Xbox 360 Failure Rate 16.4 Pct?

February 15, 2008 By Geoff Duncan

Xbox 360 Failure Rate 16.4 Pct?

It's no news that Xbox 360 systems can be a little flaky, but warranty seller SquareTrade says it's found the normal-use failure rate of Xbox 360 consoles is 16.4 percent.

It’s not a secret that Microsoft’s Xbox 360 console isn’t the sturdiest gaming system on the planet: first Microsoft extended the system’s warranty from 90 days to one year, then the company took a $1.15 billion charge to extend the system’s warranty to three years, citing an “unacceptable number of repairs” to its flagship gaming system. In the meantime, Microsoft has quietly revised the Xbox 360 hardware and design, trying to make the consoles sturdier and more reliable.

Now warranty firm SquareTrade—which sells warranties on electronic goods—says that the overall Xbox 360 failure rate for normal use is a whopping 16.4 percent. Although this number is lower than the one-in-three failure rates apparently reported by Best Buy, Gamestop, and others, but is substantially higher than the 3–5 percent failure rate claimed by Microsoft, and substantially higher than the three percent failure rate found among PlayStation 3 systems.

SquareTrade says its data is based on over 1,000 Xbox 360 warranty claims. Some 60 percent of the failures are of the “red ring of death” variety, which is covered by Microsoft’s three-year warranty extension. The other 40 percent of failures include disc-read errors, dead video cards, hardware freezes, power failures, and disc trays that sometimes damage game discs.

Typical failure rates for consumer electronics generally fall between 10 to 15 percent during the first four years of service, with higher failure rates for items like portable media players and notebook computers, and lower failure rates for items like televisions.

Showing 5 comments

Samsung Galaxy Tab return rates at 16 percent? at 9:09am 2nd February 2011 [...] BlackBerry Storm had a much higher return rate, and early versions of Microsoft’s Xbox 360 fell into about the same range—it doesn’t compare very favorably with the iPad, which has return rates around 2 [...]
jstar at 7:36pm 4th July 2010 360 sucks, enough said
chopper tattoo at 6:01am 13th January 2010 You saved my alot of time thank you so much for sharing your experience.
Willie at 10:24pm 16th February 2008 This is totally unexceptable. There needs to be a huge class action lawsuit against MS for this (if there isn't already). When you get the red ring and have to send the unit in, do you lose all your saved games?

I have not heard of a single PS3 going bad.
Jordan at 10:38am 16th February 2008 The other 40 percent of failures include disc-read errors, dead video cards, hardware freezes, power failures, and disc trays that sometimes damage game discs.

This was a problem on the original xbox where i went through 2 xbox's only using clean discs, and using everything on microsofts site, and they should have to cover things like that. I'm already on my 2nd 360 and i just had a power failure in town and now the 360 has red ring of death again, not only that microsoft sent me the old 90nm chip which severely overheats, so if they don't cover it again, i'm gonna get my replacement 360 one way or another, and i most definitely (justice wise) shouldn't have to pay for another one, espescially since i'm disability and can't afford it, i won mine in a contest.