The TRUE Xbox 360 Failure rates

[GrandAmChandler]

What did that company say 16% or something? Cheapassgamer did a poll of 3500+ people, the results are ridiculous compared to the numbers that that warranty company and Microsoft posted. Check it out, I "Dugg" it for easy viewing:

http://digg.com/xbox/The_TRUE_Xbox_360_Failure_Rates

-GAC-

[heybtbm]

People who have had the RRoD are more likely to participate in a poll asking about the RRoD. People who haven't had the RRoD are not going to respond in equal proportions.

I still say the likelihood of RRoD is 100% if you play your 360 for long periods of time so it is regularly exposed to high temperatures.

[Slate]

I still say the likelihood of RRoD is 100% if you play your 360 for long periods of time so it is regularly exposed to high temperatures.

This poll could have been towards all 360 hardware problems. I have two 360s and never had the RRoD. The biggest problem I ever had was the DVD drive not opening on my pro console.

Oh, and the pro console got tons of use until I got an elite. I even left it (The pro) on for two days straight.. Twice.

[otoko]

I'm pretty sure those consoles are after they "fixed the problem".

According to my friend Nick who regularly mods and fixes a random assortment of Consoles and computers, he finds that most 360 consoles when produced Microsoft soldered the entire board using the same temperature. Well, this of course did not hold near the parts, *cough*possessor*cough* excuse me, that get hottest. Thus, during use msot of them became unsoldered.

Of course that's not all of them.. Just the ones that can be fixed with the towel trick. That in turns melts all the inside hardware if you do it enough.

Edit: I do not own a 360.

[heybtbm]

Oh, and the pro console got tons of use until I got an elite. I even left it (The pro) on for two days straight.. Twice.

I see what you're saying, but leaving the 360 on for two days doesn't compare to the amount of heat generated by playing a game for 1-2 hours. I'm talking about actual "play time" not idle time.

[Slate]

I see what you're saying, but leaving the 360 on for two days doesn't compare to the amount of heat generated by playing a game for 1-2 hours. I'm talking about actual "play time" not idle time.

It was running dead rising in both of those 2 day sessions. Yes, Its true!

I would like to know how much use the 360's got, so we could see if the 360's that have not failed are owned by gamers who dont play as much as people who got the RRoD. I am betting people who got the RR are heavy gamers and people who havent gotten the RRoD yet are casual gamers.

I've never had the RRoD problem and I have two 360s. The pro got tons of use up until I got my elite which is on anywhere from 4 to 9 hours every day.

When I used my pro It was horizontal and got proper ventilation. My elite is the same way, Horizontal and lots of ventilation.

[consolecrusader]

I kinda do this face every time I turn on my XBOX360 Elite:



I was one of those who voted on that CAG poll being I trade there a boat load. And I was not surprised at the results. I mean heck did you even see the owner of CAG got the RROD? Jeez

[miaandjohnrule]

That statistic isn't even close to being accurate. You would need a poll of all 360 users to get an accurate percentage. People on CAG are more rabid and also folks who have had faulty 360s probably have more incentive to be vocal.

[otoko]

That statistic isn't even close to being accurate. You would need a poll of all 360 users to get an accurate percentage. People on CAG are more rabid and also folks who have had faulty 360s probably have more incentive to be vocal.

We realize. Also that's impossible. You may send a survey everyone who has a 360 but you'll only get a percentage back. Even then you can still hold this argument of "faulty people shit and bubbles wahh blah blah" argument anyway.

[Logicdustbin]

I still say the likelihood of RRoD is 100% if you play your 360 for long periods of time so it is regularly exposed to high temperatures.

I bought mine a couple months after launch, and have never had an issue.

in fact, when PSU came out, I had a wee bit of an addiction - that and for people who played PSU, there was no lobby jumping when the game came out; so I had one week where the system was not turned off at all, with a lot of heavy playing.


meh, I'm still waiting for mine to die though, it will give me an excuse to buy the sexy black elite

[ProgrammingAce]

Those numbers aren't even reasonably accurate.

There are over 10,000,000 xbox 360's sold, 3,000 users isn't going to provide an accurate sample.

[gepeto]

Those numbers aren't even reasonably accurate.

There are over 10,000,000 xbox 360's sold, 3,000 users isn't going to provide an accurate sample.

Why is percentages used in the neisen rating? I am on my 3rd. The funny thing was this recent one seems new manufactured on 2/13/08 but no hdmi go figure.

[lendelin]

Those numbers aren't even reasonably accurate.

There are over 10,000,000 xbox 360's sold, 3,000 users isn't going to provide an accurate sample.

Oh yeah, 3000 respondents would be more than enough to provide an accurate sample, even 1500 would be enough with an error margin of +-3%. The key is that the respondents have to be be randomly chosen, (which isn't the case for this poll) then you could generalize from a 3000 sample to 300,000,000 of Xbox owners.

Very often people think that the more respondents you have, the more reliable is the poll in terms of generalizability. This is only true for up to 1000 respondents; for more respondents the law of diminishing returns strikes brutally.

Error margins are hardly reduced from 3000 respondents upwards. That's why you find hardly polls with more than 3000, most settle with 1500 respondents. The error margin from a sample of 3000 to 10,000 decreases only by 1%, after that it gets even worse. A sample of 10,000 and a sample of 100,000 have statistically speaking marginally reduced error margins, the reduction is insignificant.

The key are randomly chosen respondents which reduces sample bias dramatically, not the number of participants.

For this poll that means: if it had 3000, or ten thousand, or 100,000 respondents doesn't really matter. Even with 100,000 respondents the sample biases would be still there.

A sample of 1000 randomly chosen participants would be way more reliable than a sample of one million participants for this specific poll.

[jcalder8]

I go to CAG regularly and I never saw the link or I would have voted that mine has never had a problem.

It's interesting to see but of little importance.

[skaar]

I've got a pre-launch 360 that I've left on for days (and even weeks) at a time - I'd pause the game and turn off the TV, go to work, come back - still going fine.

That being said, I've locked up twice playing Bully recently

I remember when the 360s were coming out people were freaking about power supplies and heat and people were giving the consoles LOTS of breathing room - but people seem to be back to cramming it into their entertainment centers and having bricks sitting on top of piles of wires behind the TV these days when I see other peoples'.... it's a PC, people. Let it breathe.

[kaedesdisciple]

For what it's worth, mine took a little over a year to "die" (it just got the color tint -> no video problem). I had it sitting in the open, nothing blocked any of the vents, out of direct sunlight. I never played it for more than a few (2-3 max) hours at a time, a few times a week.

Hopefully that BB replacement warranty I have comes through here, else I'm gonna be quite upset.

[thedeityofhardcore]

I'm in the faulty Everything club.

I'm on my 2nd 360 now
Faulty Rock Band Guitar Club

I'm starting to have video issues with my 2nd 360 dunno if it's the Cable TV or the 360 (seemed to be a loose connection but still I've also had AV problems lately anyway)

so yeah.

my first 360 was made in August of 2006 my 2nd was made August of 2007 (no HDMI out though wah wah)

of my online friends all of them are on their 3rd 360. Of my real life friends none of them have had any problems with their 360 and one of them has a launch unit.

[Damaramu]

... it's a PC, people. Let it breathe.

Yup. I've got mine in open space, horizontal, and elevated. My machine is a Pro, which I purchased in October of '07.

I play it maybe 2 or 3 times a week...for maybe an hour or two at a time. It never feels hot. Of course, I keep the room fairly dark, the ceiling fan is always on, and it sits directly across the room from an A/C vent. And I always keep the place at @ 70 degrees.

[lendelin]

People who have had the RRoD are more likely to participate in a poll asking about the RRoD. People who haven't had the RRoD are not going to respond in equal proportions.

That's exactly right, and there are many more biases of Internet polls which aren't just generalizable. The limitations are 'somehow' addressed by Cheapassgamer.

The poll would have been much more meaningful if they had made the same poll for the Wii and the PS3; that would give you a clear trend across systems and would in all likelihood show how bad the design problems of the 360 are compared to the other systems.

A comparison across systems wouldn't have eliminated the inherent biases of the sample, but it would have shown a clear cut trend because the same biases apply roughly to all systems.

Additionally, an estimation how "realistic" the total numbers are could have been made assuming that an alleged reliable system like the PS3 has a failure rate of 2% to 5%. If the failure rate of the PS3 in the poll would have been let's say 15%, we could have made a more educated guess about the total number of failure rates for the 360.

But these reports are alarming. Together with other data and reports from users the design flaws of the 360 are just terrible. Joe Santulli said that he expects the older systems to fail even by 90% based on his experience. Let's hope that isn't the case.

I assumed that the failure rate is around 40%. This poll together with other data indicates an even worse failure rate. I think if we go up the ladder from 40% onwards it doesn't really matter anymore.

The 360 was sold in the first year and a half with a terrible design flaw. There wasn't a system which had such terrible failure rates (since the mid 80s, that is).

MS did a lot of stuff right for the launch: it was well prepared, development kits were give early to developers, the list of launch titles had quality and was varied. But to get out such an unreliable system despite some warning signs in test runs is just unacceptable. Games don't matter to me if I the system to play them with breaks down, and if I spend $400 for the thing I expect not a failure rate of around 50%.

It is strange -- the 360 does so well with its good games despite the hardware horror reports which came in a couple of months after it launched. The PS3 suffered from sales numbers because of a lack of games despite its fantastic hardware design and reliability. It seems it is all in the good games and the price.

My 360 is now 22 months old -- that means I bought it in May 2006, I don't know when it was manufactured. So far no problems whatsoever. (knock on plastic) But if my system breaks down MS will not see a penny from me for the 360 for a very long time.

[HYB]

As I said in the other RROD thread, I have a launch unit, running as perfect and smooth as ever. I play heavily, anywhere from 1 to 18 hours a day. My friend also has a launch unit, he doesn't play as much but no problems there. Boyfriend has one, not a launch unit but one of the earlier versions, no problems there either. Me and my friend store the console horizontally, I have my Wii on top of it. Boyfriend has his vertically. In fact, I've never heard or anyone who had a RROD here in Finland. I bet there are people who have had it though.

The failure rate is alarmingly high though and I just hope that my 360 doesn't die on me. I could never afford another one.