3 year warranty for all X360s.

If you follow Occam's razor this action by MS shows the design of the 90nm model was faulty by default, they should recall all units in the market now before selling them to potential customers as they know exactly which serial numbers are subject to these problems by now. What they are trying is postponing the damage and praying less broken units are actually sent back to MS.

 

If you were afraid to get one because of the reliability, this would ease much of the worries.

 

I don't see how the 90nm model was faulty by design. When I apply Occam's razor, it looks like the inhaled design of the case is the cause of the issue (since they all had the inhale design). But that's just me looking at the problem obliquely.

 

That's basically the same thing if the inhaled design doesn't cause 3 red lights for the cooler 65nm chip set. This timing for the announcement looks too timely for the process transition.

 

In the end MS is giving a 3 year, no hassle, shipping paid warrantee. That's pretty damn good, I don't know how you can really harp on them.

Worst case sceario, you're out a console for 2-4 weeks, once in 2 or 3 years of gaming.

It's still a minority of systems that fail, asking for a recall seems fairly extreme.

I do see what you're saying thiough, these 90nm systems do feel like ticking time bombs.

 

Agreed.

Let's see a raise of hands here who thinks it's the CPU at fault...

I'm not saying that a 45nm CPU won't make the system cooler and therefore less likely to fail, but something tells me they better have a die shrink of the GPU go with the CPU shrink to really nip this problem in the bud.

Tommy McClain

 

I know what you do for a living so I'm not playing this game with you.
But I'll give you a free tip on how to improve the PR situation with pesky bug-bears like me: get someone of official responsibility on record uttering the following sentence to the world:
"The XBox 360s manufactured up until summer 2007 have not had a critical design flaw."

If you can do that, it might make sense to continue this conversation.

 

Even one of the Finnish newspapers picked this news. They wrote that even though Finnish 360's importer doesn't want to comment on the subject, some other importers suggest that as much as every third 360 has a hardware failure. The article was overall very badly written but still, bad press is bad press.

 

Spot on.

I'm not surprised by this move at all. They had to act.

Still wondering how long my launch unit will last though.

 

Very true.
Yes, the 360 has a reliability problem, however I've always wondered if there are very specific environmental or setup conditions that worsen the problems. With a worst case 25% failure rate, having 14 systems fail (which I believe I read somewhere) would be a 1 in 64 million chance. It simply doesn't add up, unless the user has significant effect on the problem.

I've also wondered if the high current power in the US has an effect.
There seems to be far fewer anecdotal reports of failure over here. A local retailer once told me they'd had just a single returned 360 - for a dodgy power cable. This was the local equivalent of a US walmart too. A friend of mine also got 4 red lights, for a damaged A/V plug. Pretty much my experience with the system failing.

Which part of the $1b accounts for reimbersing customers their $140..? $140 + $shipping + $400 console + $staff time + $freebies + $overhead +$repair + ...= $lots.

 

The repeat failures become more plausible (and possible) because the systems people are sent as a replacement have until now been refurbished units that have essentially had the same problems, but been 'corrected.' So, think of the 25% failure rate as for the console itself, but the stories of 12+ units failing as those of folk that have been trapped in a cycle of compromised hardware. Microsoft has had to play it this way up until now, as the cost of writing off a lot of these units for out-and-out replacement would have been a large hit.

Granted, this is a hit they are taking now in a significant aspect of the first half of the billion $ charge, as the majority of that first half is going towards inventory write-down.

That's also covered in the first $500 million.

 

The timing is much more due to the end of FY07 than anything. If we are to believe the anecdotal evidence, its the proper cooling of the 90nm chipset thats the issue, not the chipset itself. To Sis' point, the concave design of the of the box certainly didnt make that task any easier.

Hopefully not longer than 2 years and 364 days.

 

What game? You're putting forth something that I've yet to see any evidence of, I'm wondering what basis you have for saying that.

Moore has already stated that the issue is not systemic.

 

That's what I was thinking as well. Though I believe environmental issues played a small role, nothing that could account for the high rate. Replacing a broken Xbox 360 with one that has already proven itself to tend towards breaking seems like a bad idea in general.

Well, I was attempting to be somewhat ironic. I don't think you can point to a single component in the system. It's a confluence of components and problems that appear to cause the issue(s).

 

Anyone hear of units manufactured in late '06 and into '07 having this problem? I thought most were launch + 6 months time frame. We should be hearing reports of that by this point, if the problem was still systemic. Of everyone I know who has had the problem, they were all early 06 builds.

 

Why does it seem that some people are trying too hard to spin this negatively?

They owned up to the problem, and have extended the warranty so even my launch X360 is covered for another year. Geez, this is a good thing, for everybody except Microsoft's bottom line and people wanting the X360 to fail. A full out recall is not going to happen, they hardly ever do in the CE world.

Edit:
Sis, I've had a June '06 box fail (as I recall) which was actually bought new in Nov or Dec '06. so that's more than 6 months from launch, but not quite late '06.

 

Why should they worry about people like you? You simply sit here and spread complete FUD, you're not reasonable, you're not objective, so what's the point?

Not everyone is getting refurbs, I got a brand new console to replace mine, and that was last Nov. I've been a happy camper ever since.

 

I have to believe that the major mitigation step of these issues is the beefed up heatsink configuration we've seen on the net. Once we find out if that is now the standard config, and when they started implementing it on all new units, we should know what units are likely to still break or not.

P.S. Apologies for not picking up on your irony, my fault.

 

Honestly, I simply can not understand this mentality.(ok,I understand.for 1 year the x360 was the only one console for the hc gamer fans with good network capability and with good shooters, and the money that they spent for it during this time made many fan for the machine.)

If I buy something, I buy it for the purpose of the item (example:to go with the car from A to B), and I don't buy anything for the fun of the repair and waiting.Even if it is for free.You can bear it until there is no decent competition ,but if there is an other choice this simply not make any senese for the avarage customer.

From this point of time te xbox and the ms don't have any chance in japan, and the chance of the ps3 is bigger by one magnitude to get decent market share.
Possibly for a fan it is absolutly acceptable, but for anybody with common sense it is simply a not to buy decision.

 

Yikes. Price drop or no, I'm not touching a 360 with a ten foot pole with those kinds of failure rates....