Tech & Biz

FAIL: Xbox 360 Has 16% Breakdown Rate

by Jordan Yerman | February 16, 2008 at 08:10 am

1433 views | 1 Recommendation | 2 comments

Anecdotally, every person I know who owns an Xbox 360 has had at least one warranty issue. Aside from having zero free time, one of the reasons that I don't have one of these things (despite my admitted affinity to titles like Splinter Cell and Grand Theft Auto) is that I don't really need one more machine to support.

An independent study has pegged the Xbox 360 with a 16.4% failure rate, though retailers claim closer to 30%.

The first unbiased measurement comes from SquareTrade, whose business is in handling warranties for electronics. Using a sample of about 1,000 systems, it found that the 360 had about a 16.4 percent failure rate.

SquareTrade handles certain warranty claims for 360s through several retailers, and said that its own research indicates that the issues are a much bigger problem than Microsoft is letting on, but not quite to the extent that some retailers have claimed.
[...]

Among Xboxes, the "red ring of death" error was said to have accounted for three in five failures. The remainder dealt with disc read issues, as well as various hardware failures including video card and tray malfunctions.

SquareTrade says the red ring of death failures could increase, since it found that overheating and prolonged use seemed to contribute to problems. According to analysts, the industry average failure rate among consumer electronics is said to be between two and three percent.

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Al Havard (not verified)

at 20:52 on December 5th, 2008

I have and xbox360 and for the second time just today it went down. When I called xbox about it they said I would have to pay 99.00 dollars to have it fixed. My problem this time is the disc read issues. I fell Xbox is a good over all good system, but it has to many problems and they don't want to fix them. They made the system and now they don't want to stand by it. They rush this system out with out making sure everything was a ok, so now what am I to do. I paid alot of money in games to just go out and buy PS3, if I could talk to Mr. Gates I would like to hear what he thinks about his product. When called xbox there was not one person I talked to spoke english, and this in its self is bad.

Thank you, for letting me vent but I still have the problem of what to do!!