And The Award for Least Reliable Console Goes To…The Xbox 360

By Geoff Duncan September 2, 2009

A year and a half ago, independent warranty provider SquareTrade ruffled some features by publishing figures that showed failure rates for Microsoft’s Xbox 360 console as high as 16.4 percent. Now SquareTrade is back with more failure numbers for leading video game consoles (PDF), and guess what? The Xbox 360 is still bringing up the rear, with 23.7 percent Xbox 360 owners reporting failures within the first two years of ownership. That’s four times more likely to fail than Sony’s PlayStation 3 (which saw failure rates around 10 percent), and nine times more likely to fail than the Nintendo Wii (with failure rates around 2.7 percent).

However, SquareTrade did qualify its figures for Xbox 360 failures, noting that failure rates and the infamous “Red Ring of Death” problem seem to have become considerably less frequent since the introduction of the so-called “Jasper” chipset in the Xbox 360 in late 2008. Also, in a move which likely cost Microsoft more than a billion dollars, in mid-2007 the company extended the warranties on its Xbox 360 consoles to three years; the move likely did a lot to assuage Xbox 360 customers whose consoles gave up the ghost, but may have resulted in under-reporting of Xbox 360 failure rates in SquareTrade’s analysis.

SquareTrade found that the most common problems with both the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 were disc read errors and problems pushing video out to televisions. Conversely, the Nintendo Wii was more likely to suffer fro power supply issues and remote control problems.

SquareTrade compiled its figured by randomly selecting 16,000 game consoles covered by SquareTrade warranties; failure data only reflects problems reported directly to SquareTrade.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics

Former Digital Trends Contributor

Geoff Duncan writes, programs, edits, plays music, and delights in making software misbehave. He's probably the only member…

Gaming

Age of Mythology: Retold will launch on PC and Xbox at the same time

Key art for Age of Mythology: Retold.

Microsoft and World's Edge gave us our first glimpse of its upcoming remaster of real-time strategy game Age of Mythology: Retold during Friday's New Year, New Age livestream. They also confirmed that it will launch on PC and Xbox later this year.

Age of Mythology: Retold's segment of the livestream began with Art Director Melinda Rose introducing the gameand teasing that it will contain all-new 3D character models, animation, textures, and UI. Rose also highlighted the details of the character models for units like Medusa, Pegasus, and Cerberus. Each time players upgrade a unit, their design will change slightly. We then got a look at its key art, as well as confirmation that Age of Mythology: Retold will be released later this year. It will launch on both PC and Xbox at the same time and is the first World's Edge game to do so.

Gaming

Xbox and Embracer’s mass layoff explanations aren’t good enough

Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer during Updates on the Xbox Business | Official Xbox Podcast.

The wave of layoffs that has happened over the past year in the video game industry is well-documented. Some of the biggest culprits are Embracer Group, which has laid off nearly 1,400 workers across several of its studios since the start of a restructuring program last July, and Microsoft, which laid off 1,900 developers across Xbox, Bethesda, and Activision Blizzard in January. After relative silence around these layoffs, leadership at both companies finally tried to offer more transparently into what happened.

Neither of their statements are good enough.

Gaming

Every key detail from Xbox’s business update: new console, multiplatform games, and more

Microsoft just released the latest episode of the Official Xbox Podcast, and it contained lots of crucial details on the future of Xbox. Microsoft addressed everything from how many games it will make multiplatform to the arrival of Activision Blizzard games on Xbox Game Pass to future Xbox hardware.

If you don't want to listen to the full 23-minute podcast and want more details than what's shared in the Xbox Wire post about the discussion, here's a quick rundown of the biggest points made during the episode.
Four Xbox games are going multiplatform
To kick things off, Phil Spencer, CEO of Microsoft Gaming, addressed the multiplatform Xbox game rumors. "We made the decision that we’re going to take four games to the other consoles. Just four games, not a change to our kind of fundamental exclusive strategy,” he said. “We’re making these decisions for some specific reasons. We make every decision with the long-term health of Xbox in mind, and long-term health of Xbox means a growing platform, our games performing, building the best platform for creators, reaching as many players as we can."