Analyst: Xbox 360 Failures Caused by Cost-Cutting

[Junaid Alam]

Analyst: Xbox 360 Failures Caused by Cost-Cutting

The Xbox 360's infamous 'red ring of death' woes stemmed from Microsoft's attempt to cut corners, an analyst recently said.

"Microsoft wanted to avoid an ASIC vendor," Bryan Lewis, research vice president and chief analyst at Gartner, said during the Design Automation Conference in California.

Microsoft designed its own graphic chip and handed the specifications to the manufacturer directly, Lewis said. In trying to save itself some tens of millions of dollars, Microsoft ended up eating more than $1 billion in recalls, he added.

Lewis said that Microsoft ultimately had an outside ASIC vendor look at the problem and revise the design.

Microsoft has never provided a full explanation for the relatively high failure rates for the Xbox 360, but has denied that the problem stemmed from production issues.

Source: Ars Technica [http://www.eetimes.com/news/latest/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=51TYZYXYRWUZUQSNDLSCKHA?articleID=208403010]

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[Faeanor]

Microsoft used substandard hardware and that caused high failure rates? I'm shocked. Wait, no, I'm not.

 

[UpInSmoke]

$1 billion in recalls? Microsoft never issued a recall.

 

[thebobmaster_v1legacy]

Wow, the failures were due to producing cheap equipment. Gasp.

 

[Kukakkau]

okay ive heard of the red ring of death but never experienced it or any other problems. is it really that common?

 

[Anton P. Nym]

$1 billion in recalls? Microsoft never issued a recall.

I believe that is regarding the $1bn write-down Microsoft took on FY2007 against their RRoD repair/replace program.

-- Steve

 

[Cousin_IT]

Mines ring was orange rather than red. I feel somehow cheated :-D

 

[Ian Dorsch]

okay ive heard of the red ring of death but never experienced it or any other problems. is it really that common?

MS has made several revisions to the hardware over the last few years, so it's less common than it used to be. But yeah, it's extremely common.

An anecdote: when your 360 dies with a RROD, MS sends you a shipping box via UPS, a "coffin" in which to send your 360 to the repair center. My 360 died last summer just after the release of Bioshock, and when my coffin arrived, I had the following exchange with the UPS guy:

Him: "Xbox died, huh?"
Me: "Oh yeah. You see a lot of these?"
Him: "A lot. Mine died last week, but I took it back to Costco for a refund instead."

I packed up my dead 360 that day and took it to the one UPS store in the small town where I live.

Girl at the counter, glancing at box: "Xbox?"
Me: "Sadly, yes. I take it you guys have a lot of these come through."
Girl at counter: "Yeah, five or six a day."

Now this in mid 2007 before the new, cooler running hardware had hit the market in any kind of significant quantity, but still. In a town with a population of roughly 16,500 people, 5-6 dead 360s leaving town each day is a lot of dead 360s.

 

[UpInSmoke]

$1 billion in recalls? Microsoft never issued a recall.

I believe that is regarding the $1bn write-down Microsoft took on FY2007 against their RRoD repair/replace program.

-- Steve

True enough. It's still erroneous to say that microsoft issued a recall.

 

[fix-the-spade]

So Microsoft shipped a sub standard product, big surprise.

That machine ruined my Christmas 2005. Didn't buy one, I was in Curries selling the bloody things, our store got twenty, 20 sold on release day. By new year, 20 returned for warranty claims. 20 "You thieves, you've ruined Christmas"... arg.


Although in the little white box's defence. One of the crates they came in had had a, shall we say 'involved' transit. But that still left 10 that hadn't.

 

[UpInSmoke]

Is there any way that we will EVER know how high the failure rate for launch 360s was? I've heard several anecdotal stories like fix-the-spade's, and I think the failure rate might really have been up around 50%. There's just no way to know.

I know that mine failed. Go into a halo 3 match and ask everyone there if they've had rrod. It seems like almost everybody has gone through it.

 

[ingsoc]

When my 360 RRODed, I returned it to Sears for store credit which I applied towards a new lawnmower. The $400 I originally spent on the 360 is about to be used on a PS3.

 

[Skrapt]

Is there any way that we will EVER know how high the failure rate for launch 360s was? I've heard several anecdotal stories like fix-the-spade's, and I think the failure rate might really have been up around 50%. There's just no way to know.

I know that mine failed. Go into a halo 3 match and ask everyone there if they've had rrod. It seems like almost everybody has gone through it.

A lot of figures have been guessed ranged from 3-90% more reliable sources (such as the companies MS contracts to fix the xbox 360's) put the figure around 15-20% while other consoles (Wii, PS3 etc.) are around 3-5%. Looks like MS cut a lot of corners to get the price tag, though some people point towards using shoddy solder for components which means it could melt/break connections when heating up beyond a certain level, causing a RROD. Guess MS will never tell us the reason, though there may be many reasons as multiple motherboard refreshes have not fixed the problem, with another planned soon.

 

[fix-the-spade]

Unless all the retailers in a country show their total return rates. It's probably impossible to tell how many actually fail.

Especially given Microsoft's persistent 3-5percent claim.

 

[captainfuzzy]

okay ive heard of the red ring of death but never experienced it or any other problems. is it really that common?

MS has made several revisions to the hardware over the last few years, so it's less common than it used to be. But yeah, it's extremely common.

An anecdote: when your 360 dies with a RROD, MS sends you a shipping box via UPS, a "coffin" in which to send your 360 to the repair center. My 360 died last summer just after the release of Bioshock, and when my coffin arrived, I had the following exchange with the UPS guy:

Him: "Xbox died, huh?"
Me: "Oh yeah. You see a lot of these?"
Him: "A lot. Mine died last week, but I took it back to Costco for a refund instead."

I packed up my dead 360 that day and took it to the one UPS store in the small town where I live.

Girl at the counter, glancing at box: "Xbox?"
Me: "Sadly, yes. I take it you guys have a lot of these come through."
Girl at counter: "Yeah, five or six a day."

Now this in mid 2007 before the new, cooler running hardware had hit the market in any kind of significant quantity, but still. In a town with a population of roughly 16,500 people, 5-6 dead 360s leaving town each day is a lot of dead 360s.

Ok, I knew it was pretty bad, but wow. I'm really glad I never bought one.

 

[Knight Templar]

The fan for the 360 is at the back, all the heat is up front with the disk.


Therefore the fan gets over worked (and it wasn't too good at the start) and the disks get worped by heat.

 

[stompy]

The fan for the 360 is at the back, all the heat is up front with the disk.

Therefore the fan gets over worked (and it wasn't too good at the start) and the disks get worped by heat.

Yeh, I remember it was something along the lines of this. Anyways, he just told us what we all knew, so there's no real point. Though, it's not really a concern anymore, with Microsoft using the better motherboards now.

 

[Eagle Est1986]

Wow, that guy's pratically a genius. I never would have guessed that sub-par hardware was the cause for all the hardware problems.....

 

[Skrapt]

Wow, that guy's pratically a genius. I never would have guessed that sub-par hardware was the cause for all the hardware problems.....

Well you'd guess they would have figured it out by now with the motherboard refreshes, however people still get the problems so they could still be cutting corners just to be cheaper then a PS3