I know this is slightly impossible to determine, but I wonder if he's factored in any margin of error in case some of the people he interviewed were referring to the same mutual friend without knowing they were referring to the same person.

I must be one of the rare ones then who hasn't had a problem- though I am considering dumping my 360 for a PS3.

Getting through to MS's India support is hell though.

I had a newer Elite RROD on me after about 8 months, but a Halo 3 edition is now 2 years old and still going strong.

My old roommate has had 2 RROD's. I'm still under my 1=yr period before my warranty expires, so I haven't had any problems. I'm expecting to have a failure around the 13-14 month mark since I don't own a 360 on the new Jasper chipset.

While i am also on my forth xbox 360, its really only my 2nd. i bought one in the beggining of 07 the drive failed after 3wks, sent for repair. a yr later it rrod, 6 months after that it rrod again. same xbox(not really) only was repaired/replaced/refurbished, but still only one purchased. can people really claim a forth fifth sixth etc when they have only paid for one?

i finally sold it on craigs last holiday season and bought a new jasper model for 25 bux over using my crafty shoping skills. actually i got more then 25 dollar value (extra control and 2 games and hdmi). supposed to be less then 5% failure rate.

i might be buying the mw2 special edition xbox if there isnt a good black friday deal as i want a 2nd box for my living room.

I'm coming up close on a year of owning a 60 GB Pro. I bought it at the CC clearance sale. No real problems so far, although it did freeze a couple of times after playing Fracture. No other problems though.
Holding breath and crossing fingers.

I had an Xbox have a hardware failure. The disk drive in it failed around November of 08. I bought mine around June of 07. However, recognizing that its just a piece of hardware that will inevitably fail made it easier for me to just go and buy a new unit and not spend time waiting for Microsoft to fix it.

The problem with his survey isn't calculating if it will fail, but when it will fail. All components eventually fail, especially if you're looking at the way people game nowadays. I used to play my Xbox or leave it on for 48 hours straight. Either playing Halo or FFXI or just watching a DVD. Was I surprised when the disk drive failed? No. Its a part that wears and tears and not totally unpredicted. Now I down load the game I'm playing and don't have that fear.

And before anyone starts with the "My PS2 still hasn't gone out on me" argument, yeah, neither has mine, but then again, I don't play my PS2 the same way I play my Xbox 360.

Personally, I can't wait until games are put on Flash Disk cards. Give me 4 SD Card Slots for my games. Saves me money on a hard drive and less wear and tear.

Ben's mistake is relying on people relaying a "friends" experience. That won't even hold up in court, due to peoples inherit inability to accurately remember pretty much anything. Heck, a new study has shown that even in events people participated in, if shown doctored video evidence, they will remember what happened in the video as "what really happened".

Speaking of Xboxes, does anyone know if the Netflix streaming works with the Arcade version or not?

I have 2 Xbox 360s. The second one was purchased before they extended the warranty to cover the issues with the first. Once the warranty was extended, I sent the first in for repair, so that when the second one failed (it did), I would have no interruption of gaming/DVDs while it was being repaired.

Both boxes are out of warranty now (I think). I'd consider selling the second one off, but with Netflix streaming on the Xbox now, I think my wife would murder me if we lost it for a few weeks.

@EricLecarde: A hard drive that fails in a year and a half is a bad hard drive if you ask me.

@GitEmSteveDave_HasANewNameToday: I'm pretty sure it's not meant to be a purely scientific venture. I agree that for a college-level marketing class, going by anecdotal data can be tricky.

I am currently on my sixth XBOX 360. The latest one has been the best due to the quiet DVD drive.

@arstal: Local India support or outsourced India support? (As in, you could be IN india)

I am going on 2 years of having my XBOX 360 Pro and so far (I fear I am jinxing myself every time I comment on this) so good. I have gotten alot of usage out of it considering it is my DVD player as well as my Netflix streamer.

@MostlyHarmless:
Outsourced.

It looks like they've turned off the automatic renewal, but I can't get my credit card removed as of yet.

I'll escalate if needbe, but I'm waiting until 11/1 to see if I'm billed or not.

@pecan 3.14159265: I'd say his survey was immediately screwed when he decided to also include "respondents saying they know someone with a failed Xbox". But at least he's counting those separately from his 71% with firsthand experience.

My ethernet port recently crapped out on my 360. The place I took it to, which does refurbs for MS, said in the 4,000+ decks he's repaired, this was maybe the second ethernet port. I had a later model, I think 3rd gen "Falcon" board, which had a much lower RROD rate than the launch models. Oh, and it wasn't covered by warranty, meaning MS wanted $99+shipping both ways. I'll be using a local shop and getting a brand new board for $50 instead.

@MostlyHarmless: You'd need a hard drive I think, if only for the program itself.

@GitEmSteveDave_HasANewNameToday: We need to ban stories featuring people named Ben. It gets confusing.

@MostlyHarmless:

If you live in India and call MS support, your phone call is answered by Mexicans.

@arstal: monterry mexico is where one of thier call centers is.

also ur decision should come down to game library. xbox wins for me hands down.

This survey will suffer from selection bias. The people that respond will largely consist of people that have had an XBox failure.

Wasn't there a story a few weeks back about the high rate of XBox failures?

Oh yeah: [consumerist.com]

54.2% failure rate

@MostlyHarmless: dvd drive. hdd can be repaired on ur own by going out and buying one.

@temporaryerror: Holding breath and crossing fingers.

Exactly how I feel when I use Windows Vista.

@arstal: i think it can be saved to the memory card.

I work for a library system that owns 15 XBOX 360s, one for each location, for our patrons to use. In the two years since we bought them, EVERY SINGLE ONE of them has had to be sent back to Microsoft for repair, some of them multiple times.

Oh, the fun conversations with XBOX customer support.

I've had my 360 for almost two years and *knock knock* have never had a problem with it. I also have a Wii, a PS3 and a PS2 that work perfectly, and considering that I've had the PS2 since launch that's an awesome feat. :)

I personally prefer the PS3 for its graphics. I'm not a fan of online gaming so XBox Live isn't a huge draw for me.

Maybe, just MAYBE he's asking for Referrals to friends who have had their X-box RROD on them.

Thus increasing the respondents pool sufficiently to get a thousand users to survey.

He could also get a programming or statistics major to help him with a study of the overlap via social networking sites such as twitter and facebook, etc.

I repair Xbox 360's professionally - not with MS, but as a private contractor. Let me throw some facts out there for everyone to chew on.

I work on all three current gen systems - the 360, the PS3, and the Wii. I see maybe one Wii, and one PS3 per month, and somewhere between 3 and 7 360's per week.

The age of the 360 has very little to do with the chances that it will fail. I see Xbox's of all ages come across my desk. The hardware inside is solid, it's the construction of the device that leads to all the problems people are having. The 360 is prone to overheating, which leads to the bulk of problems with the hardware, and that's entirely due to how the thing is put together.

No one has a solid estimate on how many units fail, as the people inclined to take a survey are people who had a bad experience. Based on my business, and some sales data from my area, my guestimate would be that the failure rate falls between 30% and 40%, which is unacceptable.

MS's customer support is becoming less and less reliable. As time goes on, I hear tales of longer turnaround times, and more hoops to be jumped through before the CSR's will agree to give you a free repair.

You can do a few things to avoid getting the dreaded red ring of death - first of all, keep the console horizontal rather than vertical. Second, make sure the back vent has room to breath. If the 360 is in an entertainment stand that doesn't have a hole in the back wall, take a razor blade, and cut an oval shaped hole about two inches tall, and six inches wide right behind the 360 - that will allow the hot ail to vent out the back rather than hitting the wall and blowing back to the 360. Alternately, get a usb laptop cooling pad - the bottom of the 360 is the problem area, and having some cold air blowing up at it sure couldn't hurt. One other thing - those fans you slap on to the back of the 360 are useless - avoid them like the plague.

@firemunkie: Yeah I assumed disk drive = hdd. my bad.

But still, the fact that you can replace an hdd does not negate that fact that it still broke (hypothetically) in 18 months.

Hi guys,

I'm Ben, the guy that's conducting this survey. I'd like to address some of the points that have been brought up in this discussion.

1st off, Bias: Yeah, Mr. Popken and I discussed this possibility. It's pretty much assured that there will be error, I believe we will be able to work out the data well enough with 2 reliable 3rd party sources, all while taking in Microsoft's "fund" as a scale. I'd like to see as many people as I can give me information. So far, the survey I have conducted as been cold pitching campus housing and asking literally everyone I can find on campus. That does eliminate a tremendous amount of bias. No survey will ever be 100% correct unless the entire population that is affected is addressed. So...what I'm hoping to assess is an upward trend in usage and length of ownership to determine a Pass/Fail here.

2nd: I'm a Marketing major myself. This study is being conducted out of my sheer frustration with handling Xbox customer support. 4 Xbox 360s have died, and the vast majority of the student population have had their's die. This is obviously not some fluke. I've got the OK from campus to conduct my research, and I have help from the Math Department here on campus. We will best analyze this data while ensuring as balanced a statistic as possible. Of course I have put my thesis out there, but again, I want fact. There is no concrete evidence from 3rd party sources, and there is no statement from Microsoft. This is troubling, to say the least.

Thanks for your opinions, I want to get this to work. It would be nice.

Have a good one then!

@MostlyHarmless: OK, Ben:INS(In The Story), not Ben:CEE(Co-Executive Editor).

Another anecdote: Bought my first 360 on launch day, 11/22/2005. I had it for three months before the graphics froze and I got the RROD. Sent it in and got a different unit back. Had that one for one year before I got RROD again. Sent that unit in and got same unit back, supposedly repaired. It lasted for another year and a half before getting RROD again. Sent it in and got same unit back, and supposedly Microsoft knows how to fix the heat issue on the graphics board now. I'm out of the three year warranty period, so let's hope I'm done for a while. :)

@MostlyHarmless: Yes, it does work with the arcade version. The problem is with all the mandatory updates you really need a larger hard drive to run it. I made the mistake of buying mine just over a year ago and ended up having to add a hard drive for 100.00.

@tawni: Yeah, my sister wants me to "gift" one. But with all the extra controllers and having to buy the hard disk, it is starting to look like an expensive gift :P

@arstal: You don't have to call them anymore. You can make a repair order on their website.

The site also keeps track of your console's warranty status, and will track your 360's status as it is being repaired.

It's way easier than struggling through their phone support.

Not to mention MicroSoft Live subscription.

My 360 is 16mths old with no issues, my g/f's is about 8 months old with no issues. Both are 20gb models with the newer chipsets though so I don't expect they'll have anywhere near the old failure rates.

100% of the (1) xbox 360 owners I know have had their xbox 360 fail.

@scoosdad:
I find it somewhat odd that while 71% have had theirs fail, 85% know someone who has.

I've only had 1 fail, and that was after 2 1/2 years, and only took them 1 week to replace (including transit). None of my friends have had any problems with them other than 1 persons drive going out after heavy usage.

I think there is just as much dis-information as information on the failure rate. I've owned a 360 since 3/06 and needed a DVD drive replacement and my Son's has lasted since 5/06 no problems. I owned a PS3 for 2 weeks before it died so what does that mean. I owned 5 PS2's that died with disc read errors. No product is perfect and the with me the PS3 is used for movies and the 360 for gaming so who's knows about quality. I really believe alot of these 360 "issues" are other console fanboys trying to take a real problem and make it worse than it is. I don't even personally know anyone who ever had a RROD, not saying it doesn't happen just that I really don't think it's as bad as some people are trying to make it seem. I think it's funny how every article like this has a couple commentors that are "repair guys" who see this all the time like the guy up above my comment.

We've got 3 360s at home.

Got a Premium in March 2007, and it got the RROD just 4 days out of the 1-year warranty. I had heard the new Elite model had better cooling and was supposed to be "RROD-Proof" so we went out and got one.

Not long after that, Microsoft extended the 360's warranty for the RROD to 3 years, so I sent in the old Premium we had to get repaired.

Then I got the Halo 3 Edition myself because I'm a collector.

The Halo Edition stopped reading discs, so it had to be sent in, and then the Elite got the RROD. Both were sent in and back. Now, the Elite is showing signs of failure again.

But to be fair, my brothers and I use our 360s extremely heavily. We know all the tips to make them last longer (like never setting it vertically, since that blocks the cooling intake), but the heavy use just wears them out.

Though I guess it's better to wear them out quickly and send it in for a replacement under warranty than to baby your 360 to make it last long, only to extend its life past the end of the warranty in doing so.

@MostlyHarmless: The way I played I was surprised it didn't break sooner. There were times where I'd spend weekends on that thing without it getting a rest. It was an obsessional type thing, the way people are with WoW.

The old xbox still has its use. I picked up a 20 GB hdd for it and I transfer XBLA games to it using a 512 memory card, put that bad boy in a home made arcade cabinet with an analog tv. I picked up to arcade pads for it and now my friends and I have an arcade system where we can play Frogger, Street Fighter, Dig Dug, etc, without fear of damaging anything when we're drunk.

@BobSalawalatski: Or it might have been March 2006 we got the Premium. It was just a little over a year before the Elite was introduced.

@pecan 3.14159265:

The results of his survey will be worthless regardless because of his selection methodology.

My launch 360 (bought Nov. 2005) finally went tits-up last Sunday with the RROD. It took almost four years to happen but still...

I played it more than sparingly, but never did I engage in weeks-long marathon gaming sessions during which the poor thing ran for 8-10 hours a day.

It was well ventilated and its ports and airholes kept dust-free, but alas...

And naturally I couldn't get the repair order started online as the system kept telling me "That serial number is already registered!" That meant I had to call customer service. Oh, rapturous day.

Customer service rep had no record of the 2-year extended warranty I'd bought in Nov. 2005, making my RROD extended warranty good for four years, not three. Call was 'escalated' to a supervisor. Sigh.

I'd say, yeah, all 360s produced between 2005 and *maybe* early 2009 will fail for one reason or another. Microsoft, in its zeal to beat Sony to the next-gen market, cut some corners and consumers are left holding the bag.

@socalrob of the 24 and a half century:

My experience was largely the same as yours. One RRoD that showed up after owning the console for 3+ years, sent it in and got it back in one week with a free voucher card for 1 month of Xbox Live Gold.

@Miraluka:
The warranty on the general hardware failure (and the E74 error I believe) is 3 years.

I'm not sure what this guy means by "As Microsoft states, it's a general hardware failure, one that they refuse to officially identify." Microsoft has acknowledged the issue and extended the warranty as a result.