Retailer: Xbox 360 failure rate 30%
The failure rate of Microsoft’s Xbox 360 next-generation gaming console reached an incredible 30% in the months after its launch, according to an Australian retailer.
A failure rate of up to 5% is considered normal, with most companies aiming for a failure rate of 2% or less.
In a recent interview, Todd Holmdahl, Microsoft’s corporate vice president of Gaming and Xbox Products Group refused to reveal the Xbox 360s failure rate and maintained that the “vast majority of people are having just a great experience” with their Xbox 360s.
A very different picture has been painted by a store manager at Australian retail chain EB Games. The manager revealed to current.com.au that almost 30% of Xbox 360s were returned soon the gaming console was launched, compared to just one Wii and five PS3s after their respective launches. He said that the Xbox 360 continues to suffer from unusually high return rates.
The store manager believes that high failure rate may have been a result of Microsoft using components from a number of different manufacturers.
“For example, in the Xbox 360, the CPU is made by AMD and the video card is made by ATI, whereas with the PS3 everything is Sony, they’ve bought the IBM chips and put it all together in the one go, same with Nintendo, it’s all in-house,” he said.
The problem with faulty Xbox 360 hardware appears to widespread, and Microsoft just seems to be making the situation worse, with a number of GAMER.BLORGE.com readers complaining about the company’s attitude:
“I am frustrated to no end with a company who’s vice president of entertainment refuses to release its system failure rates, however claims that their customer service is top notch,” commented Derek Rader on a recent post
“My opinion of Microsoft has changed. It’s a large company who doesn’t care, a company that took my money and sold me a product that failed a little into its first year … when I think about Microsoft, all I can think about is regret.”
Fred had this to say:
“Microsoft refuses to fix the problems and refuses to take responsibility for all of the games that are scratched from the refurbished products they use to replace the products that are sent out when your xbox 360 is sent in for repair.”
On another post, Kmach reported going through four Xbox 360s in 18 months:
“I currently just had my fourth 360 break (in a year and a half) and Microsoft tried to make me pay to fix their mistake. I sold it and I am either going to wait until Microsoft fixes the problem or I am considering purchasing a PS3 this holiday season.
“I constantly ask people while playing online and about 90% of those I have talked to are on their 2nd or 3rd 360. The only people who have said they are on their first system had recently just purchased the system. I have NEVER run into anyone who hasn’t replaced their 360, most I have heard one run for is 13 months, then again I forgot to ask how often they play. It could be they play like an hour a week.
“The 360 is easily going to be looked back upon as the most unreliable system ever made!”
Kmach, that may very well prove to be true…
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12 Responses to “Retailer: Xbox 360 failure rate 30%”
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June 22nd, 2007
Not to be a fanboy, but it seems like a biased article.
I notice the “source” is one manager of one EB games in Australia. He mentions 30%, but of that 30%, were all the returns from broken 360s?
For comparison purposes, I notice the manager said only 1 Wii was returned and 5 PS3s. How many PS3/Wiis total were there? It would be nice to compare percentages with percentages.
The rest of the article are opinons from random people. No authoritative sources. Dramatic angle though.
June 22nd, 2007
Picked mine up first day of release,,November 05. Still have original..no repairs..no problems. Has about 20 hours a week on it
June 22nd, 2007
First off I have never been a fan of Sony. I find their company comes off as an arrogant multi million dollar mistake. When the Xbox was released back in 2001 it was like a breath of fresh air in a barren dessert of overrated and overpriced games. I don’t think anyone who owned an original Xbox could deny the fact that it was a far superior machine to its Japanese rivals. In a few years the big black box won my loyalty.
With that said, its clear to me that Microsoft is making big mistakes. Two years after the Xbox 360 (or xbox 1.5) launched they are playing the old game of dodging the tough questions and in doing so undermining millions of gamers hard earned dollars spent on a faulty machine. They’re clearly sending countless gamers the wrong message. Can they turn this around? Absolutely. First they need to be honest. If there really is a failure problem then they need to address that the general public. Second, they need to tap into their giant pockets, swallow a little corporate pride and fix their multi million dollar mistake. Not only will it show that enormous corporations are capable of having a great deal of integrity but i think it will show an amount of humility that you don’t see in console manufactures unless they are getting their asses kicked by a company that hasn’t been on top since the early nineties…
June 22nd, 2007
Well, I have personally purchased four of them… first one I stood in line for 27 hours to get (never again!) and the most recent an elite… two others were gifts… they all get played regularly and I have never had a problem with any of them. So, unless these “surveys” start quoting some reliable and confirm-able sources, I’ll take these reports with a grain of salt. Of all the folks that I know who have 360’s, none have had problems with the console itself… seems like if the failure rate was really this high, then at least one of them would of had an issue by now…
June 22nd, 2007
Microsoft owns the hardward inside of the 360 just like the Sony owns the hardware inside of the PS3. By the way, IBM not AMD designed the cpu for the 360 (IBM also designed the chip inside of the Wii). ATI makes the graphics card (same for the Wii).
For the PS3, the cell processor was the result of work done by more than just one company. Although, IBM appears to be the main developer of the technology. As for the graphics card, NVIDIA was the designer.
Also, Adam correctly pointed out the lack of credibility in reporting the figures. If the store sold 10 PS3s during launch week and 5 came back, then the failure rate is 50%. So, without knowing the total number of PS3 sold, we can’t compare the supposed failure rates. Also, to get a more accurate picture of the failure rate, you would have to take a random sample of all Xbox 360s. For all we know, this store got stuck with a group of machines that were on the edge (or beyond) of the control limits of a particular production run.
June 22nd, 2007
Why can’t people grasp the fact that the 360 as a whole is a faulty machine? Sure, some of the 360 units have to work otherwise the console wouldn’t have made it past the testing/quality phase. The bottom line is that:
A) there really hasn’t been another console that I can recall having this much news about failures,
B) even looking on auction sites such as Ebay there are pages of broken 360’s up for auction while there really aren’t any PS3 or Wii units,
C) MS has extended their warranty from 3mos to 1yr,
D) MS customer support even has automated messages and a support department dedicated specifically to broken units. I personally went through 3 original Xboxs so I have been through MS support many times. I have never experienced cs this dedicated to failing hardware.
E) MS has even begun installing additional cooling features to their consoles.
F) Most telling for me is you would think with all this heat MS would simply reveal data showing failure rates. IF they were in the 2% range I don’t think MS would even think twice about releasing it, MS would do anything it could to save its image and compete against their fierce rival Sony. The fact that they are refusing to even comment reveals a lot don’t you think?
As far as games and online capability goes, you can’t get much better than the Xbox 360. What is being discussed here is the units reliability. I mean come on! “Well my friends and I haven’t had any problems” or “maybe they just received a bad run?” Quit with the excuses. I think even if there were hard facts these people would still find some excuse, “the representative sample wasn’t large enough.” GIVE ME A BREAK!
June 22nd, 2007
I’m now on my 4th 360, but I won’t bore you with my story. The real problem is with MS not releasing the failure rate details. Saying that the majority of gamers are having a great experience? WTF?? That could mean failure rate is at 49%!! Seeing as though I’ve gone through 3 360s in 15 months and I know 5 out of 7 mates that have had theirs die, anectdotal evidence suggests the failure rate is very high. Especially considering the system has only been out a little more than a year here (Australia).
June 22nd, 2007
the rate is huge BUT this article is flawed just as bad as the system.
you said:
“Microsoft using components from a number of different manufacturers.
“For example, in the Xbox 360, the CPU is made by AMD and the video card is made by ATI, whereas with the PS3 everything is Sony, they’ve bought the IBM chips and put it all together in the one go, same with Nintendo, it’s all in-house,” he said.”
nintendos CPU is made by IBM and the GPU is made by ATI (exact same deal as the 360)
sonys flop box is in the same boat
CPU made by IBM GPU NVIDIA
the rate is huge and im on my 4th unit buttt im a gamer and sony and nintendo are really not giving me any reason to pick they’re system at all.
June 22nd, 2007
well, I sent my 360 back twice, and lets be honest ,the system was rushed, it makes a lot of noise, it gets very hot,that big as brick it comes with is a Joke…
I also have a PS3, and it makes less noise, and has no brick… another thing.. you would think that with the brick, it will work on all volts (220 europe/110 US)
That is not the case, right now I’m on a 3 month deputation in Europe, my ps3 works on the 220 vault, the 360 on the other hand i had to get a converter for it…shit is weak
June 23rd, 2007
I purchased my Xbox360 at the start of February 2006- two months ago i got the dreaded red lights of doom- but that stopped a few hours later. my console has been working perfectly since- so thats nearly 17months.
June 23rd, 2007
meh, I bought my x360 a few months after release, have currently 23 games with a whole bunch more pre-ordered, and played it pretty heavily since buying on each , never had any issues with the console, the odd poorly coded game hangs every now and then, but hardwares worked fine, it could have just been a few bad batches in early production, and hence certain area’s were badly effected, so folks who know each other are likely to have the same issue whilst most don’t.
And great experience, well thats a comment open to interpretation, every one could break at one point but if a gamer had fun whilst it lasted that could still count as a great experience, teaches folks for reading into things.
BTW it may be interesting to know that the next Xbox system from microsoft is according to reports I read going to use a proprietary processor chip, weather or not it will include a propriety graphics chip I don’t know.
However its clear that Microsoft is not happy with the situation, and clearly believes its not to blame if they’re prepared to invest in the not in-considerable expense of developing their own chip’s to prevent problems caused by issues like that it in future, especially for a games division who’s hardware dept will/has depending on who’s report you read has only just begun to or is soon going to break-even in hardware production (weather that’s simply in future manufacture or including overall losses im not sure, but im more inclined to believe its the first option for the moment)
Fact is, its not exactly like the ps2 was free from problems in manufacturing either, so its not to surprising if their’s some manufacturing issues with what is in essence the xbox2, it remains to be seen as to weather the extra time sony took developing the ps3 and wasting time integrating the blu-ray reader will lead to greater overall reliability, afterall working fine for so many months is all very well but if they all critically fail in a year or two due to as of yet unknown faulty component, owners will be baying for blood.
And sometimes theres no predicting such things short of intensive use tests done by the manufacturer, which still take time, and have to repeated with every batch to ensure accuracy which clearly isnt always done, and theres no chance the public will be privy to those, and while still its clear they don’t catch everything but the others track-record if ye count over time.
I think the high-failure rates reported here are likely to be simple bad luck for the store, and probably overall not to much different then the other consoles, after all theres always some unlucky buggers who seem to have problem after problem with nearly every product (washing machines, dryers, cars etc.), so its not to surprising consoles are included in the mix.
November 16th, 2007
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