XBox 360 News
Xbox 360 failure rates at 16.4 percent
By Stevie Smith
Feb 14, 2008, 15:30 GMT

According to a sample hardware assessment carried out by electronics warranty firm SquareTrade, the reliability woes plaguing Microsoft’s Xbox 360 console remain severe when compared to failure rates connected to market rivals.

Moreover, game site 1UP has today reported that in its appraisal of 1000 sample Xbox 360 consoles, SquareTrade discovered a failure rate of 16.4 percent, which is considerably worse than the 3 percent returned from similar sample tests run on the PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Wii.

SquareTrade’s breakdown (excuse the pun) of its sample assessment revealed that approximately 60 percent of failures were related to the infamous Red Rings of Death (RRoD), and that most hardware reliability errors were caused in relation to the console’s motherboard.

While 16.4 percent is already a sizeable problem for Microsoft to tackle, SquareTrade offers that overheating issues often cited by users when struck by Xbox 360 failure could lead to that initial figure climbing yet further.

“It is reasonable to believe these failure rates will increase over time,” outlined SquareTrade CEO Steve Abernethy, “since the Xbox 360 failure issues tend to increase with prolonged use where overheating appears the main culprit.”

Despite the appearance of such a worrying statistic, SquareTrade’s sample test over 1000 units is a far cry from the more than 17 million Xbox 360s that have been bought worldwide since it launched at the end of 2005.

And Microsoft is, of course, standing by its product.

“The majority of Xbox 360 owners have had a great experience with their console,” a spokesperson commented to GamesIndustry.biz, while also reiterating that the American software giant “do not disclose internal hardware repair data and we do not comment on speculation.”