Supposed MS insider discusses RRoD errors, Falcon at 10% failure rate?
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If people expressed that hardware faults are not a concern, then I'll count it as an encouragement or reinforcement of that school of thought. Personally, I am glad the issue blew up because it helps to ascertain some level of hardware quality in CE space. Whether MS will do it again is anyone's guess. If it turns out well in the end, only Steve Ballmer and company know the answer to that one. Entering a new market is expensive and time-consuming to begin with. MS knew that from prior experiences.
Only for RROD issues. I have seen other 360 problems in forum due to the way they design and source the components. The executives tried to ignore the faults, citing the exact same "great game" argument. Granted these issues should have been addressed by now (I hope !).
The great game argument is a valid but subjective one. Third parties have pretty much gone cross platform, and there will be great first party games on all platforms.
I have no interest to fan it either way, but I am sensitive to consumer electronics quality that's all.
scooby_dooby
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Well I think the idea was that they've recently discontined the models with BC, so that if it fails in a year or two they'd no longer be able to fix it.
I'm not sure what the actual policy is, but I have a friend who got a replacement on a launch unit recently that only seemed to have a disk problem. Although I didn't listen in on his customer service call so I'm not sure what he told them. I do think to most customers one flashing red light probably equals rrod, so they might be rather lenient on the policy rather than face lawsuits over it.
It wasn't a directed attack, but next time I'll be sure to use a smiley.
The policy's for RROD, but people often perform what is probably fraud: they try to force a RROD, aka the towel trick.
Well I'm sure you'd get aPS3, so it wouldn't a total $440 loss! But yes, all these SKU's offer another pitfall for consumers. In this XB360 case, the returned unit doesn't have HDMI when the faulty unit sent in did. Semms an interesting legal consideration to me - if you buy a product and it goes pair-shaped, what responsibility has the company to replace it as bought? I suppose in the States, none, but in the EU within the mandatory 2 year (or greater) warranties, how does it work?
Imho they are doing two things:
Buying goodwill and PR, on the other hand they are saying "this have a history of breaking but don´t worry".
They are not guaranteeing me anything.
I still have an Amplifier from them that works like a charm after 17 years. But because i got 2 CD-Players from them with 2 years in bewteen that developed the same problem i lost all confidence in that brand.
I only got 6 months of warranty and after that 18 months of warranty if it breaks and it should be expected not to have. In the weird way of EU i have to prove that my PS3 should have worked perfectly the last 18 months.
Given it´s price it will not be a problem
Yes, they announced that the extended warranty was for 3 flashing red lights. However its possible they just treat all failures similarly regardless, because its simpler and less likely to add to the bad PR they've gotten over the problem.obonicus said:
(Aside)I'm not sure why you'd bother to actually go through some elaborate scheme to make it fail worse, I expect at this point they just take the returns on faith. ie. If you have a rma #, they send you a replacement unit. If they tried to object after they had the unit you could just claim a miracle in shipping. I suppose you could run into some self righteous tech guy following the letter of the rule, but the fact is that MS doesn't even actually do the repairs themselves so there's not much incentive for some outsourced repair vendor to object to a certain RMA. They probably save themselves paper work and get paid either way.
I'm unsure how they get away with replacing thing with a removal of features and I imagine it certainly creates issues for them.
It's possible, but as I understand the representative will ask you about the RROD specifically. If that's the case, it's not really a blanket 3 year warranty.
Isn't it essentially fraud either way, whether you force a RROD or if you say you have an RROD and don't? I mean, no one's gonna be busted for it, probably, but that doesn't make it right either.
Is there any confirmation on anyone actually recieving a PS3 without BC? And isn´t it more of a problem for those insurance companies that sell those extended warranties (i bet there is something with small print).
So you expect MS to charge them with fraud? Or are you just wagging your finger at customers for being dishonest? I expect you'll get a chuckle out of people who exaggerate an insurance claim here and there.
There was a thread on GAF about people being forced to wait extended periods (I recall 6 weeks) for a proper 80GB replacement in the past. With their option being, take a lesser valued unit. Are they still manufacturing replacement units for failed 60GB and 80GB units or are they actually manually repairing individual failed units with parts? Or do they just tell customers: sorry, its 40GB or nothing and ride out the class action suit when it hits?
A 360 HDMI certainly should be replaced with an HDMI unit, I have to think that was an error, if the customer complains, they would be forced to do another swap. However the laws vary in different regions so what they cannot do in Europe might be standard operating procedure in the US (or even vice versa).
Didn't I say that no one would be busted on it? But you can't really go 'MS has a blanket 3-year warranty... if only you lie a little' as an argument for MS' better warranty any more than you can use piracy as an argument to attenuate the cost of PC-gaming (whether that cost is high or low).
Do you have a link to Gaf handy? if not i will try and dig it up myself. For me there is a big difference between normal warranty and bought warranty. Microsoft and Sony can´t be held responsible for the extra insurance, and i would be mildly suprised if Sony didn´t stock up on repair items for the BC version. It would be very strange for someone with their experience.
It is possible, but that's not what MS does. I've read countless first hand post of people getting rejected for non-RRoD issues. That is why you see the towel trick suggested time and again to force a RRoD.
To answer your question without the noise, the answer appears to be a resounding "yes".
For info, there's an automated tracking thread on GAF detailing models and failure rates, and the Falcons (which I believe is all that's out there right now) has dropped significantly. While the system is just hitting 12 months of life, the failure rate at this point in life is in line with the other consoles, whereas the old model obviously was notable higher.
I actually have a Falcon, too, and that's going strong after a year. For comparison, it's my third 360, and both the others failed after six months. Thankfully I had the foresight to buy the EB trade-on-the-spot extended warranty, meaning the failures didn't really impact me other than having to plod down to the store.
That was before the 3-year policy was introduced, of course, so I'm feeling quite happy with how MS has treated consumers here... particularly as every console I've owned has either outright stopped working (PS1, Xbox1) or had niggles (Dreamcast GDrom spin, Megadrive "blow in the slot" within two years, and they all told me to pay for repairs myself
I don't think the hardware mess-up is excusable, but given the situation they were in, there's not much more you could ask for them. I actually hope it sets the standard for machines moving forward, given the price-of-entry seems to be climbing for mainstream consoles each gen.They keep spares for repairs. It was only last year that Sega stopped repairing Dreamcasts and Saturns. And Nintendo only within the past few years stopped repairing SNES because they ran out of parts. Sony should be able to repair PS3 with bc for a few years.
Sort of related. Gamesindustry (and others no doubt) reporting that a/the insider chap has been fired by MS. No surprise really.
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/microsoft-fires-whistleblowing-employee_7
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/microsoft-fires-whistleblowing-employee_7
Just a thought...
If we assume for a moment that the hardware issues were well socialized throughout Microsoft, and that they were given the opportunity to go back in time and delay the launch 6 months, at the expense of the marketshare they enjoy today, does anyone really believe they would have held off?
Also, if you had told the earlier adopters that "this console may fail, but you will have it replaced for up to 3 years. However, by assuming that risk, the platform itself will thrive and there will be arguably the best content available for any console this generation" I still think a vast majority would have made the tradeoff and bought the thing regardless.
If we assume for a moment that the hardware issues were well socialized throughout Microsoft, and that they were given the opportunity to go back in time and delay the launch 6 months, at the expense of the marketshare they enjoy today, does anyone really believe they would have held off?
Also, if you had told the earlier adopters that "this console may fail, but you will have it replaced for up to 3 years. However, by assuming that risk, the platform itself will thrive and there will be arguably the best content available for any console this generation" I still think a vast majority would have made the tradeoff and bought the thing regardless.
Definitely not.
I doubt it, myself. People stick with the 360 because they already have a lot invested in it -- you're not going to play those hundreds of dollars of 360 software anywhere else. If they were told up-front of the real odds of failure (supposing that these initial odds were 16%+, which they seem to be) I doubt they'd want the hassle. Remember, the PS2 was still going strong in 2006. And if the adoption rate hadn't been what it was, we probably would have seen the content scaled down for the PS2 (and games like Dead Rising would have flopped or not been made at all). Maybe by the time Gears rolled by, if it even would, we would have seen an upswing in 360 adoption, but it also might be too late, since by then the PS3 and Wii were coming out.
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