Microsoft executives will be a little red-faced today after an Xbox 360 on display at this year’s Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco contracted the infamous ‘Red Ring of Death’ disease.
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The console was set-up as a demo unit in an area dedicated to …
Yeah I've never got arguments over consoles either. I guarantee in 5 or 10 years time gamers will be quite happily playing 360, PS3 and Wii games on their PCs via emulators and judging each game they play on it's own merits regardless of which system it was originally designed for.
Myself, I got to my 3rd 360, before I sold it and bought a PS3. Out of the people I know with 360 (about 12 or so), I know of only 2 people who have yet to had it fail on them, and 4 of those people are on at least their second replacement, either scratching discs or RROD.
I think most peoples numbers will be similar. Whilst there will be lucky people around, who have never had it go wrong, the chances of having your 360 fail in the short term VASTLY outweigh the chances of it lasting.
I consider the 30% figure to be more accurate. I suspect the 16% Squaretrade stat is somehow flawed, or funded by Microsoft to hide the actual number.
If, as Microsoft claim, all initial 11 million consoles are indeed faulty, and will all fail prematurely, then the failed percentage number will continue to climb, until Microsoft can get 10 million WORKING consoles into the market to stop than number climbing. That is not going to happen over night.
30% today, 60% next year, and then it might slow and eventually start to drop.
...that 78% of statistics are made-up....like this one.
Never had a problem with my 360, not got a PS3 (yet) but last time I checked my 3 PS2sand their discs were absolute shite. Pot, kettle, Sony, Microsoft. End of discussion...
Highlander: Don't be ludicrous. The solution to a game of Russian Roulette going wrong is not "Switch back to playing Rez on the Dreamcast for a week or two while Microsoft put your brain back together". Yes, the failure rate is bad. Yes, I considered it worth the risk when it's the platform currently offering me the most things I want to play, at least until Proper GT5 comes out at some point in the future (I've never found the Prologue releases worth the money).
Chris: Current XBox 360s have one proper HDMI socket on the back, just like the PS3. There is a dongle to give HDMI output for people who have an old model without the port, but that's not the worry of people who don't already have one. Re: Processing power, there is one particular benchmark that gives the PS3 a peak rate of twice the 360, but in reality the difference is much smaller. The 360 also has a faster GPU than the PS3, so overall it's a wash - both machines have bottlenecks in different places. Finally, as mentioned to Highlander, what you actually should be saying is "If you want to play Halo 3 buy a 360, if you want to play GT5, sit on your hands until it comes out; there's bound to be a price cut in the meantime".
Anyone experienced RROD like me? Play Halo3 in 2-player,same screen/console mode for about 45mins == RROD. Sent 360 way for repair. Came back2 weeks later, instantly wanted to play Halo 3 again...30mins of 2-player, same screen/console == RROD Again...so...when it came back... Halo3 has stayed firmly in its box...no RROD yet!
Incidently, I stopped arguing about this sort of stuff when I left junior school so I suppose it;s a moot point, as stated above, you wnat sony exclusive games then get a PS3 you want Xbox exclusive games then buy a 360.
I chose the 360 for convenience (had an xbox before) and I've had 1 issue with it but other than that (touch wood) it;s been perfectly fine.
I'm also liking a lot of the games on it, oblivion, Bioshock, mass effect to name a few. If there were games on the PS 3 that i wanted I'd probably have held out for that.
So everyone, get out of the playground, people pick a console that suits their needs, if you don't agree with them then stop whining
"I don't know anyone who owns a Xbox360 that hasn't broken. Repairs are made with refurbished parts which can lead to multiple repairs (friend now on console number 5!) Overall good performance and I'm very happy with my experiences so far even though I've had to send it off for repairs."
I don't understand. If I spent several hundred pounds on some CE equipment which had these kinds of failures, I would be immensely annoyed. I would also demonstrate this by taking my money elsewhere. Especially when there's an alternative which is similarly priced, more feature complete, offers similar experiences and is bulletproof in comparison.
Otherwise, what's to say that the xbox 720 doesn't suffer the same problems? "Well, they put up with it last time... suckers"
I remember those arguments, but they were never about console reliability. It was mainly over which had the better games.
Nowdays it is over reliability, ever since microsoft joined the market mind you. At first it was the argument between PCs, Play Station, Nintendo, and Dreamcast, which ones had better games and the PC was always attacked for being unreliable cos it was prone ot crashing and viruses.
Now dreamcast flew and xbox landed.... somehow PCs dissapeared from the argument and it's all about XBox needing be to be replaced most of the time. Also we all know what happened to the PS2s and their powercord problem but to me.. that's just a power cord. Here xbox just seems to be the problem.
It's fun to blab about this. And funny when people can't take a sense of humor.
Point taken with some of that. But some of it is slightly misleading.
"Current XBox 360s have one proper HDMI socket on the back, just like the PS3." Well the PS3 has 2, but I'm just being pedantic there.
"Re: Processing power, there is one particular benchmark that gives the PS3 a peak rate of twice the 360"
Yes - Floating Point Operations Per Second. The XBOX 360 performs 1 teraflop, the PS3 performs at 2. This one I think is really quite misleading, because thats the only real true measure of processing power.
"The 360 also has a faster GPU than the PS3, so overall it's a wash"
This one, true, but as bit of a cheat on Microsofts part. A small area of the GPU which can access 10mb of special memory has a speed nearly 10 times that of the PS3. When accessing the other 512mb the speed is about 2/3's that of the PS3.
"both machines have bottlenecks in different places."
Yeah, thats true. I still think the PS3 has less of a bottleneck, but with current games not really stretching either of them, it's very hard to say.
"If you want to play Halo 3 buy a 360, if you want to play GT5, sit on your hands until it comes out; there's bound to be a price cut in the meantime"
Completely true. My mistake, I keep thinking GT5 is out. Yeah you can get prologue, but you don't get much for your money with those half games.
Mostly that was all fair, but some of it IS spin from Microsoft. Despite their terrible track record, I think some of the PS3 was underhyped. With the Bluray drive in, it really is a much better deal.
I am talking quite specifically about the statistical chances of failure. Of course the failure of your 360 is not lethal, unless of course it shorts out and causes a fire.... However that's not the point, the point is that 1 in 6 odds are not good odds. I remember having an SLA discussion years and years ago with someone who was trying to persuade me that 99.9% was sufficiently reliable for a mission critical network system. I sat there and asked which working day he thought we would like to lose due to system failure. Imagine if he'd tried to suggest to me that 84% was sufficient!
I used the Russian Roulette concept because it fits nicely due to the old 6 chamber revolver. You can't deny that it is a good fit to illustrate a point regarding 1 in 6 odds. And that is rather the point, isn't it? 1 in 6 Xboxes according to this report, 1 in 3 according to earlier reports and reported insider information from the Xbox team itself. Even just the 1 in 6 failure rate is ridiculous for any consumer product. I don't honestly know how you or anyone else can be so enamored with the 360 console that a 1 in 6 failure rate is deemed a price worth paying.
As for the Prologue version of GT5, agreed. I don't like 'prologue' games. They seem pointless to me when the real game is coming soon.
True, true. If I had a 1 in 6 chance of dying in a fatal car accident within the year I might strongly consider finding an alternate mode of transport (or simply staying at home). Granted, a 360 failure isn't anywhere near that serious but the point stands.
And I agree with most - "Prologue" versions are just pants. It's like having a woman tickle your balls only to say she won't go any further, for a while anyway.
Jeez I seem to be on it with the sexual metaphors today :)
... not what you want to see after getting home an excitedly plugging in your new toy!!!
[this was at start of Feb 08]
Still, took it back to PC World where it obligingly did it again… and I got a replacement. But, this makes me wonder about those people who have to play Halo3 for 45 min before getting the RROD. What do PC World do then? Do they make you play for 45 min in shop until destruction, or do they just believe you???
So far so GROJ on 360 II. [Green Ring Of Joy; first use - no hits on Google!] Still, not really pushed it heat wise yet as I am still playing the Boogie Bunnies two level demo!
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Microsoft executives will be a little red-faced today after an Xbox 360 on display at this year’s Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco contracted the infamous ‘Red Ring of Death’ disease. Can't see the video? Download Flash Player from Adobe.com The console was set-up as a demo unit in an area dedicated to …
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Thats not a red ring of death :P
Thats had just its powercord knocked. Theres no error message on screen.
I own two xbox 360s. One from launch and its never had a read ring of death but i have had to send it back twice now.
Once for a some weird fan probem and the other was the CD drive broke.
I'm going to get a ps3 as a Blu-ray player. There arn't really any games i want to play on it. Not yet anyway.
The 360 controller is sooooo much easier to use over a long period of time.
Media sharing on the PC to the 360 is terrible. It hardly ever works. I have to run the install everytime i restart the pc almost.
All it is, is a simple x-over lead from my pc to it. How can that go wrong. Microsoft cant tell me, but if i go on the forums loads of people get it.
This is even on a clean install of Win XP.
Hopefully the PS3 media sharing is better
RE: arguments over consoles
Yeah I've never got arguments over consoles either. I guarantee in 5 or 10 years time gamers will be quite happily playing 360, PS3 and Wii games on their PCs via emulators and judging each game they play on it's own merits regardless of which system it was originally designed for.
The 16% numbers are totally bogus.
Myself, I got to my 3rd 360, before I sold it and bought a PS3. Out of the people I know with 360 (about 12 or so), I know of only 2 people who have yet to had it fail on them, and 4 of those people are on at least their second replacement, either scratching discs or RROD.
I think most peoples numbers will be similar. Whilst there will be lucky people around, who have never had it go wrong, the chances of having your 360 fail in the short term VASTLY outweigh the chances of it lasting.
I consider the 30% figure to be more accurate. I suspect the 16% Squaretrade stat is somehow flawed, or funded by Microsoft to hide the actual number.
If, as Microsoft claim, all initial 11 million consoles are indeed faulty, and will all fail prematurely, then the failed percentage number will continue to climb, until Microsoft can get 10 million WORKING consoles into the market to stop than number climbing. That is not going to happen over night.
30% today, 60% next year, and then it might slow and eventually start to drop.
Don't forget...
...that 78% of statistics are made-up....like this one.
Never had a problem with my 360, not got a PS3 (yet) but last time I checked my 3 PS2sand their discs were absolute shite. Pot, kettle, Sony, Microsoft. End of discussion...
@various
Highlander: Don't be ludicrous. The solution to a game of Russian Roulette going wrong is not "Switch back to playing Rez on the Dreamcast for a week or two while Microsoft put your brain back together". Yes, the failure rate is bad. Yes, I considered it worth the risk when it's the platform currently offering me the most things I want to play, at least until Proper GT5 comes out at some point in the future (I've never found the Prologue releases worth the money).
Chris: Current XBox 360s have one proper HDMI socket on the back, just like the PS3. There is a dongle to give HDMI output for people who have an old model without the port, but that's not the worry of people who don't already have one. Re: Processing power, there is one particular benchmark that gives the PS3 a peak rate of twice the 360, but in reality the difference is much smaller. The 360 also has a faster GPU than the PS3, so overall it's a wash - both machines have bottlenecks in different places. Finally, as mentioned to Highlander, what you actually should be saying is "If you want to play Halo 3 buy a 360, if you want to play GT5, sit on your hands until it comes out; there's bound to be a price cut in the meantime".
RROD Twice! Halo3
Anyone experienced RROD like me? Play Halo3 in 2-player,same screen/console mode for about 45mins == RROD. Sent 360 way for repair. Came back2 weeks later, instantly wanted to play Halo 3 again...30mins of 2-player, same screen/console == RROD Again...so...when it came back... Halo3 has stayed firmly in its box...no RROD yet!
Console/computer arguments
Let me think here,
It started with:
Amstrad/Spectrum/Commodore
Then went to:
Amiga/Atari ST
Then we had
Master system/NES
Also:
Game Gear/Game Boy
And throw in some:
Mega Drive/SNES
Is there a pattern here?
Incidently, I stopped arguing about this sort of stuff when I left junior school so I suppose it;s a moot point, as stated above, you wnat sony exclusive games then get a PS3 you want Xbox exclusive games then buy a 360.
I chose the 360 for convenience (had an xbox before) and I've had 1 issue with it but other than that (touch wood) it;s been perfectly fine.
I'm also liking a lot of the games on it, oblivion, Bioshock, mass effect to name a few. If there were games on the PS 3 that i wanted I'd probably have held out for that.
So everyone, get out of the playground, people pick a console that suits their needs, if you don't agree with them then stop whining
Cheers
@MarmiteToast
"I don't know anyone who owns a Xbox360 that hasn't broken. Repairs are made with refurbished parts which can lead to multiple repairs (friend now on console number 5!) Overall good performance and I'm very happy with my experiences so far even though I've had to send it off for repairs."
I don't understand. If I spent several hundred pounds on some CE equipment which had these kinds of failures, I would be immensely annoyed. I would also demonstrate this by taking my money elsewhere. Especially when there's an alternative which is similarly priced, more feature complete, offers similar experiences and is bulletproof in comparison.
Otherwise, what's to say that the xbox 720 doesn't suffer the same problems? "Well, they put up with it last time... suckers"
Re: Console/computer arguments
I remember those arguments, but they were never about console reliability. It was mainly over which had the better games.
Nowdays it is over reliability, ever since microsoft joined the market mind you. At first it was the argument between PCs, Play Station, Nintendo, and Dreamcast, which ones had better games and the PC was always attacked for being unreliable cos it was prone ot crashing and viruses.
Now dreamcast flew and xbox landed.... somehow PCs dissapeared from the argument and it's all about XBox needing be to be replaced most of the time. Also we all know what happened to the PS2s and their powercord problem but to me.. that's just a power cord. Here xbox just seems to be the problem.
It's fun to blab about this. And funny when people can't take a sense of humor.
@Iain
Point taken with some of that. But some of it is slightly misleading.
"Current XBox 360s have one proper HDMI socket on the back, just like the PS3." Well the PS3 has 2, but I'm just being pedantic there.
"Re: Processing power, there is one particular benchmark that gives the PS3 a peak rate of twice the 360"
Yes - Floating Point Operations Per Second. The XBOX 360 performs 1 teraflop, the PS3 performs at 2. This one I think is really quite misleading, because thats the only real true measure of processing power.
"The 360 also has a faster GPU than the PS3, so overall it's a wash"
This one, true, but as bit of a cheat on Microsofts part. A small area of the GPU which can access 10mb of special memory has a speed nearly 10 times that of the PS3. When accessing the other 512mb the speed is about 2/3's that of the PS3.
"both machines have bottlenecks in different places."
Yeah, thats true. I still think the PS3 has less of a bottleneck, but with current games not really stretching either of them, it's very hard to say.
"If you want to play Halo 3 buy a 360, if you want to play GT5, sit on your hands until it comes out; there's bound to be a price cut in the meantime"
Completely true. My mistake, I keep thinking GT5 is out. Yeah you can get prologue, but you don't get much for your money with those half games.
Mostly that was all fair, but some of it IS spin from Microsoft. Despite their terrible track record, I think some of the PS3 was underhyped. With the Bluray drive in, it really is a much better deal.
@Iain
I am talking quite specifically about the statistical chances of failure. Of course the failure of your 360 is not lethal, unless of course it shorts out and causes a fire.... However that's not the point, the point is that 1 in 6 odds are not good odds. I remember having an SLA discussion years and years ago with someone who was trying to persuade me that 99.9% was sufficiently reliable for a mission critical network system. I sat there and asked which working day he thought we would like to lose due to system failure. Imagine if he'd tried to suggest to me that 84% was sufficient!
I used the Russian Roulette concept because it fits nicely due to the old 6 chamber revolver. You can't deny that it is a good fit to illustrate a point regarding 1 in 6 odds. And that is rather the point, isn't it? 1 in 6 Xboxes according to this report, 1 in 3 according to earlier reports and reported insider information from the Xbox team itself. Even just the 1 in 6 failure rate is ridiculous for any consumer product. I don't honestly know how you or anyone else can be so enamored with the 360 console that a 1 in 6 failure rate is deemed a price worth paying.
As for the Prologue version of GT5, agreed. I don't like 'prologue' games. They seem pointless to me when the real game is coming soon.
johny giles anyone?
i fixed my red ring of death with some cream from the chemist.. have to watch them hot curry's though...
@Highlander
True, true. If I had a 1 in 6 chance of dying in a fatal car accident within the year I might strongly consider finding an alternate mode of transport (or simply staying at home). Granted, a 360 failure isn't anywhere near that serious but the point stands.
And I agree with most - "Prologue" versions are just pants. It's like having a woman tickle your balls only to say she won't go any further, for a while anyway.
Jeez I seem to be on it with the sexual metaphors today :)
RROD on very first power-up, SOB!
... not what you want to see after getting home an excitedly plugging in your new toy!!!
[this was at start of Feb 08]
Still, took it back to PC World where it obligingly did it again… and I got a replacement. But, this makes me wonder about those people who have to play Halo3 for 45 min before getting the RROD. What do PC World do then? Do they make you play for 45 min in shop until destruction, or do they just believe you???
So far so GROJ on 360 II. [Green Ring Of Joy; first use - no hits on Google!] Still, not really pushed it heat wise yet as I am still playing the Boogie Bunnies two level demo!
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