Bad News for Xbox 360 Owners - 16% of Consoles Are Broken
As I clocked out of work, I was completely excited, eagerly awaiting the joys of rolling up large katamaris. As I got home, I ran up the stairs, threw my keys on the couch, and stayed dressed in my scrubs. I turned on the TV and the Xbox 360 and prepared to have some late night fun. I bypassed the loading screens and went to the last level where I had left off. I quickly scrolled through the in-game dialogs until I saw my little character in front of my rolling ball. Just as I was ready to begin, the screen went black.
A moment of shock overcame me and I went through the same process of loading the game again. I was excited and ready only to have the same thing happen all over again. I spoke to my significant other who was immersed in a game of World of Warcraft, demanding that he fix whatever nonsense the Xbox 360 was doing. I was on a mission, I had katamaris to roll. He took a brief pause from his game and attended to my emergency. He messed around with it and as he tried to load it, that is when the unthinkable happened, I saw the red ring of death appear on the front of the console.
I knew at that moment, my quest to roll katamaris would be slightly delayed. I went back and thought that this was all just a nightmare. After all, this was our second Xbox 360 and the red rings were just a fluke. Well, it wasn't. Like so many other gamers out there, I am part of the newly announced 16% who has a broken Xbox 360.
A new report from Squaretrade, who is a third party, independent warranty provider, has finally confirmed the news that everyone knew from the start, proving that Xbox's 3%-5% claim is all lies. And it's not as if Xbox isn't owning up to the problem, as they have extended the warrant period of their Xbox 360 console, but it leads one to think, could the failure rate of the Xbox 360 actually be higher?
During their research, Squaretrade "tracked 1,040 Xboxes over six to ten months after Microsoft's warranty expired. In that time 171 claims were filed." It is interesting to note that there very well may be several systems out there which did not have the complaint filed through Squaretrade and have went directly through to Microsoft's support team themselves.
So here I sit, waiting anxiously for the arrival of my new and improved Xbox, hoping that I will not have to go through this nightmare ever again. although chances are that I will again be affected by the Red Rings of Death.
Source
Terrance O'Brien, Report Confirms that 16% of Xbox 360s Are Broken. Switched
Published by Carly Kullman
I'm a 27 year old single mother who loves writing in her spare time. I work in the hopsital field and enjoy all things hospital-related. View profile
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22 Comments
Post a CommentAt the risk of nitpicking source accuracy, there is really no statistically plausible way to extrapolate a failure rate for the 18mil consoles Microsoft has shipped thus far of their Xbox 360 platform. That requires direct access to the refurbishing accounting, which Squaretrade (nor anyone else) has. Also, there are some caveats to the way this story was presented. First, the claim Microsoft made regarding within "industry standards" and "3%-5%" was actually made during a seemingly quiet period that lasted a few months in 2006 when the failure rates seemed to drop after their initial production issues got worked out. Also, as of about 6 months ago, they started shipping their new units which don't break down anywhere near as often.
At the peak of its failure rates, no doubt the console suffered a painful death more than 5%. But calling that claim a "lie" is itself a bit misleading. You base that exclusivley off of an estimation by a group who has literally no data whatsoeve
Sounds like this was released too soon . Nice job with the article :-)
Oooh, I forgot to post an update. I got my Xbox back on Tuesday, and it works great. Now I can play Beautiful Katamari. Yay! =)
Wow and those things are expensive
I am subscribing to you.
The red ring basically means that your Xbox is useless. There is some sort of fatal hardware failure where nothing works, no games load, basically, it means that your xbox is dead.
What does the red ring mean?
It is hard to believe that we are surprised that the folks responsible for the Blue Screen of Death are also responsible for the Red Rings of Death. If MicroSoft made cars I would walk!
16% is quite high, am suprised this is covered in tech circles.
See, someone else who knows how bad it is to wait. I will say, if this replacement one goes bad, I am going to be quite disappointed.