Yeah, none of this is making me happy as an owner as of yet to fail 360. I’m assuming it’s going to fail at some point…
On a side note, do current 360 owners make sure it gets good ventilation? I know mine heats everything up around it and I can’t have the stand it’s in closed while it’s running or overheats…
Mine sits vertically behind my big TV, all by it’s lonesome. There’s nothing restricting air flow back there so I don’t know why it died on me.
But they lose money every time this happens. It’s not like you bought an electric can opener and it broke and has a warranty, but it’s not worth trying to get a new one under warranty because the replacement cost is so low. I would bet that more than 95% of people who have broken 360’s under warranty get them replaced. Even if the 360 is replaced with a refurb, it still costs them a bunch of bucks.
So one would think that MS would do whatever it takes to avoid the continual losses on the hardware side of the 360. OTOH, if they are able to hide the actual loss in some other way (ie the initial loss on the 360 is xyz but they can put the repair losses elsewhere) then it’s gonna take a while and probably consumer or federal action to make them clean up the unit. Everybody I know who has a 360 has replaced it at least once, including myself. It’s ridiculous for them to continue to put out low quality units like they are doing.
We’ll see what happens, but I suspect it’s gonna get worse before it gets corrected.
Well, since may of the extended warranties are directly through MS stores don’t have to deal with. As for the in-store extended warranties I can pretty well guarantee that retailers are “talking” to MS about it at great length.
its no secret that the original Xbox project ended up deep in the red. The idea of course being to act as a loss leader and get a foot in the door for future consoles. The 360 has done well in terms of market share and developers are definitely on board providing lots of new titles.
I wonder if the numerous defect problems will ultimately make the 360 a financial failure too. MS has probably worked a lot harder to fix the problems than say Sony would, but nevertheless as others have pointed out this cant be cheap. Had MS not been in such a life or death rush to get to market ahead of the PS3 this problem might have been corrected before full scale production. In the end it was a rush to beat a competing console that appears to have doomed itself with a very uncomfortable price tag.
I’m on my third 360, though one died completely due to user error (my fault). But I bought my 360 at Costco, so all I’ve had to do is walk in with everything that came in the original package, and exchange it for a brand new one…and then flip the HDs (which they allow).
But the failure rate on these units is ridiculous. There are more than enough accounts of people having them fail than I can recall for any other piece of hardware I’ve ever owned. Inexcusable QA from MS.
Why would they recall? Even if the failure rate is as high as some say, it would cost them far more than dealing with each case and replacing the defective ones with “fixed” units.
How the heck do you kill a console via “user error”? OOPS I PUT GRAVY IN TEH CD DRIVE OH NOES!!!1
He swaddled it because it looked cold.
Why? Do you think he’s some kind of masochist? Who wants to spend their life trying to get a working console? Point is, he’s not an isolated example.
If there’s a chance of death or bodily harm that will cost you lots of money, you order a recall.
If not, you repair the failed parts as part of warranty service.
Out of the 4 people I know who had launch consoles all 4 had to be replaced. I’m on my second one and a co-worker just got a coffin to get his third replacement. We really need a full investigative report on the situation to find some truth because we sure won’t get it from MS.
Speaking of which my wireless gamepad, the little rubber coatings on the analog sticks are ripping and separating from the underlying plastic sticks. I’ve never seen a gamepad do this. I wonder if it’s covered by my extended warranty. I’m kind of dreading calling MS support for any reason.
In my small circle of “lawyers who play video games”, I only know one person whose 360 hasn’t broken, and this is a crew who definitely play their systems less than the average gamer, probably averaging 2-4 hours a week, so it definitely isn’t normal wear/tear. Shame, because I love the system other than its crappy durability.
I only know one person “in real life” out of a dozen that has had their 360 fail. Is my anecdotal evidence better than yours? Also, WTF are you doing to your gamepad? I though I was bad because the plastic onteh shaft was wearing out a bit from pusing forward all the time.
I have a relative that works at Microsoft who can hok me up with games…if I were to buy the console. I have enough headaches keeping my house, car, and life running. I do not need the hassle of another thing that is going to fail eventually. The PS3 is outta my price range. It is looking more and more like I am going back to Nintendo for this generation of the console wars.
Can’t your little circle transform into “lawyers who play video games and sue the shit out of Microsoft”?
Would be entertaining to watch. :)
I blame geometry wars. It could also be my 2yr old chewing on them though I don’t think I can see any teeth marks.
My middle kid took out a couple of GC controller sticks that way.
Well, not to sound like captain obvious here but if MS doesn’t do something right and something huge in the next weeks, they’re screwed. No matter how good the Live and the games are, no matter what price cut we’ll see with Halo 3, come Christmas they’ll pass for the cheap and unreliable piece of crap, and mummy and daddy will put 200 extra dollars in the PS3 which, they’ll know it by then, will live for at least 5 years without a problem. The cat is now more than out of the bag, they clearly need to do something, and it pisses me off that this great console is on the verge on becoming another Dreamcast-like failure due to its now tainted image. It may sell in the US, but on every french board the 360 is described as a piece of junk, and I imagine that explains partly the 40.000 units sold in over 3 months we saw at the beginning of the year.
Microsoft is shitting bricks right now praying that the 65nm refresh of the hardware fixes these reliability problems for good. If it doesn’t, then yeah, there’s eventually going to be a class-action lawsuit that will make Bill himself cry like a tiny child.
What I want to know is WHAT HAPPENED. How the hell did this incredibly flawed design make it out of Microsoft? I mean, we all know Microsoft is not a hardware manufacturer, but does that really explain it? Is it possible that this was just sheer incompetence on all levels inside the XBox design department? Maybe this really is where Sony’s and Nintendo’s experience shows – they know how to design hardware, they design LOTS of hardware, they’re hardware companies.
You know how everyone always says “don’t get version 1 or version 2 of anything from Microsoft, wait until version 3”? I think we’re seeing what happens when Microsoft’s version 2 is unpatchable hardware, not Service Packable software. Microsoft’s never shipped an ambitious hardware product before, and it seems like they simply lacked the skills to execute it.
There’s no doubt that this is a colossal issue at this point. I’m rabidly curious to find out the true story. The downer is that unless/until Microsoft comes up with a major redesign that actually systemically makes new 360s reliable – and who knows whether the design is too flawed to make that possible at all, even given a putative 65nm refresh? – there’s a chance that I’ll effectively wind up losing my investment in a 360. (My 360 is in the repair shop right now, in fact, and who knows when I’ll get it back?)
I’ll tell you one thing, I was going to get Bioshock for the 360 because I expected it to outperform my PC. But now? Now I’m not sure I’ll be buying any 360 games again AT ALL, until we get solid word that there’s been a hardware design with radically better reliability. I’m in “cut my losses” mode at this point.
Denny, probably there’s nothing you can do to help shake Microsoft out of “LA LA LA THERE IS NO PROBLEM IT’S A COMPLEX BUSINESS WE DO NOT COMMENT ON ANYTHING” Iraqi Defense Minister mode, but if there is, I sure hope you’re doing it.