SquareTrade, a firm that deals in warranties for electronics, analyzed the data taken from more than a thousand warranty purchases. It found that the Xbox 360 has a failure rate of about 16.4%, making it much more malfunction prone than the Playstation3 and Wii, which have a failure rate of only 3%. According to 1UP, they were far above Microsoft’s own estimates, which were, ironically, also 3%.
Sixty percent of those 360 failures were due to the system’s infamous “Red Ring of Death,“ where 3 flashing LED lights go on around the power button to indicate a “general hardware failure.“ Most of the RROD failures tend to occur because the system’s construction inhibits it from releasing excess heat properly. RRODs have become so common a problem that Microsoft wound up extending the length of its own 360 warranties by three years.
Upon their reporting this failure rate, 1UP advised a grain of caution about this study, stating it represents people who went out to buy third-party warranties for their systems, meaning they were likely to put more stress on their consoles than more casual players. Editor’s Note: Besides, those 1000 SquareTrade customers are certainly not a statistically representative random sample of all Xbox 360 owner. (Stay in school, kids).
However, the fact that I put just as much stress on my still-functional SNES more than drives the point home about this study.
Bob is upset. He just spent 5 years creating a game to be played on the Nintendo DS and Nintendo won’t sell him what he needs to actually market the game. So what is he doing? Sitting in his basement for 100 days to protest…
Sixty percent of those 360 failures were due to the system’s infamous “Red Ring of Death,“ where 3 flashing LED lights go on around the power button to indicate a “general hardware failure.“ Most of the RROD failures tend to occur because the system’s construction inhibits it from releasing excess heat properly. RRODs have become so common a problem that Microsoft wound up extending the length of its own 360 warranties by three years.
Upon their reporting this failure rate, 1UP advised a grain of caution about this study, stating it represents people who went out to buy third-party warranties for their systems, meaning they were likely to put more stress on their consoles than more casual players. Editor’s Note: Besides, those 1000 SquareTrade customers are certainly not a statistically representative random sample of all Xbox 360 owner. (Stay in school, kids).
However, the fact that I put just as much stress on my still-functional SNES more than drives the point home about this study.
Site [SquareTrade] Also Read [ABC News] Also Read [1UP]
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