Tag: red ring of death

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.

A week ago I reported on the astounding console failure rates listed in the most recent copy of Game Informer. The Xbox 360, of course, led the pack with a whopping 54.2% failure rate. Microsoft heard those numbers this week and, guess what? They don’t dispute it.

That one took me by surprise. I figured they’d nitpick the data for being some flavor of inaccurate, and then blast the other two consoles for anything and everything. Instead, a Microsoft spokesperson said that Redmond offers the “best warranty in the industry” and that the company is “constantly improving design, manufacture, and performance.”

The statement sounds more like the words of a development team than a press release about a console that’s potentially halfway through its life cycle. What Microsoft did well was to ignore the problem completely. Maybe it will go away, right?

Everyone knows the Xbox 360 is a poorly manufactured piece of crap. Don’t get me wrong, I really love the console, but the death rate is alarming, and Game Informer has finally put a number on things.

According to their most recent issue, the folks at GI claim a whopping 54.2% failure rate for Microsoft’s next-gen console. The stat comes from a survey of more than 5,000 console owners, of which only 3.2% said they would never buy a 360 again.

Maybe 50% just sounds bad, right? The other consoles are struggling too from massive usage stats, right? Not exactly. The PS3 has a failure rate just above 10% and the Wii led the group with a measly 6.8%. So the 360 is failing 5 times as often as the console it’s outselling by a mile, and consumers still aren’t fed up enough to stop buying the damn thing. Infuriating as it may be, I have to say, “Nice work, Microsoft.” Really, it’s sort of impressive that they could pull that off.