X360F Poll: (Insert game) killed my 360! [update 1]

I haven't had any problems with my Xbox 360. I bought mine like a month ago. I truly love my 360. Now i have to buy a HDTV, which I'm going to get later.

My opinion is that does who have problems with there 360 playing dead rising, could be because they have the early models, which came with some problems.

Well I will not bad mouth this sytem but I have to tell everyone that thursday morning I turned on the system to play Dead Rising and everything was going great......I pressed start, it started loading and it froze, no big deal right....wrong!! I tried to reset it and the dreaded three red lights of death!! This will be my thrid 360 and I REALLY go out of my way to take care of it!! Why me??
Now I e-mailed Major Nelson Re: Software Vs Hardware, can a game kill a system?? I asked him to have one of the tech guys on to answer this gripping question. I hope someone can, I LOVE the 360 and will continue to support it but damn what a month for the system to go down, Madden, N3,Saints Row and EchantArms!!! Crap!! Tell me what you think!!!

I didn't have a problem with mine until I accidently supercharged mine with a can of full throttle. Now, my dvd-drive doesn't always wanna cooperate.

I'm sorry to say this but that poll-site was just infested with malware trying to install itself.
You should pull this back ASAP!

My 360 loves to kill PGR3 disc but thats about it

Sometimes, Quake4 hangs on a load screen between 2 levels.
I just reboot the Xbox and it's OK.

Rayner: sounds like you've got problems with malware that doesn't have anything to do with this poll. Scan your system, stop using IE, stop being paranoid, and then look at the site. Hasn't that poll software been used for a while now? kthxbye.


On the flipside: I've had a couple of freezes, but that was with oblivion and GRAW, so I marked the second option.

Had mine a couple of months, and have played 28 different games. No problems encountered thus far.

I had to completely reformat my harddrive in order to play Dead Rising.

yah... I'm sick and fed up with trying to get Dead Rising to work. First was the demo - I downloaded it, and it was so choppy, that it was completely unplayable. So I deleted it and downloaded it again, to see if I had a bad download or something. still I had the same problem. I figured maybe the full game would work fine (I had it preordered and paid for) so when it came out, I stuck it in the 360 and guess what??? Same thing - it ran, but incredibly slow (unplayable still). So, I bought an XSATA drive, to backup my savegames to my computer. Next I wiped my 360 harddrive (thinking it was too fragged to play on). I popped dead rising in again and it still wouldn't play right. Finally fed up, I sold my XSATA and Dead Rising on eBay. I don't know if my Xbox needs repair, because I've had no ring of death and all my other games work totally fine.

I'm done ranting, but I did vote "all games work fine except ________"

I've had very few problems with my 360, and i've had mine since launch, all of my friends' 360s have had problems like the drive scratching a disc to death and the other having to be replaced. The only problems I have ever had were due to the massive amounts of heat the 360s seem to manufacture. When I had massive 8 hour gaming binges it would all of a sudden freeze on a pause screen or something, and all I had to do was turn off the system and let it cool off for a little. Now i have a little USB fan that I have aimed a the back of the console , and besides the negligible amount of noise it makes, it keeps my 360 *relatively* cool!

I guarantee that half of the votes that are under the problems options are the same people who came up with the bogus rumors about Xboxes dieing from certain games. I know hundreds of people who have not had any sort of problem, the only person i do know who had a problem droped his xbox on his way home.

I may be bias but I think most of these "games that kill my 360" things are just made up by microsoft haters. Maybe one or two people will get red lights because their running their 360s in a low ventilated areas and tell one person. Who makes a blog post about their 360 having the same problem, who doesn't even own a 360, causing a trickle effect.

The votes support what i think also...

Need for Speed Most Wanted freezes my 360 about once a day.

got my 360 on launch day and have had not one single problem.

My launch 360 died about 2 weeks ago. Oddly, many posts about dead 360s I had linked on xbox.com have vanished. Just look at these posts for a sampling of people reporting dead 360s: http://forums.xbox.com/6093130/ShowPost.aspx
http://forums.xbox.com/6119864/ShowPost.aspx


I love the 360 console, but I have never heard of such hardware failures on any gaming system. I think that 3-5% initial failure rate has gone up.

My only problem was with the xbox 360 starting up, I could never do it from the controller, until i shut it off, and did it again, then it worked.

That all has been fixed with the spring update!

Now 0 problems with my Xbox 360!

I recently traded in my XBOX 360 with Wal-Mart, did the ol buy a new one, bring back the old one.. they dont scan seriel numbers there, i just couldnt wait weeks for M$ to fix my X360, and I had to play Dead Rising. I was getting a 3rd quadrant red light, either that or it would start to load and freeze out.. it was an original from launch day and the only game that ever made it freeze was FIFA World Cup 06, when me and my roomate would play 45 mintue long half games, it woudl always freeze with like 10 mins or so left to play, I think it was over heating.. but since I got the new system it never has any glitches, and in fact I had a party here saturday that lasted 13 hours and people where playing Dead Rising the whole time, not with one freeze up. I am super happy with my X360, just sucks that they are electronic components and all electronics have a small failure rate.

Frogger killed my 360=(

It's in repair right now actually.

I have a launch day system. It's had some freezing problems since the first week, but only on certain games (NFS:MW, MotoGP '06, and ES4:O. It may have happened on others too, but those are the only ones I remember.). It's not common, and it's never really caused me to lose much, so it's not that big of a deal. I've always been scared it would develop into something worse, but luckily, so far at least, that is not the case. I think I've also had a single DRE, but I can't even remember the game. DOA4 maybe, not sure though.

I've had a 360 since winning it at launch, and it has NEVER given me a problem, overheated, or scratched a disc. Not once. I've put hundreds- even thousands- of hours on it between DVDs, games, XBLA, and just messing around with photos and music.

Of course, I read the manual and treat it like what it is: A sophisticated piece of computer hardware. I don't have it in an enclosed entertainment center, or on the floor, or sitting atop an already-warm component like a TV or audio receiver. I have the power supply sitting where it can get airflow. I have the unit on a very nice surge strip. I don't move it while it's running. I don't abuse it. I dust it regularly. I care for it like I care for my computer, my digital camera, or my iPod.

When I quit Best Buy a few months ago, we had sold hundreds of Xbox 360 consoles, and we had gotten very few as defective exchanges. I believe it was about five, in total, that were defective. That's pretty normal for consumer electronics, and I don't doubt that at least one of those five was abused in some way by the owner.

You see, children, you have to learn to take care of your nice things. If you read the manual, follow the rules, and treat it with care, your Xbox 360 could last as long as my Atari 2600 or Odyssey2, which are both working fine and looking good to this day.

I also want to point out that I have had my 360 running from noon until three in the morning, between movies, music, long gaming sessions, and downloads, and it still doesn't get much warmer than any other DVD player. All these "it's SOOO hot!" claims are utter B.S. as far as I'm concerned. I've personally witnessed a 360 sitting inside a poorly-ventilated plastic display case, in Best Buy, running the demo disc 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for seven months straight without a single issue, and certainly not overheating! When it finally did have a problem, it was because the wired controller developed a short from customers screwing with it, and wigged out. The console is still fine.

So just shut up. Some of you might have had faulty consoles, but I'm betting at least half of you are Sony shills spreading lies and rumors.

I was one of the unlucky few who was having problems with the demo.. I downloaded that aswell as SF2 during the same week. Since i purchased this machine on day one, it had no problems with demo games, etc. Until i downloaded those two items. Then it started locking up, finally resulting to a complete system failure. On this board (well Joystiq) i was told to check to see if the power bar might be at fault, which it wasnt. Asides from doing all the troubleshooting on the website aswell as the Customer Service Rep, nothing seemed to work. I've only had this machine for only 7.5/8 months and it's dead. Originally they were going to charge me full price for repairing the machine (160 cdn), however upon speaking to a supervisor got the price down by half, which still i find for what ive spent on the machine, games, equipment i should have this done for free.. She went on to explain to me that they extended the warranty to 60 days (as to impress me) - i interrupted her to let her know WHY they extended it with major issues, etc.. Nevertheless, i called back to make the payment and talked to another supervisor, and i asked her, would it be from the demo/items i've downloaded, and if it were, would i be compensated for this? She said it wouldnt be the demo's/items that id ownloaded, it only pushed the system that had an issue to fail.. So there you have it, im now awaiting for a new machine in roughly 4-5 business days, however in my neck of the woods im giving it 7 days.. Im still happy with my purchase and they were nice to deal with, im FOR SURE getting the extended warranty as soon as i get my new machine, aswell as any form of extended waranties for either my soon-to-be purchased wii & ps3...

People need to learn to leave more than half a gig of storage space for their 360 to use as a cache...do you REALLY need three demos and a dozen videos on your hard drive? I have maintained 11 GB of free space and the only problems I have ever had were rare, and only when listening to streaming custom background music playlists while in a voicechat over xboxlive while playing Oblivion while simultaneously downloading an xboxlive arcade title or something of similar size.

With such a small population for this poll I doubt the defective rate on the 360 is any thing but less than or equal too 2%. This is about 50k on the high end of the interval. With modern day technology you'd think the manufactures of the consoles could keep the defect rate lower that a few percent or they'd probably shut down production to figure out what the issue is. Then you have to wonder how many people actually have defective consoles, I once had a guy bring back a laptop that had the numlock key on and he wanted it replaced because it was "defective." I've talked to tier 1 XBOX support when my original unit died on me, thank God my 360 is fine because their tier 1 is a joke and would probably take back a good number of working consoles.

Ok, first of all this is a stupid excuse for a blog. I think you guys should just shut the hell up and not post anything unless your going to post something that's actual news. Second, there really isn't that many people that have had bad 360s mine is launch day and I've never had any problems other then standard freezing. The 360 is a new console and this stuff is expected with game consoles. It's like less then 5% of 360s have problems so stop posting these f*cking stupid blogs. You need to fire your staff and hire new people who will actually go online and research useful information people care about. I love this blog but lately you guys are the most boring part of my day. If your truly getting paid money for what you do get off your lazy asses and f*cking do something. Jesus christ you guys are the saddest excuse for bloggers ever I can't even express how disapointed I am with this sh*t. Now shut the f*ck up about the freezing and give us some real news so I don't have to check real sites like gamespot to get 360 info.

No complaining here just a little dissapointed. I am now going on my third xbox360. They will be sending me a box to ship it back to them. I don't think it has to do with the games. I take good care of my xbox like dusting it regularly, giving the power source airflow, etc..

I have played all the new games that people are having problems with. No problems here. Mine happened this time when I was shutting down my system with my controller and plugging it in to the charging cable, for plug-n-play. The dreaded red lights came on and the smile on my face from good gaming went away.

I feel that the PS3 will have the same problems as well. My loyalty to Microsoft still remains. It's just like I said, "I'm dissapointed"

Hi, i know this has very little place in this particular post but what the heck, it's popular. It just struck me that gaming is actually dead for the consumer. Where are the focussed efforts from console manufacturers to provide a gaming experience rather than a bloated profit experience? It hit me when i actually thought about the HD-DVD player add on for the 360. Granted it lets you play movies that are of an up and coming age, and will no doubt help developers of HD televisions get the support they need. However, how the hell is this helping me in any way shape or form play games? The inclusion of DVD players was a bonus as far as im concerned, the addition of a HD DVD player that will NOT play games,is simply Microsoft flogging off its support for the HD DVD format, cheaply. Does anyone else agree that we'd rather have our technological developments in the hands of a creative willing to make money, rather than some profit weildy gamer targetter making the moves?

I think the poll results so far showing that 19% had to repair/replace a 360 are correct. Out of the 50 or so guys on my friends list, at least 10 (including me) have had a defective 360.

I got my 360 in Janurary, and not one problem until about 2 weeks ago. Screen froze while playing Burnout and got 3 red lights on reboot. I actually went through the procedure on the Knowledge Center and got it to work again.

Worked for 2 weeks with no problems until this past weekend - frooze again and got 3 red lights. Now I am waiting on my box to send it in for repair.

Well, I had no problems with my 360 that was purchased at launch (and born on October 21st, 2005)until Dead Rising. Problems started with the DR demo and got progressively worse. I was only able to spend a few days with the retail version of DR until my 360 would lock every-time at about the 5 minute mark. I'm not saying the GAME killed my system, but I do think this game is pushing the hardware and bringing sout some flaws inthe early systems. BTW, it is now 6 days since I contacted MS about the problem and I am STILL waiting for my shiping box.

Haha! I'm too smart for *you*, XBox 360 Fanboy! As soon as I enter 'Nope. No problems whatsoever.' my 360 will halt and catch fire back home.

Things like this are like the people that foolishly say Candlejack's nam--

i bought mine about three weeks ago. And the controller wouldn’t connect. Tried a different wireless controller and same problem, took the system back and the new one works fine. Although it did freeze once when playing Burnout for 4 hours. but i played dead rising for 12 hours strait for 3 days in a row and didn’t have any problems.

I've had problems with 2 games. First with oblivion, which froze quite often while loading new area. I also had one very strange bug with graw. Suddenly, everything went to wireframe and colours were strange and fps was something like 5. Anyone else had major graphical problems with graw?

No it didn't go wireframe, that would be impossible ;p Lots of walls became seethru, basically i could see whole map and enemies who were like 1km away.

@ Grimm,

First, if you don't like it, don't read it. Simple as that. Second, the Dead Rising post got more comments than any other post in months. Obviously, this issue has struck a nerve with a lot of our readers. I'm glad yours works great. So does mine. Click that box and move on. Finally, believe it or not, this is not my only job. It's not Ken's only job either. Hell, nobody I know of on the Joystiq network survives solely on this job. We do our real job, come home, and then write these wonderful posts for our grateful readers -- and some ungrateful sods like yourself. If you think you can do better, by all means do so. Seriously, hosting is cheap. Start your own blog. That's what I did, and it landed me this job. Hell, send us some writing samples, maybe you'll land a job here. And if you really hate it so much here, leave. Read something else. We deal with enough puerile BS as it is. That's it. End rant.

@ benjamin

Hooray for Freakazoid references! :)

Oblivion hangs and gives a dirty disc error on me almost constantly. I can be near-assured of a crash in every long session with it. I believe this is a software issue, however, as crashes and lockups for the rest of my collection have otherwise been few and far between.

/To oblivion's credit, it manages to be great even with its major stability issues.

I've had mine for about 6 months, and the only problem was Oblivion locking up on the load screens, which was fixed by the update. Until last week. Last week, Chromehounds (which I've played 60-70 hours up until this point) locked my 360 several times, uncluding the dreaded circle of death. Now my 360 won't run 20 minutes without locking up, even if I'm just in the dashboard. Looks like I'm going to be paying for some repairs...

Had the game for a week and it was running fine.. The evening after I read the article about dead rising killing xbox's mine started freezing.. two days later I only have 3 red lights when I turn it on. this is the second time my xbox is being replaced

Yes, I just had a few lockups until 2 weeks ago. Halo 2 and Halo 1 are now locking up consistently, while the 360 games act better. Some nights it won't lockup at all (short 1 hour session), other nights it will lockup repeatedly. Sometimes just in the Live lobby or even before I hit Start at the load screen. I'm getting frustrated and I'm trying to find a pattern or consistency, but I haven't been able to pinpoint it yet. I won't be giving it much longer before I take it back. This 360 was purchased in December 2005.

Launch console. Red ring of doom yesterday. FUBAR.

I had occasional freezes during loading sequences in Oblivion and when playing around with the guide menu while an online game of Dead or Alive 4 was loading, but software updates for the games fixed those issues within weeks of the games releases. Also had some crazy loading times in Condemned which was the first game I bought for my launch day console, the first dashboard update fixed that issue.

A small price to pay considering what a flexible interface and vast capabilities of adding new features to the dashboard the 360 has.

@ ZeroCorpse and others.
My 360 is a launch day one and has worked perfectly until Dead Rising. Maybe it's coincidence, maybe it's not but mine is dead now and going in for repair. It's perfectly clean, sits out in the open (as does the power supply) so there's no chance of overheating, and has never been moved once. I resent the assertion that if my 360 died I either broke it myself or am shilling for Sony. I don't know why it broke, but it damn well did. I do know that I played many hours on many other games since launch day with no problems until I got Dead Rising, when I experienced the same thing that several other people are talking about. Freezing, then red lights. Why is this so hard to believe?

I had the same experience as Gombard. Zero Corpse Id love to be a PS3 fanboy but the simple fact is that Im just not. I love my 360 - I want it back soon. I bought it on launch day and had no problems with it until SF2 came out. Shortly thereafter my box would freeze and then not restart with the 3 red lights. I was very irratated to have to pay $129 US to fix a faulty piece of hardware that is less than a year old. I am an adult and I take excellent care of all of my electronic equipment as well as my game discs. I never had a problem with the box until a few weeks ago. I guess what I am saying is that this could happen to you as well - so if are still able to - purchase the warranty. The 90 day Microsoft warranty is a joke.

I'm with you, Modano. I used to have similar thoughts as Zerocorpse... that the problems that were reported were blown out of proportion by a vocal minority. Now I'm a part of that seemingly growing minority. Looks like it stands at over 25% according to the current poll. Even if it is skewed 5%... there are 2400 people who've voted. Either the entire Sony fanboy army has really mobilized or there's a problem with the 360.

I think another poll is warranted... I wonder what percentage of launch consoles are failing/have failed.

Mine blew up on the dashboard. My wife watched a DVD (Madagascar), and the next day, when I went to play, it froze up (checkerboard) on the dash. No game in the drive. The majority of my gameplay has been limited to COD2. No other freezing issues to speak of.

Again, well ventilated & taken care of, never moved. My guess is that one of the components within the machine is simply expiring across many many consoles... and at a much greater rate than the 3-5% MS has touted.

At what point does the term 'class action' come up? And on what grounds?

As far as zerocorpse goes, I'll keep my fingers crossed that his console fails next so he won't be so quick to be such an idiot in his post.

No sense in pussyfooting around...the damn thing ..or the capcom discs are fucked up!....I have had no problems with my 360 until I bought dead rising....it always freezes at loading screens..and I've gotten 3 replacement discs so far. I'm so pissed $60 fucking dollars went to waste!..I could have saved that money for Enchanted Arms..now I wont be able to get it ... ...dead rising is sitting in the fucking corner unplayable.

I have had freezes with most of the games I have played, NFS, Oblivion, to name a few.

I got my 360 at launch. It would crash randomnly on almost any game, and refused to play some titles like Madden. No red lights of death, just hard crashes and lock-ups.

The replacement Microsoft sent me didn't connect to XboxLive which was very infuriating. After going through 3 more 360's and the ensuing exchange processes (which took about 20 weeks in total due to extremely rude/incompetent Customer Service), Major Nelson got involved with some of the angry messageboard users who were going through the horrific process of getting a working box.

They finally reciprocated with a free month of XboxLive and 3 free wireless controllers. I think I was only supposed to receive one controller...but since I had gone through 3 exchanges (and lots of headaches) this eased the burn a bit.

My latest box (from late November) hasn't locked up yet.

I forgot to mention, they ALSO sent me a free game: choice of PDZ, PGR3, and Kameo. All of which I already had. I took PDZ and traded it.

No problems with any of the games so far. I have played and owned close to all of the titles except for the tennis game at launch and Condemned. The 360 has been flawless easily handling whatever function I want to use at any time.

hi all,

my launch 360 died playing espn's basketball game. I had mine ventilated and played it lightly. If you add up the people with problems, from the poll (36 percent) you see that a whole lot of people are having issues. Freezes, deaths, etc.

For people like Glewis and zerocorps to think that grown men like I and others who paid six hundred dollars for games warranties etc and have been playing games since the age of 5 are just taking the time to just make up stories while meanwhile we are throwing this expensive equipment around the room is completely stupid.

I personally was tired of weak sony crap so i bought a 360. it crapped out on me and i'll be getting a replacement one with my warranty but there are an awful lot of people making rediculous statements (sony fanboys, making it up) when stuff is really going wrong.

Sure some mistreat their systems but the days of all the gamers being twelve and tearing up their stuff is over. Many adults are having problems with their systems to.

I cant wait till the same people saying all this crap have their systems cut out on them. Then we can all have a good chuckle!!!!!

Those of you with issues I understand and it's a darn shame we spend this much and pay for such blatant errors.

and it's a shame we have to find "normal lockups" as "normal" it should be EXTREMELY RARE Lockups not Normal.