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: EETimes.com, via Ars Technica

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kukakkau:
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.

Anton P. Nym:

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Ian Dorsch:

Kukakkau:
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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.....

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

Between my cousins and I we have 5 xbox 360s. Three are early models, mine is a newish one and the other is a new elite. 3 have RRoD, the 2 early ones and mine. Yes this is a pain in the anus but its being repaired for free. Still thats one hell of a statistic 3/5 died and one of the survivers is an elite, so I'm unsure whether they have solved the problem for these. I still prefer it to the other consoles, though.

you know, I'm not suprised by that, but I am suprised that the 360 software is pretty stable, why aren't PCs like that?

I don't have a 360, but most of my friends have one; so far 2 have RRODed, and all but one have scratched at least on disk....ouch, makes me glad I bought a ps3... oh wait, that died a couple of months ago XD, but I got it replaced for free recently.

Oh, and I think the 360's failiure rate is about 33% but I'm probably wrong

stop Bsing Microsoft

stop Bsing Microsoft

stop Bsing Microsoft

The RROD issue is not entirely surprising as MS rushed the 360 into production once they knew the potential of the PS3. Who can blame them, had the PS3 hit the market first, the 360 may have already gone the way of the Saturn and Dreamcast. When you take shortcuts, bad things are bound to happen, but at least they got off to a good start which saves this generation for them.

Can MS get sued for that?

laikenf:
Can MS get sued for that?

Several class actions have already been launched. They were pretty shaky at first but now that this is becoming public knowledge, it could heat up a bit.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20061208-8381.html

Either way, those things take years upon years to march through.

once again this only teaches microsoft no to release C*** to the public, the 360 is good, but not when its in a coffin, im starting to think this may happen to vista... it sure looks like its heading down the same road as the x-box.

And in other news, the sky is blue and grass is green.

An ASIC? If Microsoft was replacing 4 or 5 chips with a single big workhorse (which is likely), then no wonder the thing had heating problems. I've read other articles on this (from other engineering-minded people), and it seems the rush to beat the PS3 was just as much at fault, if not more so, than cost-cutting.

But this is all water under the bridge.

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

Collector!?
I put an option on it!
Gimme your price dude.

More seriously, isn't there a SKU variant which is a bit more reliable?
What about the Elite? I mean, besides the cookie box sized power hog...

Arbre:
More seriously, isn't there a SKU variant which is a bit more reliable?
What about the Elite? I mean, besides the cookie box sized power hog...

I don't think there's an SKU you can look for, but if I were looking for a 360 these days I'd keep an eye on the build date. More recent builds are more likely to have the smaller die chips (less heat) and the frame update... and the HDMI output, a selling point for some.

(I'm fighting down the temptation to buy an Elite this summer to replace my Pro with it's far-too-full hard drive, and instead just bite the bullet and get the 120GB drive kit. But that HDMI port is tempting.)

-- Steve

Wow....
I dont usally say this but, FAIL!