Supposed MS insider discusses RRoD errors, Falcon at 10% failure rate?

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

As people are trying to point out to you, for the vast majority of users, who've had 1 failure or less, the value users have gotten from the box outweighs the small annoyance caused by having a failure, and it's ridiculous for YOU to tell those users they have a lemon.

A lemon is a product that has a major design flaw that results in critical failure. The Xbox360 is exactly that. You're trying to make out that one failure is acceptable when in actual fact one is too many. In practise a lot of people have had more than one failure.

A lemon is a product that fails, and is defective, repeatedly. So, if someone returns their 360 4 times, and it keeps failing, then you can call that a lemon. Sure. But you gotta also have a little perspective, and realize that is probably 1-2% of the userbase.

Microsoft's statements and billion dollar repair fund says you're the one who is wrong here and is exaggerating the robustness of the product with only your own "good" experience of a single critical failure to go by.

 

[AlphaWolf]

If MS knows the failure rate to be 30%, why would they only allocate enough money to cover a small portion of it?

 

[scooby_dooby]

Microsoft's statements and billion dollar repair fund says you're the one who is wrong here and is exaggerating the robustness of the product with only your own "good" experience of a single critical failure to go by.

What kind of gigantic leap of logic is that?

1st...what MS statements?

2nd...how does a future repair fund prove that a high percentage of owners have multiple returns?

Explain how that 'proves' I'm wrong...

If the failure rate is 30%, and MS has sold 16million consoles, assuming each console costs ~$300 to make, then they need to replace 4.8 million consoles, there's $1.5billion right there. Without any multiple returns.

That's without factoring in refurbs, which is impossible as we don't know the percentages there. I know you'll probbaly just assume that the majority of replacements are refurbs...but that would be nothing but a wild guess on your part, and meaningless to me.

 

[....]

If the failure rate is 30%, and MS has sold 16million consoles, assuming each console costs ~$300 to make, then they need to replace 4.8 million consoles, there's $1.5billion right there. Without any multiple returns.

That's without factoring in refurbs, which is impossible as we don't know the percentages there. I know you'll probbaly just assume that the majority of replacements are refurbs...but that would be nothing but a wild guess on your part, and meaningless to me.

If the policy the article says is correct, and it is to just refurbish units and ship them back, I'm not sure it would cost as much as making them. They probably thought once refurbished they'd be working decently, thus not needing more than a billion, who knows that may indeed be the case. But if it isn't and if there's a 100% early failure rate on the units as the article suggests, and they keep refurbishing and re-refurbishing them and let them remain in the customer side. The costs might exceed the projected Billion and more may be needed.

 

[scooby_dooby]

If the policy the article says is correct, and it is to just refurbish units and ship them back, I'm not sure it would cost as much as making them.

The article says nothing of the sort. Now you're just making stuff up.

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

What kind of gigantic leap of logic is that?

1st...what MS statements?

2nd...how does a future repair fund prove that a high percentage of owners have multiple returns?

Go back and read the threads here (and elsewhere) and statements made by MS when the 1.15 billion was announced. Estimates at the time put this at between 30 and 50 percent failure rate. There's plenty of anecdotal evidence of multiple returns/failures.

 

[scooby_dooby]

Go back and read the threads here (and elsewhere) and statements made by MS when the 1.15 billion was announced.

No. You're the one referencing these statements, that don't exist, so you go find them yourself, I'm not wasting my time to support your false claims.

I was part of those threads, and I remember what was discussed.

There's plenty of anecdotal evidence of multiple returns/failures

Worthless. 1% of 16million, is 160,000 people, that's enough people to provide plenty of anecdotal evidence, and does not prove anything about the magnitude of the problem.

 

[AzBat]

I have had ZERO problems with my 1.5yr old system. So I don't consider it a lemon. But I think that's enough talk about that. I think we need to go back to the legitimacy of the original article. What kind of hard evidence do we have that his technical reasons back his claims up? I'm surprised this technical forum hasn't dissected Bunnie's post on the matter. That would be a much more thought provoking discussion than this circular discussion we're having now.

Tommy McClain

 

[....]

The article says nothing of the sort. Now you're just making stuff up.

The article says :

How many times does an Xbox 360 unit have to be sent in and repaired before they will replace it with a completely new unit?


That's not how it works. You send in a broken box, you get back a working box (hopefully). So there is a rotating stock of the original units that get repaired and returned to service. Plus, they keep finding these cashes of launch units here and there and using them too.

By that, I take it they just give you a unit they just refurbished from someone else, and they keep doing this no matter how many times you give it back, whatever recently refurbished unit is lying around they send that to you.

They questioned the guy if they give new ones to you, and he comes out and says that.

Though maybe I misunderstood what's said there.

 

[AlphaWolf]

Though maybe I misunderstood what's said there.

You either misunderstood, or he was just wrong. My replacement unit was a new one.

 

[dobwal]

I bought my 360 the spring after it launched.

Has it failed?

Yep.

Has it bother me one bit?

Not in the least.

Why?

Typically new technology always have higher failure rates then normal products especially consoles. I simply paid $50 for a replacement plan and replaced the broken 360 with a new one, which cost me about 30 minutes of my time of which 20 minutes was spent driving to and from Best Buy. My plan is still good till March 08 and I still have the manufacturer warranty until March of 09.

People complain about MS rushing a product with a high failure rate. But I am glad the 360 was released in 2005, failure prone consoles and all.

Initial investment for me costed $450 +tax for a 360 console and for that I got 8 months of HD gaming, which included Oblivion, FN3, GRAW etc before the PS3 ever saw the light of day and for $200 cheaper. Owning a 360 means that I didn't have to bide my time for a year later waiting for the PS3 lineup to flesh itself out. I got to play 12-15 great games over the last 2 years. My 360 has afforded me the luxury to wait out a PS3 purchase until a more desirable price tag of $300 or less. Giving me backlog of 10-12 great PS3 game ready for me to dive into once I purchase a PS3 console.

As a long time gamer I have plenty of experience with failed units including 1 xbox, 2 ps2 and a N64. I also expanded my lung capacity by 15% in my youth from all the blowing of NES cartridges to maintain the viability of that console.

To me its seem incomprehensible that any experienced gamer would want to invest in a launch console without a replacement plan.

 

[....]

You either misunderstood, or he was just wrong. My replacement unit was a new one.

No even if he was wrong, that is what the article said, which is what I claimed. So either I misunderstood it or it's what's implied, be it right or wrong.


PS
BTW, how do you know your unit is really new? DATE?

 

[one]

What's the reason of the 10% failure of Falcon? Have Microsoft commented on this interview yet?

 

[Mr Deap]

The failure rate is indeed very high, but it didn't really affected me.

None of all my console with a disk drive haven't tough more than 2 years.

My Dreamcast, PS & PS2 crapped out within 2 years. My 360 crapped last august, but they renew the warranty & all with replacement(for free).

When I bought the 360, I knew it would crap out, but it turned better than I thought.

 

[AlphaWolf]

Have Microsoft commented on this interview yet?

You say yet, like they ever would comment on some anonymous rumor interview. They never will, and even if they were of a mind to do so, there is nothing positive they could accomplish by commenting on it.

 

[scooby_dooby]

No even if he was wrong, that is what the article said, which is what I claimed. So either I misunderstood it or it's what's implied, be it right or wrong.


PS
BTW, how do you know your unit is really new? DATE?

I apologize, I missed that part when I scanned through it the 2nd time.

I knew mine was new because the manufacturing date was like 2 or 3 months earlier.

It's not really the point though. I think everyone agrees sending out referb units is BS. It seems almost every horror story you see has to do with recieving refurb after refurb....At the sametime, we have no idea how widespread that practice really is, we also know alot of people are getting new units. So it's not fair to jump to conclusions about percentages etc based on internet forum clamour.

 

[one]

You say yet, like they ever would comment on some anonymous rumor interview. They never will, and even if they were of a mind to do so, there is nothing positive they could accomplish by commenting on it.

Why not? SCE denied some European rumor about faulty PS3 with a press release. Anyway "can't comment on an ongoing lawsuit" is probably their answer in this case.

 

[Mintmaster]

<sigh> You can ignore everything else I said in my initial postings, but it's pretty obvious from the article that MS knew they had problem as they were designing the Xbox360.

Yeah, so the article claims. You don't need an insider for anything in that article, so it could be entirely made up.

It doesn't make any sense that MS would intentionally ship an item with a 30% failure rate that they knew of. The cost to service the warranty is ridiculous, and it makes far more economical sense to limit shipments (and even raise the price to lessen demand) until it's fixed.

Of all poor quality high failure rate products, do you know of any problem that so often showed up a year or two into its life? It's not a normal defect.

This was not something that MS could predict at the beginning. A corporation as successful as MS does not piss away $1B because it feels like it. Yes, limiting early shipments or delaying until spring would be reflected in reduced profit from software, but not nearly that much, especially when you consider that they were loss-leading too.

 

[....]

I apologize, I missed that part when I scanned through it the 2nd time.

I knew mine was new because the manufacturing date was like 2 or 3 months earlier.

It's not really the point though. I think everyone agrees sending out referb units is BS. It seems almost every horror story you see has to do with recieving refurb after refurb....At the sametime, we have no idea how widespread that practice really is, we also know alot of people are getting new units. So it's not fair to jump to conclusions about percentages etc based on internet forum clamour.

That is true, I was mostly going on the horror stories(3rd-6th or more replacements), and what the guy said. It is possible the guy's plain wrong, or based his claims on the horror stories and is not really an insider, or they changed the refurbished policy a few months back after realizing the units were too problematic. Though, If it was true, and they keep doing it, and we get 100% failure of the first few million units, it would be pretty funny

 

[Daozang]

In my experience, no one I know got a new unit...
At least I can hope I'll get a new one this time.