PS3, Wii failure rate under one percent

[FantasyGhost]

Tip-top reliability from Sony's and Nintendo's consoles, reveal store managers

When you spend big bucks on a games console, the last thing you want is to get up one morning to find it's given up the fight and become a fancy-looking brick.

But that's hardly a worry with the PS3 and Wii according to store managers, who say that the failure rate of the two consoles is less than one percent.

One EB Games manager told Ripten.com (http://www.ripten.com/?p=374) that absolutely no Wii consoles had been returned with faults.

But while Sony's and Nintendo's consoles continue to perform well, store managers also reinforced the ongoing concerns over Xbox 360 reliability, one Best Buy 'associate' claiming that "between a quarter to a third" of all 360's sold develop faults.

This is in line with reports claiming a 30-33 percent failure rate for Microsoft's console - which is alarmingly high, and further explains why some repair firms are withdrawing 360 support. (http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=166883)http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=167269

[IEatFriedPikmin]

my 360 is the most unreliable console/computer i have ever had. It is fun though.

[koten]

^ It may be fun... but I just don't think the damn thing is worth the headache.

[Phoenix]

That's up to opinion. Failing consoles are never fun, but in some cases things are worth the risk.

[Too Slow]

I hope mine doesn't fail when i get it

[Viper]

http://forums.e-mpire.com/showthread.php?t=75155

I've recently proved the 30-33% failure rate to be absolute bullshit. In fact it too is less than 1%. Somebody fucked up their numbers really bad and the media has jumped on it.

That's not to say that the X360 isn't having problems, just that it's no where near the epidemic recall level proportions being tossed around.

[pari]

link (http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/microsoft-1-billion-ring-death/story.aspx?guid={A35E8BD3-E81E-40A5-B94C-2C4449CE9D6A}&siteid=yhoof)


MARKETWATCH FIRST TAKE
Microsoft's billion-dollar Red Ring of Death
Commentary: Xbox 360 failure has already spawned book, Internet legend
By MarketWatch
Last Update: 5:49 PM ET Jul 5, 2007

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- When a hardware repair is so famous that it spawns a book, an urban legend and not one but two fearsome names in less than a year, you know the company involved has got big trouble.
On Thursday, Microsoft Corp. revealed just how much when it pegged the price of fixing that persistent general hardware failure plaguing its Xbox 360 game console at more than $1 billion.
In the U.K., where the failure is so pervasive that the electronics repair company Micromart has stopped trying to fix it, they call it simply "the three red lights fault."
In the U.S., where one enterprising technician is selling an electronic fix-it book that promises to solve the problem, it's earned the moniker, "the red ring of death."
A previous fix that made the rounds of Internet game sites, and which consisted of wrapping the machine in a towel, has since been debunked, at least in the opinion of other Internet game sites.
Given that the book costs only $23.99, you have to wonder why someone at Microsoft didn't go to threeredlightsfix.com and buy one months ago.
They could have sent it to Micromart and all the retailers who have lost money on those extended warranties they sold to cover Xbox 360 buyers once the manufacturer's warranty expired.
My guess is those retailers will be getting some of Microsoft's $1 billion, which may help convince them to carry the next version of the machine.
But the cost to Microsoft (MSFT) will go beyond dollar terms.
All those gamers who've spent hours either at repair shops or online with tech support -- instead of playing games on their machines -- are going to remember long after Microsoft has fixed the problem.
-- John Shinal, columnist End of Story


Another $1 Billion in red for xbox division...,

[VG Aficionado]

Well, surely not several million 360 units are defective, but I wouldn't be surprised if of all the manufactured ones to date at least a million are likely to fail or have failed already. There are way too many reports on the Internet, and while some of them are definately BS, the fact that they're many, many more than PS3 and Wii reports makes me wonder about the quality of its components.

We'll see what happens during summer, as it has just started. I wouldn't be relaxed if I had bought a 360 in the last year or so, and I don't think the problems will be solved before next year.

[TheGreenElf]

Hmm, this article is complete bs at the MS part. There's no way that many have failed and I hope nobody is naive enough to believe that.

3.3 million at least would have failed? Utter bullshit.

Sure some have failed (although I personally have not met somebody that has had one break) but to say the numbers are in the millions is a bit ridiculous. It was probably a bunch of launch units as MS was under a lot of pressure to get the console onto the market (hell a book was written about the chaos of it all) but I think only a handful of those had problems, and then some more occasionally gave in afterwards, as MS has a track record of not being very consistent in which parts they use, but I'd say even a 500k would be stretching it.

I will say it (the 360) is likely the most unreliable, but you still have to be pretty unlucky for it to fail.

[masonite]

well if its a design fault, then its possible that a lot either have been, or still are defective. it depends on the nature of the fault as well - was it a part that was unreliable, or was it the overall design and conditions within the system that caused a certain part to fail.

But if Microsoft themselves are saying that it has cost them more than $1 billion to fix, it makes you think that although 33% is a bit over the top, it has to be much higher than "average", or even acceptable limits...

[Viper]

$1,000,000,000 / (33% of 10,130,000) = $1,000,000,000 / 3,342,900 = $299.14


Hmmm...something doesn't sound right here. It's costing ~$300.00 to fix each unit? MS could send a brand new unit at that cost as it would be OEM and not retail.

[woundingchaney]

entire article is off base