And you thought 33% was bad!

[Firestreak]

I think it's a little sad how hard it is for some 360 owners to admit the hardware is complete shit. It's like in their heads putting their preference in bad hardware means they're admitting poor judgment in what console gives them the most fun. When we look at electronics, we think about them for the most part in terms of rational breaking down of their functions and qualities and purchasing based on logic. We like to think we make choices based on pure opinion on other things. So it's hard to say that because you like the xbox 360 games/service you buy hardware that you think is shit even if it's the truth. Not me though. I wanted to play certain Xbox 360 games so I bought hardware knowing it was shit. It's not a car, or a computer it's a game so I act on preference not logic.

Once you let that go, you can be honest about how bad the hardware is. Otherwise you're gonna take a slight on the machine as a slight on yourself.

Just saying this for some, not all. This either describes you or not, it's impossible to prove why someone else feels this way, but it's true for some.

 

[Skaw]

overheating can be good for the 360. If it gives you a red ring, just roll a towel around it and wait until it overheats, then wait a while and start it up, and suddenly it works.

Straight overheating is only one red light though, three red lights overheating is generally solder/heatsink problems.

 

[TheOsyris]

I dont think there are many 360 owners that think the hardware was put together well. If there are any, they are children or 360s version of Gerry. I dont know any one personally that thinks positive about the 360s hardware Fire.

There are enough 360 owners that feel the sub par hardware does not make the gaming experience poor though. I am one.

Now there is just about absolutley no chance the 360s failure rate is 50% or anywhere near it. At that rate we would have all types of lawsuits, its borderline against the law and it would have killed the 360. That didnt happen.

 

[Bajaratt]

I dont think there are many 360 owners that think the hardware was put together well. If there are any, they are children or 360s version of Gerry. I dont know any one personally that thinks positive about the 360s hardware Fire.

There are enough 360 owners that feel the sub par hardware does not make the gaming experience poor though. I am one.

Now there is just about absolutley no chance the 360s failure rate is 50% or anywhere near it. At that rate we would have all types of lawsuits, its borderline against the law and it would have killed the 360. That didnt happen.

I think the current hardware is fine; the initial hardware sucked. I haven't had a single problem with the elite I bought 1.5 years ago. I'm definitely enjoying the hell out of the console though.

 

[TheOsyris]

I think the current hardware is fine; the initial hardware sucked. I haven't had a single problem with the elite I bought 1.5 years ago. I'm definitely enjoying the hell out of the console though.

Yeah i should have added something like that. I agree with you as far as the current hardware goes.

 

[Anglis]

I think it's a little sad how hard it is for some 360 owners to admit the hardware is complete shit. It's like in their heads putting their preference in bad hardware means they're admitting poor judgment in what console gives them the most fun. When we look at electronics, we think about them for the most part in terms of rational breaking down of their functions and qualities and purchasing based on logic. We like to think we make choices based on pure opinion on other things. So it's hard to say that because you like the xbox 360 games/service you buy hardware that you think is shit even if it's the truth. Not me though. I wanted to play certain Xbox 360 games so I bought hardware knowing it was shit. It's not a car, or a computer it's a game so I act on preference not logic.

Once you let that go, you can be honest about how bad the hardware is. Otherwise you're gonna take a slight on the machine as a slight on yourself.

Just saying this for some, not all. This either describes you or not, it's impossible to prove why someone else feels this way, but it's true for some.

I've owned 3 of them, but i've only paid for one. I'll keep owning them because I love Mass Effect, Lost Odyssey, etc and the online experience.

Now, I know the hardware is complete shit though

 

[masterorion]

I find it mildly amusing that no one's even mentioned the fact that this survey and its results are from polling less than 5000 people.

to get a VERY accurate number of problems, you would have to poll just about every owner. impossible. therefore, they use statistics. 5000 or whatever number they use, is the sample. the ratio from that sample will give a general statistic (which, i may add, is pretty accurate in most cases). unless of course, there isnt tainted information from people lying or people accounting for friends when they themselves dont own the system. in turn, that friend applies his own answer to the poll.

anything that gives consumers information like this, goes off of a statistic. taking a poll of the xbox users on this site will give a decent percentage as well. go ahead and try it.

 

[Bajaratt]

to get a VERY accurate number of problems, you would have to poll just about every owner. impossible. therefore, they use statistics. 5000 or whatever number they use, is the sample. the ratio from that sample will give a general statistic (which, i may add, is pretty accurate in most cases). unless of course, there isnt tainted information from people lying or people accounting for friends when they themselves dont own the system. in turn, that friend applies his own answer to the poll.

anything that gives consumers information like this, goes off of a statistic. taking a poll of the xbox users on this site will give a decent percentage as well. go ahead and try it.

Two problems with this:

One is sample size, you use samples to cut down on the amount of work done; but you need to have an appropriate sample size. The smaller the sample size, the larger the margin of error. Again, I could poll the 8 people I know with 360's, but that's a ridiculous sample. Given there's over 30 million 360's sold, a sample size of 5,000 is pretty pathetic.

Two, the sample has to be representative of the whole, you can't just grab 5,000 random people, or predetermine a bias into the results. It's like polling only rich people to figure out their political alignment; you're going to get skewed results. The smaller the sample, the more important it is that the sample is representative of the whole.

 

[masterorion]

a random sample is the best way to go in this case. if you pick and choose who you take the poll from, you have tainted the information to get 1) the outcome you wanted or 2) like you said, getting a particular alignment (good or bad)

with random polling(from only 360 owners of course), there isnt any bias. unless they blatently lie. but lying will be present for any poll. and that cant be changed

 

[Bajaratt]

Random for this is good, but the sample size is very low.

 

[masterorion]

well, if 50% (supposedly of course) of 5k surveys have had rrod. you can guesstimate what kind of increase in cases you get if there were 100k surveys taken. now if (rougly estimating of course) 3k of those 5k cases had rrod, we could easily say that 30k of a 100k sample would have a rrod also? would you somewhat agree. and im low balling that number. but again, that is saying that the article is being remotely accurate by any means.
in the end, i wouldnt doubt the 50% number at all. systems are getting quite old now. failure for electronics is unavoidable. if it was at 30% before, once systems start to be on their last leg, it wouldnt take much to gain 20%

 

[Bajaratt]

well, if 50% (supposedly of course) of 5k surveys have had rrod. you can guesstimate what kind of increase in cases you get if there were 100k surveys taken. now if (rougly estimating of course) 3k of those 5k cases had rrod, we could easily say that 30k of a 100k sample would have a rrod also? would you somewhat agree. and im low balling that number. but again, that is saying that the article is being remotely accurate by any means.

That's what I'm saying, that the article isn't very accurate. If it was a good sample, then yeah, you'd be able to scale that appropriately. The problem is, that there's no way almost 16 million 360's have broken.

 

[masterorion]

thats the problem no one knows the exact number of broken 360s. however, if 30% + is accurate, that is over 9 million broken 360s. 16mil doesnt look so small considering the amount that was previously said.
all of my numbers are not accurate. these are numbers that i would assume to be close if 16mil is half of the actual amount of sold 360s

 

[Bajaratt]

thats the problem no one knows the exact number of broken 360s. however, if 30% + is accurate, that is over 9 million broken 360s. 16mil doesnt look so small considering the amount that was previously said.
all of my numbers are not accurate. these are numbers that i would assume to be close if 16mil is half of the actual amount of sold 360s

I'm doubtful if the 360 has even a 30% failure rate at this point. Even a 30% failure rate means that more than every single 360 that was made before they improved the hardware(65nm chipset, better coolers, power supplies, hard drives, etc) failed. Not all of the original 360's have failed, and the failure rate went down after the hardware was improved, so I'm doubting a 30% figure.

I could buy 54% of the original 360's failed; because the hardward sucked, but not total over the lifespan of the console.

 

[Elemmire]

This is what you can do with the info Gameinformer has compiled... Throw it out.

I believe Nintendo reported less then 2% failure rate. I have no idea what the PS3s failure rate is. Just take the percentage Nintendo had and compare it to GIs info. GIs percentage is 3x higher then what Nintendo reported. So... Its fair to divide PS3 and 360s failure rate by 3 according to GIs info and guess what... The failure rate is even less then what MS reported.. Lmao. Basically GIs info is shit.

"A survey of 5000"

anyone who knows statistics knows that surveys can be very susceptible to data that's inaccurate to the actual fact so those 5000 customers might show that data and be right, but the data Nintendo has which is (ideally) from every console ever produced vs reported problems (assuming they aren't lying, they are a business after all, but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt) and you can find them both to be "correct" but really only Nintendo's is truly "right"

seriously though, Microsoft's failure rates is higher (and has been since launch) than any console to my knowledge in history lol. Only one other might be higher but it was never popular.. what the hell was it called >< AVGN did a review on it.. kept getting blue screen of death.. I think Tiger? something like that

I love how they also say that the reason the Wii's failure rate is so low is because no one plays it. I wouldn't be surprised if sony paid for the test.

wait sony? lolz, that's pretty baseless and stupid thing to say, I'd say. If anything Microsoft throws their money around more for well any shit that makes them seem better but ya, I'd say it's more that this data is inaccurate cause they didn't have a good group that they surveyed, but that doesn't mean they're wrong for that group, just wrong to report that as the overall :\

Seriously though, denying the 360 has had a higher failure rate than other consoles is lolstupid. Kinda funny though to the Wii being the least played, even my Nintendo fanboy friend is like "that's pretty valid, but I doubt it'd break down anyways, Nintendo makes pretty durable systems" (I happen to agree with this, Nintendo's systems always last longer than the others). Same with my other friend who only has a Wii but doesn't play it nearly that much, plays more WoW though >.> crazy addict.


Cool RRoD fix that isn't a Towel Trick (should be tried only if your console is passed warranty anyways):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHwZ5SG9IxI&feature=channel_page - kinda funny how they built the 360 though, placement of stuff and whatnot

 

[Bajaratt]

wait sony? lolz, that's pretty baseless and stupid thing to say, I'd say.

No, it's not even remotely baseless. Sony pays for reviews on most of their consumer electronics products, they pay for "negative advertising" of their competition. Sony has a history of doing this, and while I'm sure Microsoft has done it before, it's not nearly on the same scale as Sony.

Seriously though, denying the 360 has had a higher failure rate than other consoles is lolstupid.

No one has said otherwise, so why are you acting like everyone is?

The reason I found it bullshit was because Nintendo has a long history of making very durable hardware, and they're attributing their low failure rates as just "lack of use" throws even more doubt on the credibility of this article. The only product not being portrayed in a negative light is the PS3; which again leads me to believe Sony paid for the study.

 

[masterorion]

The reason I found it bullshit was because Nintendo has a long history of making very durable hardware, and they're attributing their low failure rates as just "lack of use" throws even more doubt on the credibility of this article. The only product not being portrayed in a negative light is the PS3; which again leads me to believe Sony paid for the study.

if sony is supposedly paying for the reviews, wouldnt their failure rate have dropped between the few console reviews that have been done of the past couple years?

eidt: just found this article which somewhat coincides with the OP
http://www.product-reviews.net/2009/08/25/microsoft-doesnt-dispute-xbox-360-failure-rate/
on a side note, when i did a search to look for the history of the ps3s failure rate, it seems that many website articles are banking on that 50% number for xbox. i wasnt even searching for anything xbox related, and that 50% is all i saw.

 

[Firestreak]

I think it's kind of funny that people are attributing 5000 people to be not enough to make a decent statistic out of(believe me it's enough). All the while throwing their own perception in as a test of what could and couldn't be. None of us "know" what the failure rate is based on our own perceptions cause we're limited by too small a sample. I've got no idea myself, so these surveys give me the only info that's actually out there for the public. They all seem to be somewhere between the 30-50% range. Though the number should be going down not up in terms of new purchases fucking up based on hardware improvement, the console is also getting older giving more chance for failure on older models.

Are all the surveys bullshit? I don't know. But there sure aren't a whole hell of a lot of Microsoft friendly surveys out there trying to fix this ill perception. I don't see MS coming out and giving their real numbers. Whatever it is, it's an embarrassment, and it's well outside of acceptable. There's no real reason to argue over what the real number is because they actually tried to find out and get heat for it by you as a result, and whatever the final answer is gonna be, it's obviously too high.

 

[Elemmire]

I find it funny that you assume at 50%+ there'd be a ton of lawsuits, sure there are quite a bit but most don't sue because they aren't stupid, most don't have the money to sue all crazy over entertainment crap and especially against easily one of, if not the most, powerful company on the planet lol.

And seriously, I wanna see the proof that Sony has paid for fake reviews to say bullshit (I'm not doubting it but I've never seen anyone talking about it. I honestly don't doubt nintendo and microsoft don't do so either).

 

[Firestreak]

Well there was this thing with the PSP where Sony created a fake blog with some guy pretending to really love the PSP. It's sketchy and was a big embarrassment but it's not paying off official reviews or surveys.