3 year warranty for all X360s.

Of course, but they're only owning up to it because they have to. Given the magnitude of the problem, they should have owned up much sooner, and in any case I believe they used cheap components inside the 360 to try to save money. Looks like its going to cost them more in the long run, quite possibly a lot more.

 

I cant imagine people tolerating these kind of failure rates in a DVD recorder for example. Whenever there is a recall (or something similar) of a consumer device, there is always a furore (like with the Sony laptop batteries last year). MS are just going to have to put up with the negative publicity. The good thing is that they've set aside a good chunk of money to fix the problem. The bad news is that the prices of peripherals, and possibly the console, are likely to come down in price less sharply as a result.

 

This person claims his new elite has the heatsink, prod date of june 07

 

Honestly I don't know what you are talking about. How exactly is a 3 year extension of warranty a bad thing? It's only bad if you don't own the console.

I understand now, I don't care about Japan and marketshare. I'm just looking for games. I'll get a PS3 for NG:S and Lair, not because of any magnitudes of decent marketshare.

 

How about a broken container?

 

Any more juvenile hyperbole that you want to dish out?

Some of you are so ridiculous. Not all problems are the same. You can have the best QA in the world and not be able to predict a problem that only shows up in appreciable quantity after a long time. And what electronics factory has a 4ppm failure rate?

What if, for example, the RoHS compliance was part of the problem? Before XB360, has anyone on the planet mass produced (i.e. millions sold) a compact CE product that has over 100W power consumption in the lead-free solder era?

There's no data on this stuff, and there's only a handful of companies capable of this kind of volume (Microsoft doesn't make the consoles themselves, genius). Firing people isn't going to solve anything.

 

What boggles my mind is the speculation that the XBox division is still going to post a profit with this $1B cost going in.

MS is making some serious dough off the 360 and its games at a time when console are supposed to be loss-leading.

 

Err, I agree. But if the container (360) fails so much, how can you then enjoy the content?

 

They would have to sell 17 million copies of Halo3 at $60 to cover that cost.

 

Yep, clearly all of the xbox360s sold are broken most of the time.

With 25% failure rate, the average xbox360 user only gets to enjoy his games 51.5 weeks a year. Oh the horror.

 

Looks like the apologists are rallying around the 25% number now. Just like they did the 3-5% number before.

 

Would you buy a TV brand that had a failure rate of 25%? How about a car brand? Computer brand? Would you buy a refrigerator that failed 25% of the time? How about a microwave?

25% is pretty damn high if you ask me for any piece of electronics. I think that's unacceptable. I'm actually pretty surprised that it's so accepted and even defended.

 

Well to be clear, they're going to be making a profit *because* of the $1 billion charge, rather than in spite of it.

This charge is being applied to the last quarter of '07 in the form of a general write-off and set-aside fund for the issue as a whole. They did this at least in part exactly because by doing so they will not have to account for this in the next fiscal year; thus enabling them to show a profit in '08 free of the liability concerns that would likely otherwise have posed a drag.

The profit MS will be posting, isn't the profit that will have this charge going in. We should be seeing the 4th quarter results very shortly now as well (I believe Monday).

 

Ouch. So what is the blessed number then? 100%?

 

I'm not offended, just surprised.

I have the 360 as an item I'd like to buy once it drops to the $299 range for the premium version, particularly since I'm going to be investing in a HDTV this Christmas. That said, however, 25% is really high and speaks to the quality issues the brand currently has.

That concerns me as a consumer and it does give me pause as to whether or not I would want to wade into the 360 world. Say what you will about the high price of the PS3 (and lord knows, do I have issues with that one), but I haven't heard a peep out of Sony owners or articles about PS3 failures. Nor have I heard that regarding Wii.

I hope that MS turns it around, but until then I wouldn't buy any electronics item when I was aware that it failed 25% of the time. I care about the quality of the items I purchase. I'm just surprised that that's not a common theme for people who shell out their hard earned money.

 

Based on what data? My personal failure rate on Sony electronics is 100%, every Sony product I have ever owned has died (needed repair) within 3 years of purchase, but I certainly wouldn't suggest the failure rate of Sony electronics is anywhere near 100%. I've had many computer failures over the years, certainly over the 25% mark, yet I keep buying computers.

If a product has the right backing and they are willing to get me up and running in a reasonable amount of time I have no problem with a high failure rate. I'd have more confidence buying an xbox360 right now than a pre-built computer system from pretty much any manufacturer.

 

If you've got a factual number or something based on reality, I'd love to hear it. Otherwise I'd just suggest you shut your stupid pie hole

 

I used the 25% figure because you talked about it in a prior post. I think 25%, the number you stated, is too high for my tastes. That's all.

Well, I build my own computers, largely because I want to determine the components that go into it. I steered clear of ATI video cards for a very long time because of quality issues with their cards and their drivers, for example. Now I have ATI cards because their drivers have been rock solid, as have their products, while the Nvidia crew are the ones who fell prey to driver problems. I haven't purchased a Nvidia product since the GTS 64MB because of that.

In short, I take quality issues very seriously. Maybe that's just my expectation, but it is how I go about making purchase decisions in part.

 

Have you read this?
http://www.dailytech.com/Retailers/article7892.htm

With the failure rate as high as 30% it's hard not to call it a systemic design flaw. According to Micromart in the UK it's because of solder crack, thousands of places for a potential solder crack make it impossible to be completely repaired. Basically there's no other way except for replacing the motherboard itself.

As I wrote in my previous post even the 1B$ expense is an evasive measure for Microsoft, local retailers are forced to sell an insecure product and support complaining customers, potentially losing credibility with customers more so than Microsoft does. The only way to solve this is to recall all older models.

 

I'm confused. In fact, I'm doubly confused. First off, why the string of negative comments? Isn't this great news? Isn't MS replacing broken units for free? Could MS have handled their past mistakes in a better way? You just seem bitter for some reason, and I can't see why. I'm honestly curious.

Secondly, let us say that the apologists are settling on the 25% number, is that so surprising that it deserves a comment? Nobody had any facts to go on prior to this news, it's only now that people have enough information to deduce failure rates.