Console failures

[BWDOWN]

PS3 and DS

No faults

[Trigger]

Originally Posted by zeekiorage

What the...34% failure rate for XBox 360 out of 36 units.

When is the XBox 360 SP1 edition coming out?

makes sense
check this out

http://www.smarthouse.com.au/Home/D3Q7G8S2?page=1

Massive Failure Rate For Xbox 360 Exposed

Retailers are claiming that Microsoft has had to handle a failure rate of over 30% with their Xbox 360 console. More than 100 consumers have written to SmartHouse complaining of either poor service from Microsoft or total failure of their gaming console. One consumer was even given back a refurbished unit in exchange for their original Xbox console

[Phantom]

Most appropriate sig ever trig

http://www.nzgames.com/forums/showpo...&postcount=182

[Trigger]

yeah fucken parasites

[_diabolix_]

1. Which current-gen' consoles do you own?
360

2. Have you had any hardware failures in any of them?
Yes

3. If so, which console[s] and how many failures each?
360, 1 so far.

4. What were these failures?
DRE's, 3 weeks old and has scratched GoW, PGR3

5. Did any of these failures recur with replacement units?
Lodged complaint with GPstore 3 days ago, no response as yet. Will expect replacement however. And it better not fucking fail after replacement.

[Torka]

1. 360
2. No.

[chiQ]

console	owners	units	faults	f.units	f.rate	20070623 2321hrs
xbox360	31	34	18	12	0.352941176	4 controllers
PS3	10	10	0	0	0	
Wii	26	26	0	0	0	
PSP	17	19	2	2	0.105263158	1 abuse of unit?
DS	16	23	1	1	0.043478261	
						
TOTAL		112	21	15	0.133928571	
f.rate = faulty units/units

The sample may be small, but I'm still finding that failure-rate a bit scary

[Phantom]

Indeed

[Golden Teapot]

Maybe someone should suggest that Consumer run a survey on next-gen console reliability? Or, perhaps this is the stuff of Fair Go? Actually, probably not the latter since (what I guess as) the main demographic for that show might not be able to afford such gear!

[Phantom]

I would be seriously interested to see a professional investigation of this - tbh the lack of such is one of my biggest reasons for believing it can't be as bad as people on teh intarwebs are suggesting; surely if it was, the whole thing would have been exposed by an independant consumer advocate?

[cEvin]

Originally Posted by Kryten

You've done the "press the wireless button on the console and controller at the same time" thing?

i know about it, haven't tried

[FireStorm]

Originally Posted by cEvin

i know about it, haven't tried

You may want to try, considering that is the way you're meant to get them to sync up with each other .

[Mario]

Originally Posted by Phantom

I would be seriously interested to see a professional investigation of this - tbh the lack of such is one of my biggest reasons for believing it can't be as bad as people on teh intarwebs are suggesting; surely if it was, the whole thing would have been exposed by an independant consumer advocate?

I think its always good to be skeptical around anecdotal failure stories. Whenever a new console launches and sells hundreds of thousands of units, it only takes a hundred people with bung units to post online and create a frenzy of discussion around poor build quality.

In the case of the 360, there are more of them out there and they have been around longer than either Wii or PS3, so there are bound to have been more failures all other things being equal.

That being said, the persistance of these reports combined with people having repeated failures and the seeming identification of at least one design fault is what I think is pointing towards a bigger problem and what people are latching onto.

Comparatively (and again, anecdotally) I'm just not seeing the same thing for Wii and PS3. I'm not looking for it, but in my random interweb travels, I've only ever come across one person with a PS3 that died, and haven't seen anybody with any Wii troubles (some controller synching issues aside for each). That compares with people mentioning dying 360s all the time.

It will be interesting to see if other retailers come forward with statements about the relative failure rates of the different consoles, as that will be more definitive than any amount of anecdotal evidence and consumer speculation.

In the mean time, carry on the good work chiq

[Golden Teapot]

I imagine that extended warranty insurers would be starting to get pretty reliable data on failure rates from 360 units having flipped out of the one-year warranty period.

The thing I also wonder about is, out of the box failures excepted, whether there would be a correlation with the type of buyer e.g. more failures for ten-hour a day users versus ten-hour a month users. A 100% failure rate amongst hardcore users might result in a low overall failure rate that nobody would notice?

[chiQ]

I think I may need to take this to some more forums...

[chiQ]

Okay, I've taken this research to another forum I used to administer. The users are mainly in the US, but a decent number are in Europe and Australia.

[P-Money]

1. Wii, DS Phat.
2. No failures.

[chiQ]

I've specified on the Q3W forum that I'm not counting dead pixels in DS or PSP units. I'm just after stuff that stops you from using the console. I did this because two PSP and DS owners were listing one or two pixels out of action as a fault, which seems nuts to me. Do you agree, or do you think I should include dead pixels?

console	owners	units	faults	f.units	f.rate	20070624 2155hrs
xbox360	31	34	18	12	0.352941176	4 controllers
PS3	10	10	0	0	0	
Wii	27	27	0	0	0	
PSP	17	19	2	2	0.105263158	1 abuse of unit?
DS	17	24	1	1	0.041666667	
						
TOTAL		114	21	15	0.131578947	
f.rate = faulty units/units						



Plus Q3W						
console	owners	units	faults	f.units	f.rate	20070625  0657hrs
xbox360	44	47	24	18	0.382978723	4 controllers, 1 optical drive
PS3	10	10	0	0	0	
Wii	33	33	0	0	0	
PSP	22	24	2	2	0.083333333	1 abuse of unit?
DS	21	28	1	1	0.035714286	
						
TOTAL		142	27	21	0.147887324	
f.rate = faulty units/units

[untouchable]

Im pretty surprised at how high the rate is for the 360. Even if you consider some are only controller faults.

[Ultimative]

Not sure if you want to count it or not, but my brothers have a PS3 and thats had no faults.

[Evilmonkey]

Originally Posted by chiQ

I've specified on the Q3W forum that I'm not counting dead pixels in DS or PSP units. I'm just after stuff that stops you from using the console. I did this because two PSP and DS owners were listing one or two pixels out of action as a fault, which seems nuts to me. Do you agree, or do you think I should include dead pixels?

[/code]

I think the dead pixel acceptance for PSP is pretty high, like you must have a cluster of more than x number pretty sure that number is greater than 5 and also matters as to where the pixel is. So one or two dead pixels doesn't really count as pretty sure they won't replace it under warranty.

Maybe have it as a sub stat as it is still interesting to know how many get dead pixels would also be interesting to know if they were out of the box or not.

[chiQ]

Originally Posted by Ultimative

Not sure if you want to count it or not, but my brothers have a PS3 and thats had no faults.

Yep, I've accepted flatmates' gear. Brothers aren't such a stretch

[chiQ]

NZG

console	owners	units	faults	f.units	f.rate	20070624 2155hrs
xbox360	31	34	18	12	0.352941176	4 controllers
PS3	11	11	0	0	0	
Wii	27	27	0	0	0	
PSP	17	19	2	2	0.105263158	1 abuse of unit?
DS	17	24	1	1	0.041666667	
						
TOTAL		115	21	15	0.130434783	
f.rate = faulty units/units						



Plus Q3W						
console	owners	units	faults	f.units	f.rate	20070625  1643hrs
xbox360	49	53	27	20	0.377358491	4 controllers, 1 optical drive
PS3	12	12	0	0	0	
Wii	33	33	0	0	0	
PSP	22	24	2	2	0.083333333	1 abuse of unit?
DS	24	32	1	1	0.03125	
						
TOTAL		154	30	23	0.149350649	
f.rate = faulty units/units

[Phantom]

fuck me

[chiQ]

Originally Posted by Phantom

fuck me

Lie back and let MS take care of you...

I really thought extending the source outside NZG might make this less dramatic. We still need more data, but it's definitely not a freakish NZG trend we're seeing here.

BTW, if I included the PSPs with one or two dead/stuck pixels we'd have two more PSP failures, which would double the failure-rate for them.

[P-Money]

Originally Posted by chiQ

I've specified on the Q3W forum that I'm not counting dead pixels in DS or PSP units. I'm just after stuff that stops you from using the console. I did this because two PSP and DS owners were listing one or two pixels out of action as a fault, which seems nuts to me. Do you agree, or do you think I should include dead pixels?

Maybe on DS? Nintendo have a zero dead pixel policy. I managed to get my one bright pixel DS replaced.

[zeekiorage]

Originally Posted by chiQ

I've specified on the Q3W forum that I'm not counting dead pixels in DS or PSP units. I'm just after stuff that stops you from using the console.

I think that's a good idea. Keep dead pixels out of the stats.

[Mario]

Originally Posted by chiQ

I really thought extending the source outside NZG might make this less dramatic. We still need more data, but it's definitely not a freakish NZG trend we're seeing here.

Just make sure you don't extend the survey anywhere where the temptation for fanboys to try and fix the numbers might be high.

Smaller communities might yield a slower accumulation of data, but you'll probably be able to trust the data more.

[MoP]

Talked to my friend who works at Gamesman. Said they get a *lot* of 360 returns... suggested you try and get one with a 12 year warranty :P

[chiQ]

Originally Posted by Mario

Just make sure you don't extend the survey anywhere where the temptation for fanboys to try and fix the numbers might be high.

Smaller communities might yield a slower accumulation of data, but you'll probably be able to trust the data more.

Yeah, hence my choice of Q3W. The forum isn't as big as it used to be, and I know them almost as well as I know NZG's crew. There are a few fanboys there, but in the same way there are here. I think they'll be straight enough.

The only worrying posts are one by an inveterate Sony-hater, who's claiming all his 'stupid' friends who bought PS3 are having faults*, and someone I don't know, who seems to work with (and love) 360s and is giving huge numbers I don't altogether trust. I've taken the personal data for the former (he didn't give numbers for the PS3s anyway). I'm not sure about the latter. Strictly speaking I should include only personal data or everything I can, without reference to the respondent, but I'm concerned he's a hardboiled fanboy, and migh be deliberately spiking my data.

*every single one of them crashes

[QWERTY?]

I wonder if retailers\suppliers have NDA's on info about various 360 problems, seems pretty plausible given the apparent high failure rate, and the low publicity

[TB]

Would you blow the whistle on MS knowing what they can do to people/companies who dont agree?

[BaM]

Originally Posted by QWERTY?

I wonder if retailers\suppliers have NDA's on info about various 360 problems, seems pretty plausible given the apparent high failure rate, and the low publicity

Retailers would have no idea, and certainly wouldn't have any NDAs. The suppliers would just be shipping units to wherever and would have no idea of whether they're spares for a warehouse, or required immediately to fix piles of flaming units which are threatening to burn down Redmond. I don't know that anyone in the service side of things could give you any accurate results either. When your job is repairing gear, all you see are faulty units.

[Phantom]

Originally Posted by TB

Would you blow the whistle on MS knowing what they can do to people/companies who dont agree?

In a heartbeat. And I can guarantee i'm not alone. So yeah, i still don't understand why we haven't heard much about this if it's as bad as our numbers suggest. Unless mainstream press only care about videogames when they're the cause of societies ills and ignore them otherwise...

[TB]

"Additionally, the call to the Havant repair centre (for 360s) revealed some other worrying stats: “A shocking statistic we found out though is that between 1,500 to 2,500 consoles get sent to Havant by three UPS lorries per day, to then be shipped to Prague for repair,” Lee told us, going on to add, “[We] phoned up Nora the [customer service] supervisor again, who then admitted my console was in Prague and hadn’t been looked at yet – she seemed amazed that we knew!”"

http://www.360-gamer.com/news.asp?id=1143

[chiQ]

The survey at that site has only asked about 360s, probably because it's a 360 site, but the survey results are nuts:

http://www.360-gamer.com/xbox360hard...ureresults.asp

I wonder if people with failures are more likely to respond. I need to find out when we got ours so I can...

[Waldo]

1) 1 NDS, 1 NDSL
2) Have no complain of product

[Skanks]

You can include data from my brother as well if you want:

1. Which current-gen' consoles do you own?

Xbox 360, DS

2. Have you had any hardware failures in any of them?

Yes

3. If so, which console[s] and how many failures each?

Xbox 360, 1 failure

4. What were these failures?

Dead unit

5. Did any of these failures recur with replacement units?

No

[Ritalin]

Originally Posted by chiQ

The survey at that site has only asked about 360s, probably because it's a 360 site, but the survey results are nuts:

http://www.360-gamer.com/xbox360hard...ureresults.asp

I wonder if people with failures are more likely to respond. I need to find out when we got ours so I can...

Because it's a 360 site, the survey is asking only about 360s, and I presume the site has a much larger audience, I would expect there to be much more acquisition bias on the data they present.
When the survey asks only about 360s, the purpose of the survey becomes apparent, which will skew results. Also, the larger more impersonal audience means that people who have had a fault are more likely to respond than people who haven't. Those with no faults are more likely to think "No faults here, doesn't apply to me, and I can't be bothered filling out the survey".
ChiQ, I think your survey design was better thought out and administered. It wasn't immediately apparent to me why you were conducting the survey, or what hypothesis you were testing (until I read the thread ), and so you seem to have got more balance in the number of fault/no fault respondents.

[Noodles]

Guy onto his 12th 360:

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3160603