So if your 360 had a 54% failure rate while gaming, would you beat the hell out of it? XD

My friends are tryna get me into buying a 360.. but I guess I should save more for a new computer

Btw, I'm stickin to an i7 build. I kno it's expensive, but I don't wanna go with AMD. I'd go for the C2Q but there wouldn't be an option to upgrade :[

If that's true and it can be proven then its class-action lawsuit time. Of course, nobody will actually get any real benefit from that except the lawyers

However, to quote Mark Twain, "there are lies, damned lies, and statistics." I don't know if a Game Informer survey of only 5,000 people is going to be the best. Keep in mind - these folks are likely to be early adopters (the early 360's were the worst for RRoD), play their systems for long periods of time (meaning more heat, aggrevating things), etc. Likewise, they're more likely to try modding their systems (to do naughty things) or buy those stupid "system cooler" things that don't work.

On top of that - look at their PS3 failure rate - 10.3%? I don't think so. If the PS3 had that kind of failure rate we'd be hearing about that. I'd be surprised if the PS3's failure rate was over 3%.

I'd argue that the survey is skewed, and is only representative of a "high-risk for problems" group of owners for all systems.

At first sight, 54% seems high however, I don't know anyone who has their original 360. Let's not forget that this is costing Microsoft a boatload of $$$ to honor 3 year replacement warranties. I guess that explains why I recently picked up a PS3. I've had one 360 unit fail on me....if the unit I currently have goes down, I might consider selling all of my 360 gear to concentrate on PS3.

I had one 360 go on me already, after 16 months. However it was put to use by not only me, but my housemate. She had no mercy and would play 12 hour Mass Effect seshes on it. ~

I got my second 360 (an arcade) when Circuit City was closing for $150, so I figure the hours of enjoyment I get for my money it's worth it. I have both consoles but play the xbox more.

Till now I had one 360 that died on me (a few days before X-Mas, bah), its replacement is still doing great "touches wood".

That's funny my original Xbox 360 never failed me, but yeah my new one failed me so I guess I'm in within that 54% that had there 360s fail.

Lol and I'm in the lucky 54%. Woo. Motherboard practically melted. Now I've got a fan on the back to help out.

Actually, it's not as bad as it sounds. First of all, that survey was of 5000 people from Gameinformer. I'm pretty sure that majority of those 5000 were hardcore gamers who used their 360 a lot, and probably had many old units. Now I'm not defending Microsoft or anything, just saying that it's not a shocker to see that more than half of a large group of heavy duty gamers have had their 360's fail. I don't even use mine everyday and it broke, and you know what, there's a free 3 year warranty on it. So it's not a big deal really if it breaks down. However, I do plan on buying a core system down the line so if mine does break (again) in a few years and I cannot get it fixed, then I have a spare.

Also it is quite funny that this 'next-gen' of consoles has had the most issues. PS3's bricking, wii's freezing and having lots of disc errors, 360's rrod-ing... man, I miss the last generation, those old boxes were reliable and sturdy. My bought-on-launch-day phat PS2 is still working.

Well it looks like over 50% of the people who commented have had one failure. Gamah and I are the only ones that never owned one lol and Chikahiro just got his.

Thankfully, mine isn't one of them... yet 54% is an unacceptable failure rate for any product! I've heard tons of stories about Xbox 360 failures and only a couple PS3 failures. I haven't heard of any Wiis dying yet. Nintendo always seems to design their consoles well. I know my Super Nintendo is still working fine after all these years.

I'll probably be able to fix my Xbox 360 if it decides to go "Red Ring of Death" on me though. I guess college was useful for something

@grafkhun
I'll agree with you on questioning the validity of this study, however last gen wasn't trouble free either.

The Xbox has disc read errors, disc scratching in Japan, and heat issues.

The Dreamcast had heat issues (and those just stopped *dead*)

The PS2 had heat issues and the launch systems had drive issues to the point Sony got hit with a class-action lawsuit.
The Gamecube had heat issues.

On top of that? The PS1 had drive and heat issues. I believe the Saturn did too. The move to discs and 3d graphics is probably the biggest culprit of problems. Had the internet been as big then as it is today, there would've been more of a fuss about all those old problems, I think (much like the RRoD).

Now the 360 has been a particularly bad system for reliability, but again, I still don't believe the actual defect rate is 50%+. That's one reader's survey of a high-risk group, and not verified by outside sources or compared to other information available. If it was 50%+, then when that one UK retailer complained (and others allegedly confirmed) they would've said 50%+, not ~33%.

Lets not forget some unscrupulous folks deliberately sell faulty 360's, some folks don't read the manual and fail to put their system in a well ventilated area, treat their systems crappily, live somewhere with no AC (like me!), etc. And for the record, my buddy still has his launch 360 up and running happily.

Looks like Gamespot is reporting on this, and its the expected fanboy scream-session. I've stated and restated my position over there. Its bunk. I do not trust the Wii and PS3 numbers at all, and that gives me even less reason to believe the 360 numbers.

Seriously - look at the 1st system PS3 failure numbers (too high) and then the 2nd system PS3 numbers (even higher). Crap. That's utter crap. There's no way the PS3 would've gotten the reputation it has if your first system is ~10% likely to fail with its replacement being ~15% likely to fail.

One guy brought up a point too - how trustworthy were the respondents? We're dealing with gamers here - how do we know they're not making up crap about the system they don't like?

Okay, this comment is already a +4/-6, so I'm posting it here before it goes bye-bye...
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Sorry, but I think these results are skewed and should NOT be considered accurate outside the context of those readers.

If the 360's failure rate was 54.2%, they'd have a class action lawsuit by now.

If the PS3's failure rate was 10.6% they'd be having recalls.

Even the Wii's 6.8% is high by normal standards, and that would've been newsworthy.

The old 33% failure rate for the 360, while far too high, sounds more realistic (and should go down due to Jasper revision which addressed the GPU). I'd have trouble believing the PS3 had anything higher than a 3% failure rate. No opinion on the Wii.

To quote Mark Twain, "Lies, damned lies and statistics." These numbers don't aren't very meaningful.
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I half want to yell, "Sorry to rain on your parade, fanboys, but these numbers are crap. The 360 isn't that bad. On the plus side, your system isn't that crappy. No, really. Those numbers are unacceptably high for all the systems. If they were real, you'd have nothing to be proud of. Seriously."

edit: And now its gone! Whoo-hoo! Judging by the thumb downs, I've been annoying both PS3 and 360 fanboys. I don't see why so many of them want to believe this poll that basically says ALL the systems are unreliable pieces of crap...

I take that back - I think I'm just annoying the 360 haters. I get thumbs up when I saw something that can be taken as pro-PS3 or pro-Wii. I get thumbs down if I say anything that questions the validity of the survey. And judging by this, I'm going to get a LOT of thumbs down because I basically just said "stop wanting to believe this because you like the 360's poor review and ignoring the fact its horribly wrong about the PS3 and Wii."

Seriously! If it didn't have the 360 numbers in there, it'd be a whole-different atmosphere I think... they'd be saying it was horribly biased, completely inaccurate, and a load of bull. But because they like one of the exaggerated results, they're willing to accept it.

*sigh*

i always knew its not 33%, shud b more than that. and bam comes the news its 50%. agreed, its unacceptable

At 54%, that's a really high number of failure rates. And the RROD is only reason keeping me from getting one.

Yeah that is a ridiculous fail rate. My 360 died last August, just before it was a year old. I've never been one to play it for long stretches and I've always kept it in an open area so there wasn't any abuse on my part. MS did replace it for me in exactly two weeks at no cost so I'm not complaining too much.

I have a friend that has had two go out on him, he plays it about two hours a day on average. I would say that the system was just horribly engineered, and to support @chikahiro94, yeah I too think that the rates are too high. I always saw around 30% for the 360, about 4% for the Wii and PS3. Average for electronics is about 3%, so really all of these have above average failure rates, only the 360 is ten times higher than average!

I agree with you on the son or daughter having a 54%failure in school. They'd wish they'd payed attention in school.