The Real Statistics for the Red Ring of Death?
May 24, 2007 34 Comments
If you have an Xbox 360 or have researched buying an Xbox 360, you are certainly familiar with the infamous phrase “Red Ring of Death“. It brings instant panic to the hearts of gamers everywhere because it means dealing with the dreaded Xbox Support Center, possibly paying for a repair center to fix it, and having your console be unavailable for several days.
Microsoft claims their 360 console failure rate is 4%–5%. How accurate does that sound to you? I personally have had either four or five 360s break on me. I finally lost count because it became such a regular occurrence. I know several people, probably more than not, who have had the same experience. Not only one console breaking but multiple.
During a recent interview on April 19th, 2007 Peter Moore, corporate vice president of the Interactive Entertainment Business in the Entertainment and Devices Division of Microsoft, dodged a question in regards to this subject matter.
From The Mercury News :
Q (from reader): I’d like a straight answer on issues with hardware quality (have suffered through 2 defective 360’s in a 7 month span and am about to call it quits with this system). MS claims an ‘acceptable’ 3% failure rate but I imagine the actual number to be much higher — perhaps 2x or 3x more?
A: I can’t comment on failure rates, because it’s just not something – it’s a moving target. What this consumer should worry about is the way that we’ve treated him. Y’know, things break, and if we’ve treated him well and fixed his problem, that’s something that we’re focused on right now. I’m not going to comment on individual failure rates because I’m shipping in 36 countries and it’s a complex business.
The 360 gamer did their own survey to try to assess how many gamers have actually received the Red Ring of Death. They admit their findings may be skewed towards the negative, but I still find their results more accurate than the 4 – 5%. What exactly were their findings? 2,315 responses out of 3,780 submissions complained they have had at least one console break on them. That is a whopping 61% failure rate.
I believe the truth is somewhere between the 61% and the 4%-5% failure rate. From my own personal experience between myself and people I know, I would lean towards the higher end. My own rough guess would hover somewhere around 50%.
If you are reading this blog and own/owned a 360, please take a moment to share if you have had any of them die on you. Let’s do our own little informal survey and see what our results are.
I haven’t purchased one yet. One of the reasons that I’ve waited as long as I have was that I was hoping they would solve their obvious hardware issues. They repeatedly talked about supposed hardware improvements that would reduce the rate of failure. They haven’t. Eventually I will bite the bullet and get one, because I need one to play Halo 3. Frankly if it wasn’t for some of the software available, I wouldn’t even be looking at a 360. Out of the couple of hundred 360 owners I know, probably half have had issues with theirs at one time or another. Many of them multiple times over.
I think that the fact that we’re dealing with the Xbox 360 distracts us from the fact that in the end we’re dealing with Microsoft. They’ve demonstrated in the past that they will be courteous, even downright humble until they have an advantage in the marketplace. However when they hold the advantage, they are hardly a consumers dream. Their Xbox Live customer service has spiralled downhill and while it’s nice that they fix or replace the systems that are broken, that’s no more than the minimum I expect of a major company like MS.
Moore’s comment that you quoted is no different from the arrogance that is shown by Sony (lately) or Nintendo (back around the early n64 days) executives on a regular basis, and that’s a dangerous thing. I think in the long run their cavalier attitude towards console failure will hurt MS. Maybe not soon, but over the life of the 360 and beyond it will impact them.
I just hope they thank their lucky stars that companies like Bungie and Bioware make games that I want to play.
I bought a console at launch day and still have it. Never received the red rings once (crosses fingers). I guess I’m just one of the lucky ones! :)
The two worst customer service centers I’ve ever dealt with are Sprint (especially since merging with Nextel) and XBL.
A normal call typically goes like this:
*Automated voice* THANKS FOR CALLING XBOX LIVE CUSTOMER SUPPORT….YOUR CALL MAY BE MONITORED OR RECORDED FOR QUALITY ASSURANCE… HEY, WE’RE CURRENTLY GETTING A LOT OF CALLS SO YOU MAY EXPERIENCE A LONGER THAN NORMAL WAIT TIME….MY NAME IS MAX AND THERE ARE SEVERAL THINGS I CAN HELP YOU WITH….YOU CAN SAY THINGS LIKE X BOX CONSOLE… XBOX LIVE….BILLING….
me: xbox live
AV: OK WHICH SYSTEM ARE YOU CALLING ABOUT?…ORIGINAL XBOX OR XBOX 360?
me: 360
AV: THERE ARE SEVERAL THINGS I CAN HELP YOU WITH…YOU CAN SAY THINGS LIKE THE IP CONFIRM TEST IS FAILING OR I WANT TO MIGRATE LIVE TO MY 360…TO HEAR EVERYTHING I UNDERSTAND JUSTSAY GIMMIE THE LIST
me: representative
AV: OK, LET ME SEE IF I CAN FIND SOMEONE TO HELP YOU….THE AGENT WILL BE ABLE TO HELP YOU FASTER IF YOU HAVE YOUR GAMERTAG READY….
….
….
FEMALE AUTOMATED VOICE: WE’RE UNABLE TO PROCESS YOUR CALL AT THIS TIME…PLEASE CALL BACK AT ANOTHER TIME…~~~CLICK~~~
and they hang up on you. Unreal, a customer support automated voice that hangs up on you. So I call back 1 or 2 more times and go through all of that a couple more times until at actually puts me on hold to talk to someone. Then I hold for about 15-20 minutes on average. A HA! Someone comes on the line…
me: hello?
CSR: (Heavy Accent) Hello, my name is Sam, may I have your name please?
me: my name is *. Sam, is that short for anything?
CSR: Samaprakashradhakrishnan…
me: so…Sam, what else do you need from me to look up my account
SAM: What’s your last name? Your phone number? Your address? Your gamertag? The last four digits on the card you used to open the account?
me: (I give him all of the info he asks for)
SAM: Are you the person who holds the card on the account?
me: yes…and I have a referance number it’s 103-413-5675
SAM: Ok I’m going to place you on hold while I look up this account…(puts me on hold for 5-6 minutes)
SAM: Mr. *?
me: yes?
SAM: Thank you for holding, I looked up your account here and it’s looks like you had some trouble changing your gamertag?
me; Yes, I paid the microsoft points and tried to change my name but it broke my account…it’s been broken for over a month now.
SAM: Oh, I understand…Have you tried recovering the account?
me: yes, it should be in the notes there that I’ve tried everything over the last five or six weeks that you you have suggested to me adn have gotten the same results
SAM: Oh, I understand…I’m sorry…It shows here that this problem has been elevated to microsoft and they’re going to give you a call. Is there anything else I can help you with?
me: when?
SAM: When what?
me: when will microsoft call me
SAM: They usually call within 1 to 2 weeks.
me: it’s been over 5 weeks…
SAM: Oh, I understand, well they’ll call you. Is there anything else I can help you with?
me: what if they don’t call?
SAM: They’ll call
me: but they haven’t…
SAM: Oh, I understand, well this issue has been elevated to microsoft so there is nothing else I can do to help you…Is there anything else I can do to help you?
me: You guys already charged me for this account, and now it doesn’t work…I feel like I’m being ripped off paying for something that doesn’t work…
SAM: Oh, I understand…hold on while I get my supervisor… (another 4-5 minutes on hold)
Sam: Mr *?
me: yes?
SAM: I have my supervisor on the line, he’ll be able to help you, have a nice day…
Supervisor: Mr. *?
me: yes?
SV: My name is John, Sam told me that you’re having some trouble changing your gamertag?
me: yes, I tried to change it and it broke my account…that was over a month ago and I haven’t heard from you guys…meanwhile you have my money and I can’t play halo.
John: Oh, I understand. Have you tried recovering your gamertag?
me: (at this point I’m 45 minutes or an hour into the call and have gritted my teeth down to smmoth) yes, I tried that and everything else that you told me to try.
John: Well it shows here that this isue has been elevated to microsoft and they’re going to call you. Is there anything else I can help you with?
me: when will microsoft call me?
John: It takes about 1 to 2 weeks. Is there anything else I can help you with?
me: it’s been five weeks and no one has called me.
John; Oh, I understand. Well it’s out of our hands now, we can’t do anything further
me: can I have the name of who can?
John: No.
me: can I have the number of the person it was elevated to?
John: No.
me: can I talk to your boss?
John: no. Is there anything else I can help you with?
me: what do I do if no one from microsoft calls me?
John: They’ll call you
me: when.
John: It usually takes a week ar two.
me: it’s been five weeks, over a month, and no one has helped me or called me..
John: Oh, I understand…Is there anything else I can do for you?
me: Give me a working account, like I paid for?
John: ~~~CLICK~~~.
That is acually how it works.
:O you’re like me, you browse through the archives as far back as May 2007. But I usually don’t comment. No-one hears it but other archive-searchers.
I hear it! You guys are the inspiration behind the Zombie feature on the sidebar I started today. :)
That is actually why I got here. That little sidebar widget. Thanks for adding it. And I’m glad I inspired it :D
Dude, just reading that exchange made my blood pressure go up. Did the supervisor really hang up on you? Seriously? If so, that is unbelievable.
More times than I care to recall…ok maybe about 10 times I’ve been hung up on, half of that by supervisors, 20 I’ve hung up on hold after an hour or so or from pure frustration from getting no help or trying to communicate my issue to someone with a rudimentary grasp of english at best, or I’ve been put on hold for fifteen minutes…and then hung up on.
My heart is like a gas boiler at this point.
That is something that upsets me in general with Peter Moore’s comment. He says the important thing is that problems and broken things are getting taken care of when that is not the case. I hear so many horror stories about working with their customer service. So disappointing. I don’t know how you are sane right now.
Wow. That was awesomely scripted.
I feel for you, buddy. The odd thing is that somewhere your tag is working because it shows it was in the dashboard every now and then.
I’m just hoping that my Elite makes it all the way….
The ethernet port on my 360 died, one call to xbox support, we went through the normal troubleshooting and stuff. The CSR was patient and genuinely concerned with trying to make it right.
Ended up they had to send out a coffin. I wish I got my same box back though. Got a refurb and have had no trouble since. I am crossing my fingers though. Keeping it well ventilated and plan on taking some canned air to the fan soon.
I had quite a nice time with M$ about my LIVE account, also. It took me about 1 or 2 weeksd to get it resolved, and it wasn’t by them. It was by Bank of America.
I had a 3 month trial offer, and the day after it expired, I called to cancel, hoping they would just do it, but I got charged for the year. So I asked if they could refund the $54, but he said he couldn’t, so I became an Xbox LIVE member. 3 months later, I get charged another $54. Ummm, no. So I called in and said gimme my money back. Why did you even charge me again? Well, they thought that it was my anniversary of signing up or something.(???) So they issued a refund and gave me an extra few months for free. Cool! But instead of a refund, I got charged….again. Yep, another $54. So I called and spoke to a supervisor and said basicaly that they were a bunch of yahoos who can’t run a business or even type in a simple refund on the computer. She said that their end showed a refund was issued. I emphatically responded that may be so in La-La land, but here in the real world, their refund translated into another charge. Then she says, “Well, if I issue another refund, the system will put it in as another charge, so I can’t do anything. Just wait and see if it corrects itself.” Yeah, right.
So I called my bank and gave then all the info. They issued me a new debit card so Dough Boy Gates wouldn’t feel free to keep charging me, then put the money back in my account, and said they would “Investigate the matter”. I felt really good having a behemoth like the inventor of the Visa card fighting for me. I havn’t heard from M$ since. Jerks.
Needless to say, I will be purchasing a prepaid subscription.
Mine is up for repair. It won’t play most discs (even new from the box), and the disks it will play take almost 1/2 an hour of dedicated time to get to work.
I love the games I have for the 360, love the controller, arcade, and the possibilities… but $400 for something that broke in 5 months… utter B.S. No disrespect meant, mam.
We are still in the 1-2 year launch window. MS themselves said there were 2 bad batches right from the get go. Those systems and more importantly, those parts, will take about a 1-2 years to completely filter out of the marketplace. Look at the PS2. Their 1-2 year launch failure rate was close to 76%. By year 3 it had dropped to about 38-40%. By the end of it the failure rate was down to about 6-8%. The question about MS’ statistics is where is that 5-6% coming from? Are those total systems sold, with or without those bad batches. Etc. If it was total systems sold id say they are full of it. If they are of the corrected production models, id say that is a believable number. Though if they just conveniently forget about those bad batches that is still criminal.
Looks like Forza is causing a lot of problems. Not surprising, since it is a new game, and is likely utilizing 2 or 3 cores, unlike launch titles that were probably only using 1 core.
Sorry, forgot the link.
http://forums.forzamotorsport.net/forums/thread/397087.aspx
I have actually read about that a bit. While I have Forza 2, I don’t actively play it so I haven’t experienced those problems. I did read an article saying there used to be a public thread in the Forza forums about the problems it was causing, and then Microsoft either deleted it or moved it somewhere in a private area so it wouldn’t be such public knowledge.
Let me do some research on the Forza specific articles and I’ll get something up in the next few hours. I’ll post a link here in the comment section when it is completed.
Ok, article is completed.
http://hawtymcbloggy.wordpress.com/2007/07/01/the-great-forza-2-debacle/
@George Cauley
PS2 had a 76% failure rate??????
Now why do I find that hard to believe? I bought a PS2 1 year after it’s launch, and never had a problem with it. I even find 40% failure rate even hard to believe.
I still use my PS2 till this day.
Do you have a source or something?
The ps2′s faults were nothing compared to the 360′s.
The main reason for ps2 failures was its lens. It would fail to read disks properly after several months. However, if you were stubborn enough, you could get games to work sometimes. Also, it was not impossible to fix the problem yourself, and even if you didn’t, the pricetag was much lower, so it didn’t hurt as much to go get another one.
The xbox 360 has complete failures, which are not a simple matter of cleaning the lens or the like, and which happen much sooner, and more often. Also, the ps2 never destroyed any of my games, whereas my 360 ruined my copy of Dead Rising because I turned the 360 vertical to save space, thinking it wouldn’t do anything since it seemed designed to go that way and was advertised like that -and I forgot that this was microsoft I was dealing with-.
I’m on my third 360 in less than a month, and I’m not sure how long it will last despite it giving me no problems. I’m on my second ps2 since the thing came out, and the new one only recently started giving me trouble, after near continuous use with guitar hero and guitar hero 2.
ARRRGHHHHHHHH 3RD TIME THIS YEAR…… as u can tell by my name im a gamer who IS PISSED this is my 3rd xbox this year and lukely EB games accepts xboxes with a recite and atomaticly give u a new one but still they said they fixed it…………… YARRRGHHHHH THE TOWL TRICK WORKS FOR LIKE 3 DAYS DONT TRY IT
Wow. i read that story where Anonymous calls up and eventually the supervisor hangs up on him. By the end of the story i was quite angry myself. It is ridiculuos in the first place to pay for xboxlive when the online service for the ps3 offers the same features for free, and not have to worry about constant hardware problems, and idiot call centre representatives. My first xbox rrod, so i sent it away. Only 6 months has past and it has happened again. I am considering changing consoles to a ps3, which may be a bit expensive but i wont have to pay for services a blind and retarded penguin could offer.
AMMMENNN……
the phone call service is retarded u say my XBOX HAS THE RED RING OF DEATH
The The what im sorry but that problem u have said does not exist if u want to get your xbox fixed stay on the line for another 4 hours……
i rest my case
I got my 360 in the winter.
Mid-summer it red ringed. Took a month for Microsoft to send me a completely different one. >8 (
About a year later (Today) I got the red ring again. They obviously replaced my defective Xbox with one of the older models prone to red-ringing.
So it’s # 2 for me.
I thought the issue had been resolved, which is why i waited to purchase my system until 2008. My 360 is only 6 months old and already has the Red Ring of Death. I am super pissed, and do not want to wait that long for my system to be fixed. How is it actually legal for them to continue to sell these machines when a majority of them crap out?? Every single person I know has had this same issue…4-5% my A$$!!!!
I think it is peoples own fault their consoles are dieing!
Microsoft clearly states not to sit the box inside an enclosure (like in your tv cabinet) and for those of you who are stupid enough to do that AND sit the your xbox 360 up against the cabinet wall which blocks the fans, then you’re idiots :P
I have had my xbox since lanch and had it sitting right next to my TV, NEVER HAD A PROBLEM!
I saw a 360 die before my eyes… it was… horrible… I had to wash my eyes out with soap… everything except the soap part was true.
The horror. Microsoft messes up.
The red ring statistics are a moving target, no wonder its so hard to fix!
I was going through the archives when I found this. I bough an xbox 360 ELITE. It broke on me after using it for a month. It scratched my disks, wouldn’t go backwards compatible, and would not connect to my internet without a whole hours worth of jiggling the ethernet cord. When I called microsoft to complain, the told me it would cost oh, about 3/4 the cost of the console, with no hope in hell it even work when I got it back. So I got a used one from ebay that hasn’t broke once. I use the old hard drive, so I had to pay $2 USD for shipping to get a disk to make the God-damn thing Backwards compatible. Not to mention they lost my money order for two years of Xbox live. I payed over $800 mother F-ing dollars because microsoft messed up. Again.
Ive had two break down in two years. Boycott Microsoft products until this problem is permanently fixed
Yes, my brother has went through several 360s including the elite. I bought a PS3 because I figured: Why does it matter that the X box has more and better games if the system is going to crash on me. I would rather have a lasting system, slightly less game quality, and variety any day.
Most of the time it turns out to be the users carelessness as a the reason for the red ring of death. You really think you have a statistic anywhere close to accurate when you only survey 4000 users, think about how many 360′s there are. I have had mine for three years and have never experienced any problems. I think the solution for you is to stop buying the Xbox 360 because it’s either your fault for the red ring of death or you have as bad luck as big as that skewed percentage you told everyone.
I’ve had my 360 for 4+ years or so and I am happy so say I’ve never had much in the way of problems. It over heats every now and then, but otherwise it’s perfectly fine. Much like Michael R. said, most people who have troubles are usually careless. I’ve known TWO people to receive the red ring, and they BOTH played on the system heavily every day. One of them constantly knocked it over by not paying attention. If you’re gentle with your console, no matter what it is it will last longer. If you buy a 360, take care of it. Think of it as a child almost. It’s a bit far but it pays off. I’ve never dropped mine on the floor, or smacked it, or been violent to it and I like to say it loves me. 4-5 years later and it’s still going for me.