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What's the 360's actual hardware failure rate?

My guess would be for consoles manufactured before Jan 1 2006 it's somewhere around 15%. I am on my third one since I bought one at launch. I have about 1.7 year left on my extended warranty though. I am wondering if Microsoft will offer an additional warranty after the 2 years is up.
 
Cerebral Palsy said:
Everyone I know has had to replace their 360 at least once. On the other hand PS3 hardware is total quality. MS should really take some notes from the market leader.

Dude I love the PS3 and the people who own one love it as well (hardware is solid rock). But dude lay off, you are seriously making us look really really bad......
 
bigswords said:
Dude I love the PS3 and the people who own one love it as well (hardware is solid rock). But dude lay off, you are seriously making us look really really bad......

Don't mind him he's just trying out his new act.
 
rage1973 said:
My guess would be for consoles manufactured before Jan 1 2006 it's somewhere around 15%.

It's got to be higher than that. Microsoft extended the warranty for all 2005 machines indefinitely for free and there's only one reason why they'd do that.
 
Burai said:
It's got to be higher than that. Microsoft extended the warranty for all 2005 machines indefinitely for free and there's only one reason why they'd do that.

Is this true? First time I've heard this.
 
It's worth noting that the likelihood of your REFURBISHED machine breaking down is considerably greater than one bought today.

So in other words, if you're just moving from system to system off the latest "3 red lights", expect to have it happen indefinitely.
 
Speevy said:
It's worth noting that the likelihood of your REFURBISHED machine breaking down is considerably greater than one bought today.

So in other words, if you're just moving from system to system off the latest "3 red lights", expect to have it happen indefinitely.
Most likely it is refurbs that keep breaking which means that very few newer consoles break. This is just a guess since I haven't really heard of anyone actually getting brand new consoles when their console breaks. So the refurbs are just going from person to person and breaking and breaking. Hopefully my third console, which I hope I will get next week, will last. I need my Crackdown fix dammit!
 
Cerebral Palsy said:
Everyone I know has had to replace their 360 at least once. On the other hand PS3 hardware is total quality. MS should really take some notes from the market leader.

Please someone ban this fanboy. He is trolling Xbox 360 in every thread damn it.
 
I have to wonder. The people that say they are on thier 3rd or 4th 360, what constitutes a failure to you? Are you getting 1 DRE and then sending the thing back? Or is the system completely ****ed every time?

Mine has had its share of lockups and DRE... but maybe I am just used to it from the PS2. :lol
 
DoubleTap said:
Is this true? First time I've heard this.
No, just until the past January.

As for the people with failing 360s, I would assume they can't play anymore at all, and that would prompt for a replacement.
 
Flo_Evans said:
I have to wonder. The people that say they are on thier 3rd or 4th 360, what constitutes a failure to you? Are you getting 1 DRE and then sending the thing back? Or is the system completely ****ed every time?

Mine has had its share of lockups and DRE... but maybe I am just used to it from the PS2. :lol

In my case, with my first 360, it was freezing every half an hour to an hour of playing any game, just to be on the safe side, before my warranty expired I exchanged it for a new one. With my second 360, it started freezing after around 1-3 minutes of playing with every game, first with the games using the DVD and the even with the demos, playing HD DVDs and while waiting in the dashboard.
 
I think the failure rate is everyone who actuallly uses theirs. The remaining percentage are of those who barely use it. Seriously tho, fix your shit MS. I want a 360. And that 65nm cpu better not be only in that supposed new premium model coming out.
 
I'm on console #3 and I bought my first one in September 2006.

I've had more 360s fail on me than all of my other systems combined.
I've also had a PSU fail on the first day.

#3 has been going strong for about 2 months now. Hopefully it'll stand the test of time...but I don't have a lot of faith.

A conservative guess would be that the failure rate is about 15%
 
Flo_Evans said:
I have to wonder. The people that say they are on thier 3rd or 4th 360, what constitutes a failure to you? Are you getting 1 DRE and then sending the thing back? Or is the system completely ****ed every time?

Mine has had its share of lockups and DRE... but maybe I am just used to it from the PS2. :lol

-launch system cratered after 3 months, wouldn't boot, 3 lights
-second system would regularly start with 3 lights but a quick reboot would start fine, it lasted about 6 months before it would perma 3 lights and not start at all
-third system running fine since Dec

I bought in-store warranty so ALL of my systems were brand new. Birth Dates were Oct 2005, Feb 2006 and now June 2006. I use my 360 daily, probably 2 hours minimum.
 
Launch-boxes my guess would be 30-40% at least

Of the 12 people I know that bought them at Launch 9 have died within a year. One is crashing and 2 work fine without problems.

With new boxes I have no experience but I would think they are more stable now?
 
I'd wager the launch units were about 75%. My drive failed on mine. I'd say that number is probably down to 3 to 4% since you don't really hear about it anymore except for the launch units. Pretty terrible, but at least they fixed a lot of them for free.
 
Burai said:
It's got to be higher than that. Microsoft extended the warranty for all 2005 machines indefinitely for free and there's only one reason why they'd do that.

this is true as far as I know also. The MS support exchange boxes manufactured in 2005 WITHOUT question.
 
Surely a decent precentage of the hardware failures can be attributed to the consoles falling into the wrong hands- women, kids etc???
 
It's better, and it should get even better, but there's no doubt the 3-5% claim is laughable. We'll never know, and Microsoft will never admit the real failure rate.
I wouldn't hesitate to buy a new unit now, but those launch units were probably the most unreliable consumer electronics product in the history of consumer electronic products. Not something to be proud of.
 
Definitely seemed around the 30% mark, but those were for launch era systems. Hopefully the new ones these days are rock solid.
 
Flo_Evans said:
I have to wonder. The people that say they are on thier 3rd or 4th 360, what constitutes a failure to you? Are you getting 1 DRE and then sending the thing back? Or is the system completely ****ed every time?

Mine has had its share of lockups and DRE... but maybe I am just used to it from the PS2. :lol

The drive completely died in my first 360. It didn't read any discs at all. I don't think it even started spinning the discs. Sent it back and got a refurb which lasted about 10 months. A couple of days ago I got the red ring of death. I managed to get it to boot again but it froze within a couple of minutes and the RRoD came back again. It's at MS now and I hope I will get my third 360 next week.
 
Some of you are way, way off track with your numbers, some huge hyperbole going on here.

I work in a retail store, we have sold about 200 units in the last 4 months and have seen 1 back.
Enough wild speculation, the fact is the failure rate is unknown. But even a kindergarten kid can tell you it's not 50% by simple math and the fact that microsoft would have to hire a huge division of people just to process repairs and returns.

If they are selling 200,000 plus units per month a 50% failure rate would mean they would have to process and fix over 3000 units per day. Please. Even at 10% to suggest that they are fixing over 600 units per day seems a bit far fetched.
 
The "My 360 died" list has 321 dead consoles, from 268 individuals. Someone else can work out the statistics of that, but there's certainly no way it conforms to industry standard. The 360 is a great console and I have no problem continuing to support it. I do wish Microsoft was a little more upfront and proactive about replacing them.

I am most disappointed in our gaming journalist brethren. Here you have an opportunity to do some real investigative reporting, instead of grubbing free schwag, regurgitating press releases and writing breathless previews of titles you will probably slag upon release. And if editors are killing any such stories over fears of recrimination, shame on you, too.
 
I believe it's less then 5%. Usually the people who have busted consoles broke it themselves. AKA, Leaving it in a cabinet, leaving it on a VCR, placing it next to a receiver. ETC
 
Haleon said:
A friend of mine just recently had his second Xbox 360 die on him, and this time MS is telling him to go 'F' himself in regards to repairs. He's debating whether or not he's even going to bother getting a new one. Which brings me to the question: what's the actual failure percentage of 360 units?

Microsoft said that it's within the normal range of 3-5%, but I honestly have a massive problem believing that. There are people on this board that have had 3 systems fail on them, and the odds of that happening to multiple people are pretty bad.

I know there is already a thread about the 360 failures, but since that thread is called "My 360 died... blah blah", most people who have a working 360 system won't go in there. It's going to be pretty skewed. Since this is a large board with a lot of 360 owners, I wanted to try and get an anecdotal percentage of failure rates. So, if you own a 360, post your experience. If you can remember, try to post the date you got each system as well.

I have had 1 360, and it is still working.
I bought it at the end of January.

According to Electronic Arts, failure rate is 30-50%

Just goes to show, never buy American consoles

http://www.kotaku.com/gaming/xbox-360/high-failure-rates-finger-pointing-and-zombies-196797.php
 
Emotep said:
According to Electronic Arts, failure rate is 30-50%

Just goes to show, never buy American consoles

http://www.kotaku.com/gaming/xbox-360/high-failure-rates-finger-pointing-and-zombies-196797.php
You make no damn sense you bigot.
47v2lvn.gif
 
EverSoTrendy said:
I believe it's less then 5%. Usually the people who have busted consoles broke it themselves. AKA, Leaving it in a cabinet, leaving it on a VCR, placing it next to a receiver. ETC

Yeah lets not treat it like every other console but suspend it with strings from our living room ceiling so nothing touches it. Give me a break, no console should be that fragile.
 
EverSoTrendy said:
You make no damn sense you bigot.
47v2lvn.gif

LOL Bigot? Be sensible. The HFR of the 360 is higher than 5% without question. It's just a matter of how much. I have plenty of friends who are on their 2nd or 3rd boxes, and they bought theirs late 2006 (or got them for Christmas). Launch boxes might skew the statistic, though, since those are damn near 100%. Excuses like "don't put it in your entertainment cabinet" or "I bet its the fault of women and children" are just that: excuses that hold no water.
 
Artificially high. It seems like a lot b/c you get one person making a new thread each week, and the same people chiming in again and again. You don't see people making "Look! My 360 works!" threads, do you? So it seems like the sky is falling, when it's not. I wouldn't expect the HFR to deviate too much from the norm. I think it's just that a larger percentage of 360 owners are online and committed forum posters. PEACE.
 
Nobody knows for sure and unless you train someone from the time they were a kid to sneak into MS ,become a paid employee, have them investigate and sneak around over years of hardship and sluething as an undercover nerd you'd never find out.

My guess is the first million systems made had a failure rate atleast 2 , maybe even 3 times the normal acceptable failure rate for electronics. With each additional million 360's made that number has gone down. The problem though, is that many of the owners whose initial system broke down were simply sending it in and getting it repaired or getting another repaired system in exchange and this pool of refurbed systems had the same failure rate as the launch units so many folks wound up with a 2nd or even a 3rd dead 360.


Then of course there's the megaphone law of the internets- the person with a problem will bitch 1000 times louder then the person without a problem. So 1 guy on 1 forum with 1 broken system will seem like 1000 people and 1000 broken systems. The other thing about folks like us, is that we usually use the hell out of our systems. Leaving them on for 8 hours + for perhaps even a week or 2 straight. Go ahead and try to play a high end PC with the newest games for that long and occasionally the thing will overheat, overheat it enough and it'll break.
 
Real ****ing high. I lost one, my brother lost his, one of my in-laws is seemingly on the verge of losing his, and someone here that I know and trust lost his. I realize that this is purely anecdotal and is not reflective of the real situation, but the loss rate in my circle of friends who own or have owned Xbox 360s is somewhere around 40%. So yeah, that 3-5% estimate can pretty much go **** itself.
 
Pud said:
LOL Bigot? Be sensible. The HFR of the 360 is higher than 5% without question. It's just a matter of how much. I have plenty of friends who are on their 2nd or 3rd boxes, and they bought theirs late 2006 (or got them for Christmas). Launch boxes might skew the statistic, though, since those are damn near 100%. Excuses like "don't put it in your entertainment cabinet" or "I bet its the fault of women and children" are just that: excuses that hold no water.

I dont know about you, my entertainment center is an oven. My receiver gives most of the heat. I certainly don't want any of my consoles cooking in it.
 
I am on my 5th console since Jan 06.

had 3 with the red lights

1 with a black and red checker board effect and occasionally rendering strange blocks of texture in games:

pgr3faulty.jpg


The current one I have now freezes on any game within around 10 to 40 mins of playing however MS are refusing to take it back this time without a £90 payment and the retailer (Dixons) will not exchange it which they had done on two of the other consoles.

Frankly I've never, ever had a console failure before the 360 and the idea that it's between 3-5% just cannot be truthful in any way shape or form. Also, out of the 10 million shipped - I'd love to know how many of those were replacement consoles...
 
If my launch console has unlimited time cover on it im feeling better, if I ever have to pay for a replacement or fix I decided to sell it with whatever games I own and wait it out a little while for a revision model or whatever. Thankfully my 360 had has no problems apart from the odd lockup but every console does that randomly.
 
At 3-5% I wouldn't feel like I need a separate warranty with the system.

I get the impression that it's closer to 20%

maybe 10% actual failures and another 10% users with a ticking time bomb who haven't put enough hours yet to make it break
 
Burai said:
It's got to be higher than that. Microsoft extended the warranty for all 2005 machines indefinitely for free and there's only one reason why they'd do that.
nah, they extended it to January 31st, 2007.

since february, launch unit owners in the other thread have been hit with the $140 quote on the phone.
 
Heres my own anecdotal experience:

* I bought an initial shipment premium 360 in february 06, and it's worked perfectly from day 1. I have it horizontal with plenty of breathing room, for both the console and the power supply. Its only crashed from Oblivion a couple of times, and some demos (I'm looking at you Ubisoft). Besides that its worked like a charm.

* A friend of mine imported a Japanese premium a little before I got mine. Worked fine until the big dashboard update a couple of months later, which bricked his system.

* 3 other friends got premiums a few months later, and all have worked fine.

* My boss just bought a premium last month. It worked for about two weeks and then started failing to boot up. He's waiting for his coffin to arrive.

So, out of six 360 premiums, one was bricked and one was fubar'd to begin with. In my circle of friends that works to what, 33%?
 
Well, if you buy an Xbox, you should know that it is garbage. That's what the name "Xbox" means.

Xbox translates into "Batsu-Box", meaning bad box, or the box I don't want. :D
 
I know 10 people with launch units:

3 (including me) have had no problems
5 have replaced 1
2 are on their 3rd machine

I'll venture it's 50% or higher among launch units.
 
I'm beginning to wonder what the failure rate is for this new batch of juniors. Really puts the 360 to shame.

P.s. 1 Failure (touch wood) so far. Was a European launch unit, lasted just over a year.
 
just to make it clear, MS has never published official numbers.

However, if you check any gaming forum, ANY... you will see that failure ratio is far higher than anything else on the market.
 
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