Motley Fool tells MS to get its act together

I had a VERY hard time with this issue. I am in love with this console yet when I got Three Lights of DOOOOOM Three months after I purchased my console, I was very concerned. It didn't help matters when I was reading the numerous horror stories while at work. I really despise the fact that Moore is not concerned about the defect, but the resolution and customer support. Let's keep this ball rolling and hopefully M$ will get the picture and do something about this "lil" glitch.

yeah, i have a friend that said he would get a ps3, and i pretty much convinced him to get a 360 once he found out the controllers had changed. then he went online and saw all about 360 failures, so either he's just kidding around or he's actually going to buy a ps3 again. but he's an idiot, so he won't really listen to me when i tell him that i'm the only person out of about 6 of my friends that has had a failure.

Richard,

While I have no doubt there are 360's that have failed, I really find it hard to believe it's as wide spread as the series of tubes, or ps3fanboy for that matter, would have us believe.

Unfortunately, all we have is our own anecdotal evidence to go on. Personally, I've purchased 5 360's, one of them being a launch console. Not because they've failed, but for my kids and wife, plus I needed an elite to try out the HDMI. You'd think I'd be replacing these every other month according to the internet.

Lastly, even should MS give us actual failure rates, if it's less then the internet believes, how likey is it to be believed? Most likely, they'll just be called liars, and the rampant rumors will continue.

Bottom line is, in my opinion, the 360 offers the best next gen gaming and online service out of the competition. The internet rumors haven't prevented me from purchasing more consoles, and alot of folks have bought 360's after playing on one of mine.

I know a person on a single forum that says he won't get a 360 until the failure rate situation improves. However, this is the same person that doesn't want a Wii and is waiting for PS3 to have "a serious price drop." So I don't know.


Anyway, I've had my 360 since December 26, 2005. Easy to remember date, it's the day after Christmas (funny part is I got my PS3, December 30, 2006.. the day before New Years Eve, I have strange luck with nextgen systems huh?) Point is, my 360 is a year and a half old.

I've experienced 1 red ring. Why? Cause I made the silly mistake of installing an Intercooler with a game in the disc drive. I must have jarred it lose while I was attaching it. Shut it off and turned it back on via the eject button and everything has been cool. Aside from the GRAW2 demo locking up.. thankfully the full version doesn't.. my 360 is still running happily. I play 4-6 hours a day. I do not use it as a dvd player. And really only download marketplace games and game trailers (most trailers get deleted right away or when I finally get the game.)

I have a friend who leaves his 360 on 24/7. He used to do the same thing with his original XB. He's had it for almost a year now and hasn't had any problems at all.

I don't know what the deal is with failed 360s, but I can't believe that all of them come down to manufacturing. I have to believe it's how people treat their systems because my original XB still works and I got it when they started packing the S-type controller with the system.

(My launch PS2 works as well. Though the cd/dvd tray has an annoying tendency to pull itself back in automatically when I hit eject on it. But that happens common place with the older cd/dvd drives of that generation.)

It didn't stop me but I hate adding it to the downside when I talk to people looking to buy one. Now in my experience me and my friends have been lucky. Of the 12 friends I have with a 360 only 2 have had to have repairs. But the fact that I think of my group as 'lucky' should really say something. Failures are almost expected.

It was a reason why I decided not to go for the Elite upgrade. I might purchase another unit once the 65nm are available. And that would only be after I wait a little bit to see about reliability.

Oh and the noise which is getting louder and louder by the day with my unit.

Maybe some of the people online stating their 360 broke is working at the same marketing firm that did the PSP website......

I had the ring of death once...then I plugged in the HDMI cord to the TV, problem solved!

On my second unit. First died 8 months after purchase. I blamed Live; I was downloading a demo while playing Crackdown and got the three lights.

I'd say it's a solid 30% failure rate for 360 consoles. It sucks, but the console offers me what I want content-wise.

I have many friends waiting on a Microsoft system AFTER the 360 if the failure rate is decreased or exterminated completely. They're still playing their PS2's.

The noise Joshua is caused by the dvd drive. Sadly there's little microsoft can really do about that. Yeah the PS3 is quieter in that regard, but it also has a different type of drive, there's no tray on it.

Mine has failed once on me but that was my fault for plugging it into a outlet with faulty power. Since I've got mine back it's been rock solid without a single hitch. I really do hope that Microsoft does figure out how to solve the cooling issue the 360 has so people will have more confidence in the product they're buying.

To me, the 360 has been an absolute great experience and is definitely my favorite console to date. I can't get past the Wii's graphics and crappy controls (for most games) and I can't stand the PS3's controller itself plus the fact there's no rumble as of now. It really does feel like a cheap piece of plastic with bad locations for the analog sticks. Anyways...Xbox 360 FTW!

My 360 crapped out last week, something to do with the video card (graphical error). I called into xbox and they said try it on a new tv, try new cables... the guy even went as far as to say something was wrong with my tv... i laughed cuz i have a $5k Sony Bravia. I was disappointed becuase it was an xbox made 11/05. I went to walmart and got a core console and plugged in my harddrive and went right back to gaming. i called xbox again last night to get it serviced and asked the rep how i paid for the service. He offered to talk to his manager and came back and said service would be free! WOOHOO!

Moral of the story is be cool to the service reps, be patient, polite and they will help you out...

To add..I don't know what SOME people are doing to their consoles, but I'm advocate that MOST do nothing out of the ordinary to have garnered a bricked console. For me I treated mine with kid gloves; never leaving it on when I was out of the room more than a few minutes, never leaving it on overnight to download anything, and I went as far as to not use my computer for the internet while I was on my 360. (shared router.)

My console died suddentely (sp, sorry) when downloading a game demo. That was it. It froze my game of Crackdown and began to flash the lights. It was that frighteningly simple.

Be careful everyone!....enjoy your consoles, but realize the day of death is probably within a few months or less. These things are near disposable, and it's near impossible to do anything to prevent the red ring.

Dispite that..I'm sticking with the 360. I refuse to get a PS3 unless they offer no less than 5 exclusive, amazing titles..something I don't expect before the end of the decade.

I'm on my 3rd 360, the first got the 3 rings, the second one the DVD drive stopped reading discs and so far the third has been solid.

My brother is also on his 3rd 360, the first was the 3 rings, and the second one stopped reading 360 discs, but would read original xbox games and dvd movies.

Other than my brother and I, I only know of 1 other person out of about a dozen friends that has had a problem.

Ok first off, lets stop calling everyone with a defective 360 liars! I have 10 friends I convinced to buy a 360, 9 of them have died, I felt like it would never happen to me, and doubted the stories online, till it happened to me.

1st one died 6 months after launch, got it replaced, then the replacement died 6 months after that! And you know what MS did for my pain and suffering? they offered to fix it and extend the warranty 1 year at the special cost of 140$ :)

So basically they told me to bend over and pull my pants down, I agree, the 360 is the best console ever made, BUT MS has a SERIOUS problem on their hands...

nice, linking to Seth. i know him personally. he sits at the desk next to my wife at The Motley Fool.

he was a big fan of his 360 before it Red Ringed on him. he's sad he's impatient waiting for it to get back from repair so he can slay more Zombies in Dead Rising.

heh

That would be me. I was thinking about actually getting an Elite, since I already had my 360 replaced once. I reconsidered that purchase since there's a good chance the 360 will break again, so I will opt to get a PS3 instead. It might take a couple of more allowances to afford one, but there's nothing like piece of mind and a BD player to boot! BTW.. I also have the HD-DVD drive, so I feel kinda burned by Microsoft on how that format is managing against Blu-Ray.

Five friends (inclusive) play. Three 360s have broken. 60% failure for our group.

Mine just died last week - 6 months old. Broke my heart. It was set up laying horizontally in an open location, in a cool basement and plugged into a big surge suppressor. I thought I was doing everything right to be honest.

I had it networked to my Media Center PC upstairs streaming recorded video and tunes to the big TV/audio rig in the basement - worked great and the gaming is, as you all know, excellent.

I went downstairs last Sunday to fire up the box and play some music and it stalled after about 10 seconds of play. Reboot, same thing. Reboot again...Red Ring.

Coffin came yesterday via Purolator and off it went, back to meet it's maker...

MS needs to address this. They need to be very open and very public about this. Whatever the case with the hardware, the preception is out of control and I believe it's already impacting future purchases.

I have 2 360's. 1 from launch works great, the second did died with 1 Red Light hardware failure. Took it back and got a new one and it's been great for about 6 months.. But I noticed last night it was having problems reading some of my discs.. Now I'm worried.

What the hell is wrong with MS's quality control? Is it going to take a class action lawsuit to actually get them to address this? Recycling refurbs isn't cutting it, they are still failing..

Wasn't MS supposed to answer to a European inquiry about scratched discs?? What happened with that?

If have any additional hardware issues, I will be selling what I have and move to something that is more reliable and I don't have to worry everytime I turn it on that it will be the systems last.

i know 7 people besides me that have had 360s for a year or longer, without any failures or hardware/software issues. i've had mine since october of 2006 and have had no problems with mine either.

For nearly a year, I was convinced the failure stories where blown waaay out of proportion to sling mud at Microsoft. Since then, two close friends have had their's die. I'm not so worried mine will die - if it does, it does - but as this article states, this is now out of hand and starting to do untold damage to the Xbox brand.

It's maddening because game-wise, the 360 puts other consoles to shame, well on its way to winning the war (once the Wii's novelty wears off ;-) MS's dirty little secret is slowly becoming public knowledge...

C'mon MS, sort it out. Even if it means admitting design flaws publicly and manufacturing a new design. Take it on the chin - people will respect that you owned up to it and corrected the problem. You may lose $ for this generation, but you'll still be in the running for the next...

On a related note, are the failure rates any better with the Elite?

...if we're talking percentages: 6 friends, 2 fatalities: 33.3% Not Good.

Sirurza, I understand there might be little Microsoft can do about the drives unless they decide to look for another supplier that can provide better drive. We've been using disc based media for some time now, I can't think back to a time where my drives have ever been so noisy as my 360.

Okay...I can think of one...my iMac.

I love my 360 and so do all my friends. But all 7 of us have now had to replace our machines. I'm on my 4th(in 18 months!) and three others are on at least thier 3rd ones. Only about half of the originals were 2005 models.

Although they are used regularly they are not really hammered and all are well vented and looked after.

After having an original Xbox, that didn't seem to have any problems with breaking down it's really worrying to see what's happening to 360's. I'm fairly confident the failure rate is very high and MS don't want to admit it.

If mine breaks down again I'd seriously be looking to buy a PS3 instead, purely because I think it would last a lot longer than paying for a new 360 every few months.

The 360, is by far, the best console but they need to sort all this out, and fast!

I just count myself lucky so far.

Obviously EVERYTHING gets exaggerated on messageboards... You go to a place like neoGAF and see what's getting complained about and then you go outside and deal with everyday people and it's a whole different situation. It doesn't reflect as much as people want to believe it does.

Not to say it doesn't happen because I'm sure it does... but I've read people claiming it's as high as 30 to 40%, which if true, would be causing a far bigger ruckus than it has.

Statistics can be used to prove anything. What matters is having a large sample. And, really, no one beyond MS seems to have remotely the full picture there.

I mean, if someone can say 2 out of 3 of their friends have a broken system, that sounds horrible. That's 66%. Yet, for me personally, I know at least 8 people with the system (as in, not just people I met on Live) that have had never had a problem. Not one person I've personally met has a broken one. So, I could claim 100% that it's not an issue... but that's obviously far from the truth as well.

My point is that we really just cannot base much on the complaints about it. People who have ones that work are unlikely to bother posting in a complaint thread. I'd be interested in seeing how many people (honestly - I'm pretty convinced some of those threads contain at least a handful of people who don't even OWN a 360) do not have a problem at all.

It's true that this "perceived" aspect of it all is a major problem though... It also doesn't help when I go to the store and the 360 there is busted.

"Okay...I can think of one...my iMac."

Is that ever true. I used one of the newer models at work and it sounded like a lawnmower. All four of the ones we had lol.

"I have to believe it's how people treat their systems because my original XB still works and I got it when they started packing the S-type controller with the system."
I too still have my original xbox from 2002, but I just had my THIRD xbox 360 crap out last weekend. Of my 60+ friends list 1/3 have had a 360 die.
The first time the service was great. They overnighted the box and I got my replacement in 5 days.
This time very bad. I called Sunday. Still no box today. I called again today and was told that the box shipped out today. What?!? Why the heck does it take five days to put an empty box in the mail?

Since everyone here appears to be pretty uneducated as to what exactly is causing the failures and because some people seem to think consoles are just being mishandled (I know we aren't all 5 years old...) here is a link to what the problem actually is. If it hasn't happened to you (yet) consider yourself VERY lucky.

http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?showtopic=579364

Ya me.

Well I experienced this situation four times already. I got my console on launch die like 5 months after got another one die like a week after, I sent it back and that one lasted about 4 months than I received my other console and it die about a month ago MS asked me for 140 dollars I said no and sold my console on ebay as broken with all my games and hd dvd player. I won't get my 5th console until MS releases it 65nm gpu and cpu and maybe hopefully that will help in some way. 360 is still the best console of this generation.

ive had my 360 since launch and have not had any problems with it it hasnt even frose yet.

See, this is the problem... people just read these comments and think "wow everyone has had a 360 broken" if we were to go off of these coments, then we would have around a 45% failure rate. I for one do not believe this for one moment. I have 17 friends (or aquaintences) who have purchased a 360, and not one of them has had problems. I have a launch console and have had no problems. when people say that they have replaced their 360 2 or even 3 times, there is cause for suspicsion. You may think that you are not doing anything wrong, but obviously you are. I can believe if a person had to get it replaced once but having it any more is ludicris. you may go "ohh quit yelling at people who arent doing anything wrong" but you are obviously ignorant (it may be innocent ignorrance or idiotic ignorrance, i dont know) of something that is going on with your 360.

I went through 3 360's (though one was my fault) before giving up and getting a PS3 back in March. It's been great so far.

Believe me once it happens to you, you WILL believe all the internet "rumours". I didn't believe it all until it happened to me. I fixed it myself with some instructions online. It shows that Microsoft has created a faulty design.

So if the lead-free solder is the issue, does an external cooler still sound like the best preventive medicine short of resoldering? Maybe that new USB powered one coming soon?...

I've had 2 failures now. I'm currently waiting the coffin to arrive. I was assigned a "special agent" from M$ to assist me in my service request. It seems like the stories I've read about the shipping boxes being few and far between are true. Apparently M$ has been shipping so many consoles, that they don't even have enough cardboard in stock to produce boxes.

Despite this, I still looking forward to receiving my new console [if it ever happens].

I read on one of the posts above about the validity of the reports of multiple consoles going bad and was surprised to see that one of my fellow gamers thinks the failures might stem from the owners treatment of the consoles. My situation is such that I am the only person who even looks at my 360. I live with my wife [who has zero interest in the thing] and 1 small dog [who doesn't even go in the same room as the console. I feel comfortable in admiting that I am EXTREMLEY careful with the "toys". I feel safe is assuming this problem lies firmly on M$'s shoulders.

I am on my second Console since April of 06. I never recieved any red lights but returned my console do to the DVD drive not opening. I have the 2 year extended warr. and I am VERY happy with my system. I found the XBOX 360 support staff to be helpful.

I think the real danger for Microsoft is that the "perceived" failure rate is not very far from the true failure rate. Among my friends and co-workers who have an XB360, there is a 100% failure rate. We have ALL had an XB360 die on us, requiring repair or replacement. About half of us have had two repairs, and a small number have actually been through THREE OR MORE consoles in the last two years. Sure, we're a small sample, but we bought through different retailers at different times which should give pretty good odds that all our units (and the replacements that have gone bad) didn't all roll off the line in the same faulty batch. That means that quality control has been consistently bad, if such a random sampling of production could turn out a 100% failure rate.

out of 6 people that i know that have had 360s, including myself, 3 failed. i wasn't too happy about my red ring of death. 2 were repaired, and 1 was outside the warranty window. the 2 i know that have been repaired have been pretty stable, but microsoft should ask themselves, 'Is this good for the company?'

r the 65nm cpus + gpus coming in at the same time???
i sure hope so cos i cant b bovvered to w8

for 65nm cpus then 65nm gpus - if they r different when will the last 1 come in???

I am on my third Xbox 360. Good thing I bought it at Costco and get a free life time warranty. The only problem is my XBLA games won't work offline or under another gamer tag. M$ needs to fix this problem. Hopefully everyone signs this petition: http://www.petitiononline.com/fixxblm/petition.html

We need everyone to sign it, pass the word on.

Im currently waiting on console number five after buying my 360 eleven months ago, in total support have had my console(s) just over three months.. all i want is a console that works! I love my 360 & hd add-on but only (obviously) when it's doing it's thing!!

I have had my 360 for over 15 months now with no problems.

I do have to admit that hearing all these stories scare me. I am dreading when I will get the ring of death. I say will, becaue you hear a lot of people that have had multiple console failures, so I figure it has to be a matter of time.

Seriously though, I think a lot of people might be full of shit.

I could go over to ps3fanboy and post a comment about how my ps3 failed, I got it fixed by sony and then it just failed again. Then bitch and say I am considering getting a 360. I wouldn't put this tactic off to any true 'fanboi' just to stir up trouble.

I would imagine the failure rate is less than 10%. However, as the writer of the Motley Fool article said, it is ther perceived failure rate that is MS's problem right now. They need to come out and give us the real failure rate.

If it is somewhere around 25%, then I would believe all these stories about multiple console failures.

But you also have to take into account the people who've had 360 failures (like me) and even some with more than one console failing (like me) who absolutely LOVE the damned thing...

I know about 3 people out og 5 at work have had to return the 260. Mine crashed but I was lucky enough to get it back to working after I unplugged it. One of my co workers 360 wouldn't read any disk. It just ejected them and said disc is unreadable. MS made him pay 150 bucks to get it fixed. damn that.

I had a PS3 but sold it b/c all it did was fold. I bought an Elite and had thought about holding out for the new CPU but couldn't wait any longer...too many good games for the Xbox. So far, no issues what so ever, but just to make sure I opted for the 2 year extended warranty from Microsoft. Such is life, stuff breaks.

"So if the lead-free solder is the issue, does an external cooler still sound like the best preventive medicine short of resoldering?"

I bought an antec laptop cooler for my 360 and started using it the last 2 weeks.

Last night I played a game of Halo 3 and shut down the system around 6ish. At 10:30 I returned and tried to turn on the 360 and got the 3 lights ring. So I'm inclined to say that even using cooling solutions is no assurance of preventing the problem.

I dont know if any of my friends on XBL have replaced their consoles but a coworker friend of mine just recently got hit with the ring of death. not to mention my post above.

Well, I do not own a 360. I am a PC gamer, and am facing the choice of upgrading my PC ($400 just for a decent video card) or buying a console to play current games.
I am pretty much set on the 360, because I can play it on my computer's LCD (it has two inputs), thus pushing back the upgrade of my TV.
Reading the internet, I am worried about the reliability of the hardware. I guess that when an offer is too good to be true ($399 for a video card, processor, hard disk, dvd player), it probably isn't.
So I am holding off until I read that 65nm XBOX is out there, runs cooler, and is more reliable. I'll have to leave with my 3 year old PC for another few months I guess.

I have owned four Xbox 360's. Three have failed and been sent back. I bought an Elite in hopes that they got it right...but it, too, has issues (goes to black for 2 seconds every haf hour). Love the console...love Xbox Live...love the games....hate the dependability.

Took me 3 consoles from Costco to get on without the red ring. First one red ringed after a week. Second one, DOA. I mean first boot red ring. Third one no issues, but still. My own perception is skewed of them ( even if it was only due to Costco employees throwing them down off the palettes they shipped in on...)