A new study from SquareTrade, an independent warranty provider, compiled failure information for 16,000 consoles and determined the Xbox 360 was the worst of the bunch. In the first two years of ownership, 23.7% of Xbox owners reported failure, compared to 10% of PS3 owners and just 2.7% of Wii owners. The more powerful systems reported failures with video output and disc read errors while the Wii’s problems were mostly related to power and controller failure.
As you might expect, though, the biggest problem for the Xbox 360 was the famous Red Ring of Death, E74. In fact, if you take E74 out of the equation, 360 failure rate drops down to 11.7%, still more than 3 times the Wii failure rate but much closer to that of the PS3.
According to a Game Informer report from earlier this year, 360 failure rates only go up past 2 years. Their survey of over 5,000 console owners concluded the 360 failed more than 50% of the time, though only 3% of consumers would never buy another console. As these stories continue to make headlines, it seems Microsoft is doing little to correct the problem. Most statements from Redmond cite their industry-best warranty, rather than addressing the continued and widespread failure.
