Wii, more reliable than x360 and PS3 (failure rate)

[LunchBox]

Xbit has an article about failure rates of current gen consoles.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/multim...ndo_Wii_Most_Reliable_Video_Game_Console.html

According to SquareTrade, during the first two years of ownership, 2.7% of Wii owners reported a system failure to the service provider, compared with 10% of PlayStation 3 owners and 23.7% of Xbox 360 owners. In fact, even excluding the infamous “Red Ring of Death” failures, which are covered by Microsoft’s 3-year warranty, 11.7% of Xbox 360 owners reported a failure.

 

[Yemeth]

Ok, so where is the surprise? Can we please have an article "the sun is shining"?

It would be an absolute miracle if the low-tech Wii would have an higher failure rate than the X-Box 360 or the PS3.

Altough I cannot read those articles anymore, everyone is pulling different figures out of their behi..., I mean, research papers and we should think "wow, so *this* is true".

Was it Churchill who said "The only statistics you can trust are those you falsified yourself!"?

BTW, LunchBox, thanks for taking your time to post the link it is just that the topics on the internet "news" sites get more and more silly and I'm getting fed up with it, so I had to let off some steam.

Cheers,

Mijo

 

[Scott_Arm]

That article from SquareTrade is suggesting 360 Jasper unit failure rate could be as low as 4%. Not that I actually trust these surveys. At least they are an after market warranty provider and they are polling their customers, not just random people on a website. They analyzed 16000 consoles total, so I'm guessing a small number of Jaspers. I'm not a statistician, by any means, but I'm guessing that sample is a little small.

 

[Acert93]

In theory a couple hundred random samples of a product should give a relatively small +/- range for the same product in similar LTD. I think one problem with these surveys is less the statistics but how "we" use them. Their statistics are completely valid... for their survey and how they use them for their own sampling purposes. "We" just need to remember how the statistic was sampled and by what criteria. This is one reason why statistics are so easily abused: they are extracted from their context.

It isn't that a web survey and a insurance company are invalid or lack insight, but we need to be conscious of factors that affect the end result. Sometimes these factors will make the statistics useless for discussions, others with various qualifications.

It is interesting what numbers generate tension. e.g. The "50% of users don't run HD" for the 360. I believe that was a sampling from one studio (Epic) for one game (Gears 2?). And another factor is presumably these stats are only valid for online users. One could make all sorts of arguements (e.g. online users will frequently have nicer displays... and assumption, but plausible) that "disqualify" the statistics, but in the end in its context of how the numbers were culled it does give some useful generalities.

Per the above, the 10-12% defect rate seems "reasonable" for the PS3/360 in terms of high end electronics for a time span (reasonable with regard to reality, not consumer expectation) although the 10% appears a lot higher than I expected for the PS3 based on the rhetoric of reliability. The 360 numbers appear a bit more inline with the people I know (much lower than the 54% recently bantered around) but that is anecdotal but fits more the picture I have personally seen.

What would be MORE interesting to me is how many of these units are salvagable and with what sort of expected life after repair. Are these terminal issues or easily fixed with a new lease on life?

Wii is not surprising as the GCN was surprisingly resiliant as well. Must have been the lunch box handle

 

[obonicus]

That article from SquareTrade is suggesting 360 Jasper unit failure rate could be as low as 4%. Not that I actually trust these surveys. At least they are an after market warranty provider and they are polling their customers, not just random people on a website. They analyzed 16000 consoles total, so I'm guessing a small number of Jaspers. I'm not a statistician, by any means, but I'm guessing that sample is a little small.

I'm just curious as to how representative their customer-base is, though I don't see any real reason for people who buy after-market warranties not to be representative of the broader population. I would like to know how many people actually buy after-market warranties for the 360 as opposed to the Wii or PS3, but only as a factoid.

 

[DrJay24]

That article from SquareTrade is suggesting 360 Jasper unit failure rate could be as low as 4%.

The latest revisions always have the lowest failure rate simply because not enough time has passed to fail.

 

[patsu]

These guys use the stats to price their warranty. It's a critical part of their P&L. I assume they will go through enough trouble to quantify their market as accurately as possible (and only for their purposes).

However from forumites' perspectives, it's an endless argument. e.g., Regarding the Jasper stats, one can also argue that the latter Sony models may be better, and less used, etc. but all these comparisons are besides the point.

You spend your own money. You cover your own risk. Our spending behaviour will train/tell the vendors our collective expectation. So please don't drag it down further than what it is today.

 

[fallguy]

The Wii also gets played less. So a big "no duh".

 

[RobertR1]

Here is the red ring graph:

 

[habbe]

So this graph only counts console that failed in the first year of it's lifetime ?.

 

[Scott_Arm]

So this graph only counts console that failed in the first year of it's lifetime ?.

Looks like. Maybe the logic is that if year 1 reliability improves, overall reliability improves as well. Doesn't really put a number on lifetime then.

 

[RancidLunchmeat]

The latest revisions always have the lowest failure rate simply because not enough time has passed to fail.

Exactly.

Everybody said that the RROD problem was fixed with the Falcon chipset, and I can tell you that it wasn't.

It was just a matter of the Falcons not being on the market as long. As that graph seems to indicate, the Falcons had just a big of a problem or even bigger than the two earlier revisions.

 

[dobwal]

Exactly.

Everybody said that the RROD problem was fixed with the Falcon chipset, and I can tell you that it wasn't.

It was just a matter of the Falcons not being on the market as long. As that graph seems to indicate, the Falcons had just a big of a problem or even bigger than the two earlier revisions.

The graph seems to indicate that the late model Xenons, the first batch of Falcons and the batch of Falcons released during Q3 08 were more reliable than the batch of Falcons released during Q2 2008. Basically it seems MS shipped a bad batch of Falcons during the second quarter 08.

Each data point represents the percentage of 1st year RROD failures, so data has been normalized.

 

[Neb]

The question is how much time does the console get used by each console owner category as this will influence the longetivity of X console hardware.

 

[djskribbles]

Also, who did they survey? When I talk to a lot of gamers, the Wii is used the least by far. And Wii owners are generally casual gamers who spend a lot less hours playing video games. I'm assuming the PS3 is used a lot because it can play movies, games and it can do Folding. The 360 probably gets the most gaming hours out of the 3.

 

[dobwal]

Also, who did they survey? When I talk to a lot of gamers, the Wii is used the least by far. And Wii owners are generally casual gamers who spend a lot less hours playing video games. I'm assuming the PS3 is used a lot because it can play movies, games and it can do Folding. The 360 probably gets the most gaming hours out of the 3.

Square Trade is a warranty provider. They basing their study on a randomized sampling of their own customer base. I guess they are looking at the number of warranties sold, time of warranties sales, claims, malfunctions associated with those claims as well as surveys of the customer base for things like usage.

 

[deepbrown]

Square Trade is a warranty provider. They basing their study on a randomized sampling of their own customer base. I guess they are looking at the number of warranties sold, time of warranties sales, claims, malfunctions associated with those claims as well as surveys of the customer base for things like usage.

Which is good that they included some caveats in their research:

"As for the Xbox 360's fabled RRoD failure rate, there are some caveats to add. Since Microsoft extended their warranty to three years for those who suffered from this problem, SquareTrade found that owners were much more likely to report the problem straight to the manufacturer.

In a survey taken by SquareTrade, they discovered that over half of their customers who experienced RRoD reported their problem to Microsoft, bypassing SquareTrade completely. This could thus put the Xbox 360 failure rate as high as 35 per cent. GameInformer recently carried out a survey, which resulted in a 54.2 per cent failure rate. "

http://www.gamezine.co.uk/news/formats/xbox360/xbox-360-s-failure-rate-9-times-higher-than-wii-s-$1324062.htm

 

[Rolf N]

Exactly.

Everybody said that the RROD problem was fixed with the Falcon chipset, and I can tell you that it wasn't.

It was wishful thinking all along. Falcon didn't address GPU cooling at all and neither did it reduce GPU heat (same manufacturing process). It was purely a cost reduction. There was no rational basis to expect any reliability improvements.

 

[dobwal]

Which is good that they included some caveats in their research:

"As for the Xbox 360's fabled RRoD failure rate, there are some caveats to add. Since Microsoft extended their warranty to three years for those who suffered from this problem, SquareTrade found that owners were much more likely to report the problem straight to the manufacturer.

In a survey taken by SquareTrade, they discovered that over half of their customers who experienced RRoD reported their problem to Microsoft, bypassing SquareTrade completely. This could thus put the Xbox 360 failure rate as high as 35 per cent. GameInformer recently carried out a survey, which resulted in a 54.2 per cent failure rate. "

http://www.gamezine.co.uk/news/formats/xbox360/xbox-360-s-failure-rate-9-times-higher-than-wii-s-$1324062.htm

This particular statement is missing from the above quote.

"Email survey respondents tend to be a self-selecting group, so the data should be used directionally rather than definitively, particularly because we did not survey PS3 and Wii owners with the same question."

 

[zed]

MS rep

"While the majority of Xbox 360 owners continue to have a great experience with their console, we are aware that a very small percentage of our customers have reported issues," the company said.

Surely 23.7%->~35% is not 'a very small percentage'
I wonder how this would stand up in a court of law.