldn't that mean that the failure rate is acceptable? Perhaps the same failure rate on a console without the other advantages of the 360 might not be. But 'acceptable' is a subjective judgment, and that judgement isn't made in a vacuum.

And sales of the 360 since the widespread reporting of RROD issues support the view that, even if the failure rate is astronomically high, it is considered acceptable by millions of people who have voted, not in a simple poll, but with their wallet. (Now there's a sentence for ya.)

There's little doubt that MS should do better next time around, but for this round of consoles, the damage (what little there was) is done.


RE: really jason?
By uvacom on 8/21/2009 1:18:31 PM , Rating: 2
I agree that the sample is completely non-representative so the results are meaningless (and almost certainly biased towards higher failure rates). But for typical statistical analysis, 5000 is a very good sample size for that population size. Let's say that 30 million xbox 360 translates into about 15 million xbox 360 owners (failure and various other reasons strongly suggest more than one unit/owner, we'll just call it 2 units/owner on average) that's more than enough to develop a confidence interval of 2 at the 99% confidence level (or a 1.4 CI at 95%). Not that the person who organized this study even understands what a CI is, of course. ;)


RE: really jason?
By Gyres01 on 8/21/2009 6:10:02 PM , Rating: 2
Imagine that.....this story again on the eve of big PS3 news......


Here's a statistic for you...
By joemoedee on 8/20/2009 4:20:12 PM , Rating: 3
100% of these console failure rate numbers are arbitrarily determined and cannot be deemed factual. How many cards were filled out correctly? There's no telling.

There's only one source that can report on the actual failure rate percentage for the 360 / PS3 / Wii, and that's the manufacturers themselves.

Even then, the numbers would not be 100% accurate as they could not report on out of warranty claims.

Clearly the 360 has had reliability issues, as evidence by MS's extended warranty. This we know for certain. How many, what percent first failures, second failures, etc?

We will not know, and how much can we actually continue to talk about this topic?

It seems we spend more time arguing over what's better / worse / etc then actually playing games. There's 4 great current systems on the market currently. (360, PS3, Wii, PS2)

At no time have he had it this good, and at no time previous has such a diverse range of gamers been catered to. So lets just enjoy what we got, and hope for news of great games in the pipeline for your chosen platform, rather than pissing in the wind with random statistics of inferiority or superiority.




By dark matter on 8/21/2009 7:47:34 AM , Rating: 2
Really? We should all stop posting about things that don't interest you any more. How about leading by example then.


RE: Here's a statistic for you...
By Chaser on 8/22/2009 11:10:51 AM , Rating: 1
This notion that the article is flawed because "only the manufacturer has accurate failure numbers" is more rose covered glasses worn by fanboys in denial.

This RROD debacle, quite frankly, has not only gotten old it's pretty pathetic. Even today no one really has any idea if this almost deceitful campaign. conducted by Microsoft is over.

Even today 360's sit on the retail shelves and no one knows if they are getting a unit that is prone or not prone to fail. But Microsoft still runs their flowery advertising for the 360 as if all is well and they believe this ridiculous "stick it in a box for 2-3 weeks and wait" is fair to people that expected something they spent their money on was reliable. Well friends I have news for you. It's not. I know several people that are on their second freaking return and a couple that are on their third.

And this idea that a console is not a necessity lessens this joke? I have news for you, your money IS a necessity. People expect a somewhat reliable product from a company that has the resources to make this issue a non-issue if they really wanted to. But they are only concerned about their profits and preventing a mass exodus from the 360 with this Russian roulette, sweep it under the carpet, return policy.

All the time while these nice shiny 360 boxes sit on the shelves at Best Buy and Walmart and Microsoft continues to portray their product as normal with their rosy 360 advertising. As it stands even today the average consumer STILL can't be 100% certain if he's going to get a lemon that will spend more time in a box on a FEDEX truck or not.

The other reality here is that a lot of people actually bought a couple if not few games for their 360. In other words they have a small investment now that they don't want to throw on Ebay and sell for .20 cents on the dollar.

So keep waiting for Microsoft to release "accurate" failure rate numbers. Pull your head out of your ass. Too many reliable sources have said they fail far too often. That alone is enough and enough is enough.


I'm not even going to call shenanigans.
By Smilin on 8/21/2009 10:08:20 AM , Rating: 2
I'm going to outright call bullsh1t.

Reality: With profit margins as thin as they are on consoles (even sold at a loss initially) if Microsoft was having to basically write off HALF of the Xboxes sold then they would NOT be making a profit in the game division. These survey results are disputed by reality itself.

quote:
According to a recent survey by Game Informer of 5,000 readers


Let me fix that for you..

quote:
According to a recent non-scientific survey whereby displeased customers are given a chance to vent and pleased customers have no reason to spend the effort conducted by Game Informer of only it's readers


What is NOT bullshit: MS had a buttload of those RRODs and it cost them a billion dollars. Nothing more, nothing less.




By PARANOID365 on 8/23/2009 2:15:41 PM , Rating: 1
Well at least some people around here have educated brains in their head, (Smilin, nafhan, clovell, omnicronx, Hakuryu), and can see this article for what it is, BULLSHIT, (kind of like it's author).

Some of you people really need to get a reality check and go back to grade school math, (which was obviously failed the 1st time), because there is no way in hell these numbers are even close to this high, (just re-read Smilin's comment a few times and you might figure it out).

For God's sake, if these numbers were even close to this high, nobody would be playing the 360, because Microsoft's entertainment division would have have imploded by now;

Get a frickin' clue you mindless sheep !!


By PARANOID365 on 8/23/2009 2:17:14 PM , Rating: 1
Well at least some people around here have educated brains in their heads, (Smilin, nafhan, clovell, omnicronx, Hakuryu), and can see this article for what it is, BULLSHIT, (kind of like it's author).

Some of you people really need to get a reality check and go back to grade school math, (which was obviously failed the 1st time), because there is no way in hell these numbers are even close to this high, (just re-read Smilin's comment a few times and you might figure it out).

For God's sake, if these numbers were even close to this high, nobody would be playing the 360, because Microsoft's entertainment division would have imploded by now;

Get a frickin' clue you mindless sheep !!


Failure rates
By clovell on 8/21/2009 1:16:08 PM , Rating: 4
I'm taking a survey of DT readers to find the failure rate of Micks articles & blogs.




80% of statistics are made up
By nafhan on 8/21/2009 12:11:05 PM , Rating: 2
This survey is meaningless.

Problems are related mostly to the audience of the website:
1. Audience for that website is made up of heavy gamers who probably use their consoles much more than the "average" person, and so there consoles will fail more quickly (look up MTBF).
2. Likewise, those people are more likely to have bought a launch console, which are known to have higher failure rates.
3. All the other problems endemic to voluntary web polls (which is enough to invalidate the "scientificness" of these results in the first place).

For the survey to be meaningful, you'd at least need it span the spectrum of 360 users. The 360 does have higher failure rates than other recent consoles, but this poll is just meaningless sensationalism without listing some caveats.




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wow
By Hok on 8/23/2009 9:05:52 PM , Rating: 2
they need to implement a cash for clunkers.

The failure rates for PS3 seems low though...




360 failure rate
By Steindaddy on 8/24/2009 4:28:48 AM , Rating: 2
I bought a 360 for my son in Jan. 06. Since then, I have had to send it in for repair/replacement 5 times! The machine is the best gaming console other than reliability. Sorry, just stating my experiances.




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