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[rehunk88]

ya nothing will happend its just bad luck if something like that happends to your consol.

[Bianca]

I have to agree that there's no reason not to buy a 360 just because of this problem (and very fixable problem at that). Every console has risks. And, honestly, I'm paranoid about my Wii as well, just because I hate the idea of all my memory being saved to a hard drive (which is why I constantly backup my memory onto a SD card).

The thing is, if people weren't talking about it so much, I doubt it would seem as "scary" as it does now. I've known about the RROD for as long as it became a problem, but only after I actually bought my Xbox and everyone and their mom seemed to be warning me about it did I start to become weary. Not only did the guy at GameStop give me a long speech about it like I was stupid, but every time I told someone I finally bought the 360, they'd be like, "Great! ... I just hope it doesn't Red Ring you like mine did." I've heard this so much that their scare tactic definitely (and unfortunately) worked on me, but in reality, after I push away what everyone has said, I doubt I'll ever actually face the problem. It's not like every 360 in existence has had the RROD.

[Alexia_Ashford]

Couldn't agree with you more DeadPan. I heard a lot about it before I bought mine too and initially was weary, but had no problems since.

[ThWorldGreatest]

yea my launch 360 died on me in last march , when it happened i was laughing and saying "haha yeah right red rings of death!! hide your children!" but then after turning it off a couple of times with it still giving the RRoD i realized it was dead , i bought an Elite in april and has been working good since then.

[Alexia_Ashford]

How come you didn't send it back for a free repair?

[missvalentine]

my friend has had his 360 for about 3 years now, and he hasn't had any problems with it, he said it went red once but he turned it of and it was fine afterwards, and i played all through gears in one night and it didn't overheat, so im sure my brothers will be fine.

but im stil nervous about it RRoDing though, im not sure if my brother got it preowned or not.

[News Bot]

4.

I own 3 now, and none of them have died... yet.

[Alexia_Ashford]

Is overheating a common problem as well then? Never really heard of that one before. I've left my 360 on all day and into the night, downloading things. Must have had it on for 10/12 hours at a time before, never overheated on me.

[Carnivol]

Since there was a wall of text here I don't feel like reading through right now, I'll just point out something fun:


Have anyone noticed this little thing:
People who've had one system RRoD and have had another RRoD... especially in media or when you hear about a "friend of a friend," have somehow had multiple RRoDs... Now... don't you think that sounds a bit fishy in terms of how some people have had their systems since launch and haven't even had a single problem?

Oh, it sure is fishy. And I'm not saying these people haven't had their 12th 360 in for repair, they probably have, but this is where you should've seen a pattern ages ago (at about nr.3-4-ish).
It's not the console that is the problem anymore, it's the consumer. The consumer is most likely to somehow blame for these absurd numbers of RRoDs. Maybe the consumer has got a shitty electricity setup at his/her home? Maybe he's using the 360 as a hairdryer? Maybe the consumer finds it funny how the 360 has this little wooooap startup tune and keeps turning it on and off again thirty times per minute? Maybe he's got it standing on a hairy rug in direct sunlight in the middle of the desert?

I dunno, but I've always found it somewhat suspicious when I always see it's an isolated group of people that experience multiple-RRoD's. I've not had any local friends gone through a system repair. But some of the people I talk to online have. Same goes for some of the people I've worked with and I've also seen a couple of systems kick the bucket in some of the offices I've worked in.


And with the whole RRoD thing this generation, let's not forget the PSX and PS2 and their dreadful laser lens quality. During the lifetime of the PSX, I went through 3 full system upgrades (the last one which I've myself first been re-calibrating the laser on to then just replace the entire laserhub on) because of this and I've gone through 3 PS2s (one of which I did a laser swap on). Sony even lost a class action lawsuit 'cause of their PS2 failures (DVD roms not reading discs, reading slow as hell, audio/Video constantly desynchronizing in DVD movies, dual layer discs not being readable and so on). Then you have the PS3s that suddenly stop working, overheat and/or the ones that just stop reading discs out of nowhere.
How about the noise of the Dreamcast? How those actually have a nice major flaw with their internal memory thingy where a battery (or something) will leak or bend and make a nice connection where it's not supposed to be, resulting in a system constantly (or randomly) rebooting? Or the original Xbox and how it could make even more noise than the Dreamcast if it really felt like doing so (nothing beats an upset and possibly dying fan on the Xbox).

Every single console generation has had their ghosts in the closet, but some might not remember the older ones, either because they weren't around back then, doesn't have any memories or experience with it, didn't have the online connectivity to see how it wasn't a widespread issue or whatever...

[Alexia_Ashford]

I've had a lot more problems with the PS2 than with my 360. The only issue I had with the 360 was Microsoft being dicks (me losing my debit card and getting a new one, but had a spat where I didn't play XBL for 2 months and they decide to disconnect my user ID on silver as well because they can't take payment, even though I never agreed to a monthly contract). Even when I tried to update my payment details it didn't work, because it wouldn't let me into XBL at all. Never had any technical problems.

With my PS2, I remember when I was younger trying to play a game (this was back when the PS2 was my main console), and I just sat there for ages and got "Error reading disc". Tried another game, got the same problem. Turns out it was the laser. I still can get it from time to time now.

Like Carn says, when people get the RROD, a lot of the time they'll get it again. A lot of it can be down to the user when they're on their fifth 360, and you get another person who's still on their first, and they have the same chip. Something has to be wrong there. It can't be an isolated case if one person has had 5+ 360s and managed to break each one.

[Member_of_STARS]

There is something wrong. Its called "the lowest bidder". When you design and manufacture an electrical appliance, you have to consider pretty much everything from dust to sunlight. Its called quality. Ill give you an example you feel more comfortable with- Your Sony Vaio vs Hewlett-Packards Pavilion series. Why is that one is hailed as one of the best midrange to brand laptops and the other one is constantly taken back to service and shops because of its motherboard cooking up? You dont believe in some machines just being technical fvck-ups? They are there, and youd think that some people were smart enough to not to put an intake ventilator right next to the outtake vent, on the bottom of the laptop? So instead of sucking in cool air, the vents suck up hot air that just came out (epic lulz????).

So poor manufacturing process, second grade material, all lead to the inevitable result of machine failure.

I should point out that its the inconsistency itsself that is proof of poor quality. Something is wrong in the process. This isnt software, you cant put all the blame on the user, even though in a lot of cases, thats probably whats to blame.

Microshaft screwed up, but I tip my hat on the return process.

[The Dude]

Owned 3 Xbox's, 2 fell to the DVD drive errors but we got one repaired, and the other I haven't taken out the box yet as its meant to be a christmas present..

[TheSelfishGene]

The Xbox 360 has a higher failure rate then most consumer electronic items.
That seems to be a fact. Independant reports suggest it was as high as a 30% failure rate. Microsoft haven't released a figure, and I think they would be transparent about the issue if there was nothing to hide...

For the sake of the argument, let's call it 1 in 3 (33%).

So I buy a 360, and I get the dud, and it dies. I'm sent a replacement. What's the chances of that breaking? The product of the independant probabilities. So 1/9.

Another way to word it, is that a third of all people whose Xbox's fail will have at least one more fail.

And our rate of 2x failure for total proportion of 360 buyers is 1/9, so about 10%.
Most consumer electronic items have a failure rate of up to 5% (from what I've read), so we're still twice that.

3 failures? 1/27. So this is low, but 1/20 (5%) is what most products peak at. So it's not that far below acceptable.

I think with such a popular product, that there will be people who get very unlucky and get 5 or 6 consoles die on them. But with enough trails, the improbable becomes inevitable. The internet only exacerbates this issue.

I DON'T think the owners could be that much of a cause. There is a reason they are on their first xbox, and it's because it hasn't died. Whereas someone who has gone through 6 only stops at 7 because 6 have died.
Give them both 7 each, and then we can compare if the cause is the owner's set up or behaviour, or an inherrant manufacturing fault.
But then we get small sample bias. The only way to really test it is to give them as many machines as possible, and then test. Of course this is ridiculous, but that's why there are only estimates on the error rate.

The only useful data is how many machines Microsoft get returned as broken, and as far as I know, they have't released that data, which seems awfully suspicious to me.

[Carnivol]

Well, when I had one of my systems in, I spoke with the guy who handled the pick up and he said there were "a lot of them these days." The funny thing to note is the "these days" part, 'cause as we continued talking for a few mins, it turned out that there hadn't been that many in my area in general up until recently, when suddenly most of the first generation systems started crapping out.

As for production quality, it surely aint the best on the 360 and also rather limited on the PS3, thanks to early adoption of a somewhat incomplete format standard (Basically mirroring the issues of mid and late 90s DVD adopters). Anyway, you'll find lots of other common consumer electronics that are having huge issues if put through some of the same conditions a lot of people put their gaming consoles through. Basically, it falls down to a lot of consumer stupidity.

The problem is that the 360 is cheap enough to be treated like crap. So when you treat it like crap it'll crap out on you. It doesn't apply to every single scenario, but I'm pretty sure it applies to the majority.

[TheSelfishGene]

What is everyone's opinion on the "XBOX 360 Intercooler". It is an attachment that snaps on to the back of the 360. I provides an additional 3 cooling fans that power on whenever the console is running, and the switch on the fans is in the on position.

The fact that there is a market for such a product just SCREAMS to me that something is wrong with the design of the machines.
On principle I'd never use one. If I purchase something I'd expect it to work without 3rd party hardware to make sure it does.

Check that using one doesn't void the warranty too. I know that sort of thing has all sorts of disclaimers saying they aren't liable for damage done. I think I remember reading once that a certain brand of cooling unit leeched too much power out of the console through the USB port, which caused damage inside the console? I'm not sure, but if you were thinking about getting one, definately check this kind of thing out.