I Am the Newest Member of The Club of Having had my 360 break on me. It sucks hard.

[Garry Silljo]

I'm on 360 number four, so I feel your pain.

Good luck.

I refuse to buy a system that many times due to manufacturer incompetance. When you keep buying the system over and over, companies don't learn a consequence.

[FxMercenary]

i got an old 2006 model that still works! Of course as soon as the news began to fly around that they were all failing i reinforced to solder points and pasted the cpu and gpu with silver thermal compound. No problems yet!

[Jimid2]

Man, that sucks... My son and I just bought a new 360 Pro yesterday - we couldn't resist the Boxing Day pricing ($240 w/ two games). I know they're infamously unreliable, but I plan on using it heavily for three years - if it RRODs, Mickeysoft can send me a new one with the Jaspur chipset and board in it; I hear those are being put into the new Arcade units with the 256MB of memory onboard, so they should make it into the Pro models before too long... All that being said, I picked up Gears, Bioshock, PGR3 and Rainbow Six for only $60 total (used, EB's sales), and we're having a blast! Oh, and we got HALO 3 for $20 too! I think this thing will get the crap played out of it over the winter...

[ProgrammingAce]

I don't care where you say you get your data from, I call BS on this. Everyone I know IRL except me has had at least one RROD. Some have had two. Granted, this is only 4 other people besides me, but anecdotal evidence suggests the failure rate of 360s is well above 25%.

The initial problem was a combination of two things, and sadly one wasn't diagnosed until sometime in 2007. There was an initial problem with the clamp they used to hold down the CPU. As the system heated up, the clamp forced the motherboard to bend and it would start breaking the solder joints.

Microsoft quickly discovered this and made corrections. Unfortunately this was just a symptom and not the real issue. After adding additional cooling and modifying the clamping system, consoles were still dieing. It wasn't until they asked a major electronics manufacturer for help that they discovered an issue with the soldering process and the RoHS solder they were using.

Basically the solder they were using was crap and melted at a lower temperature then specified. This wouldnt have been a major problem if it hadn't been for the clamping system. The reason the problem only effects a small number of consoles is due to the wave soldering process. The tolerances were off and the design spec didn't take into consideration the crappy solder. If your 360 was soldered well, it'll last for years without a heat related RRoD (the console can RRoD for 30+ reasons, including bad code in a game).

Any questions?

[Frankie_Says_Relax]

I refuse to buy a system that many times due to manufacturer incompetance. When you keep buying the system over and over, companies don't learn a consequence.

You mean the billions that Microsoft has openly gone on-record about losing due to non-stop warranty extensions, shipping costs, and repair parts & labor for RROD consoles?

While I do believe that Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo and Sega have all recouped SOME money in the past off of consumers who have re-purchased their systems due to hardware failure (or simply purchased a "refresh" design of a console/portable)...

I think that regardless of how many 360s any of us buy, in this specific instance with the 360, MS learned their own lessons from their own poor R&D on the product and the time and money they've spent and lost on repairs/replacements.

[garagesaleking!!]

does one red light still qualify as being the rrod. I thought the rrod was when you had 3 red lights.

I am on break from college and just wanted to relax and play my 360, thats what sucks, i guess i will hook up my original xbox and play some campaigns.

I just bought an xbox live download card recently and wanted to download some new rockband songs for when im back up at college, but i cant do that now.

Will they fix my system, or send me a new one? does anyone know?

[Sudo]

I refuse to buy a system that many times due to manufacturer incompetance. When you keep buying the system over and over, companies don't learn a consequence.

You don't have to keep buying it, Microsoft will fix it for free.

[scooterb23]

Awww, Sudo, come on now...why take all the fun out of a completely fact-starved, misguided rant

[Garry Silljo]

You don't have to keep buying it, Microsoft will fix it for free.

I don't keep buying them, I won't even buy one. Others in the thread mentioned being on box number 4 or even 6. They didn't say one box fixed that many times. They said that many boxes.

[chicnstu]

Mine quit working earlier this year, it was fixed and so far hasn't messed up again. Has there been a console worse than the 360? The games and features of the system are great but the system itself is crap. Compared to the other systems I own it seems like the worst made of them all:

1. Many die
2. Pick your 360 up, hold it. Then hold a Wii or PS3. The 360 feels so hollow, flimsy, and fragile. It feels like a Saturn. A Wii, PS3, DC, GC, etc feels solid.
3. Worst D-Pad I've ever used
4. Very stiff A/B/X/Y buttons, they feel like something from a late 80s toy.
5. Horrible Analog sticks, as bad as the ones on a Hyperscan. The "crater" in the top was put there to keep thumbs from sliding off, but it does the opposite.
6. Fat controller, but it's made by a U.S. company and I guess most people from the U.S. have larger hands than people from Japan.

Oh well, the 360 has the most games so we are stuck with it.

[eugenek]

there's no truth behind the theory that some games increase the chances of a RRoD.

According to this anonymous engineer interviewed by 8bitjoystick, there is:

Q: Does some games more than others cause hardware failure. Gears of War and Dead Rising were thought to be system killers when they came out.

Of course. Infant mortality, which is a weakened mechanical "thing" like a solder joint with a void in it, are exercised to failure by cyclic stress. The number of cycles and the amplitude of temperature change from low to high determine how quickly it will fail. Certain games will consume more bandwidth on the GPU, which has the most substandard thermal solution on the mother board, making it a lot hotter, warping the mobo and flexing the solder joints. Weak joints fail quickly. The better the game, the more often it will be played, again accelerating failures.

http://www.8bitjoystick.com/archives...h_failures.php

Jake has terrible grammar, but I think he's pretty credible.

[PapaStu]

I don't keep buying them, I won't even buy one. Others in the thread mentioned being on box number 4 or even 6. They didn't say one box fixed that many times. They said that many boxes.

I'm on Number 3. Microsoft has REPLACED my two dead units with new (all be it refurbed) units. I can almost guarantee that our other posters who've had 4, 6, x number of systems die have had MS replacements vs going out and buying 4 or 6 new units.

@ garagesaleking
It depends on what the problem is with your unit. Mine have all had disc drives shit out on them. They've replaced my system with a 'new' system. Good buddy Dangerboy had his die within a few days of my last one, with something else dying, and they repaired his system and sent it back to him (serial #'s matched).

[Rob2600]

Has there been a console worse than the 360?

I'd say the Coleco Adam...maybe.

2. Pick your 360 up, hold it. Then hold a Wii or PS3. The 360 feels so hollow, flimsy, and fragile. It feels like a Saturn.

The Saturn is a durable, reliable console.

[j_factor]

The only problem Saturns seem to have is the cartridge port failing to recognize. But that's probably mainly caused by Interact's ridiculously thick cartridges that stretch out the contacts. I would say that the Dreamcast (or maybe Sega CD model 1) was actually Sega's least reliable console, although it's still pretty good. Game Gear has a lot of issues that have come out over time -- I don't remember hearing about anyone having problems with them 15 years ago, but nowadays, almost every Game Gear I come across has some sort of problem.

[ProgrammingAce]

According to this anonymous engineer interviewed by 8bitjoystick, there is:

I completely agree with what he says, but he's being too specific. Think more general.

If the console has bad solder joints, it'll fail. If the solder joints are fine then it won't.

The games you play have no affect on whether or not the console will fail. Individual games may cause the system to fail faster though. If you never take the console out of the box, it'll never fail...

[garagesaleking!!]

so the e74 problem is related to overheating?

[gepeto]

. Has there been a console worse than the 360? .

Well for what it is worth my original psx and everybody I knew that bought one of the 300 dollar units. The one with the av outs.

The cd lens went bad and the unit had video playback problems and needed to be turned upside down. Whether it worked was hit and miss. Repairs cost me 125 dollars. Then they was a class action where they offered money or a game of your choice.

At least for the most part MS is free.

[jdc]

We all know that the 360 has left many gamers with bad feelings towards Microsoft. The big question is whether those same gamers are going to be first in line with their $500 when Microsoft launches their next console? My money's on the fact that they will be, and Microsoft is most certainly counting on it.

[garagesaleking!!]

the 360 is just so superior to the ps3 in my opinion, and even the wii, that it is too hard to not still love it. xbox live just blows my mind.

[Gameguy]

We all know that the 360 has left many gamers with bad feelings towards Microsoft. The big question is whether those same gamers are going to be first in line with their $500 when Microsoft launches their next console? My money's on the fact that they will be, and Microsoft is most certainly counting on it.

Just hope the next one will be backwards compatible. I believe in 20 years the 360 will be one of the rarest consoles to find as most will break down by then.

I don't have a 360 and don't plan to get one anytime soon, I wouldn't spend hundreds of dollars on something I know has reliability problems. Even if the games are really good I wouldn't buy it for such a high price(older systems have good games and they're really cheap now, around $30). The 360 has pretty much become a big joke to most people, I've seen T-shirts making fun of it so it has to be pretty bad.


I should mention that I don't have any current gen system(excluding portables), I'll wait until I find them at yard sales.