Iam on my 3rd console, and yes I take care of my electronics very well.
I was lucky and got the extra year of coverage for free, needless to say I will be buying the 2 year for $50.

The longest i have ever played my console at any given time is 6 hours.
Now dont tell me I need to shut it down every 2 hours, thats a load of .
I cant think of any electronics that need to be used or played for only 2 hours at a time.

I can understand 2 or 3, maybe even 4 blown consoles, but where do you draw the line ? 8 is a heckuva lot of consoles to fail in a few short years. I think the problem here lies with the end user, even if shoddy design is a contributing factor. 8 consoles is a lot of downtime between repairs, so I don’t see anyone deliberately doing something for the console to fail, but common sense does go a long way. When millions of cars are built, there are always a few lemons. Go 4-wheeling with your economy car every weekend at Jeep Jamborees, and your bound to have a few issues with your tranny though…

he’s just saying crap like that to get publicity

I’m not saying you HAVE to shut it down every couple of hours, but it’s not a terrible idea. It’s a good idea to take a break every hour or two anyway from gaming to avoid eye strain which can come back to haunt you.

actually, I recently saw a poll of 360 owners on the numbers of consoles they had to get replaced, and the results were quite shocking. Turns out the number of people who’ve had 2 broken consoles is higher than the number that have no broken consoles. That’s pretty bad. As far as the subject of this article, there were people (larger numbers than even I would have imagined) who’d had over ten consoles. So don’t tell me eight is “ZOMG unbelievable!!!111!!!!!”…

I’ve had every console since the beginning including the Odessey, Atari, etc…

After my 2nd XB360 blew… I’m done. I’m not recommending the P.O.S. to anybody. I’ve stopped about 6+ 360 purchases. Wait for the PS3 to drop a few hundred bucks or get a Nintendo Wii.

1. M$ has awful Customer Service
2. Had the nerve to ask me to pay $200.00 or so to replace there poorly built system
3. I’ve had 2 or 3 replacements for the PS2 and Gamecube…

Total Cost: Zero

Nintendo and Sony sent me a package, sent it in. They determined their hardware failed. Sent me a refurbished or new one.

M$ sucks.

if this guy was smart enuff and if his consoles were really “Breaking” this often dont u think that the guy would stop buying them

Its possible he is lieing, but im currently on my 6th one, and its already had its red ring problems. i bought fans for it, its up on a table next to a freakin window, there isnt anything wrong with whats goin on. Though for those who do experience the Red Rings of Death heres a quick fix. Take two towels, yes real towels not paper towels, and wrap them around your xbox. Then turn on your xbox for 20-25 minutes, after the time has passed turn it off then back on, that should work. If it doesnt unplug everysingle thing from the xbox, including things from the walls and leave it for about an hour, try that, if that doesnt work then repeat the towel process. My 6th has probably had the red rings around 7 or 8 times and these always fix it.

where did you see this poll? I find those numbers a little hard to believe. I know more people who are on their 1st console than anything else.

I’m not being sarcastic either.. I’d definitely like to see the poll.

I am also on my 3rd xbox. It sits nice and cool in my basement. No need to overheat or anything. Yet I have had 2 go bad already, and this one has started to freeze, so I am expecting this one to also go out. So ya, I think he is on his eighth because a lot of my friends are also on their 2nd or 3rd xbox’s. So get off your high horse and realize that Microsoft put out a crappy product. All of their sales over the PS3 aren’t because people are buying new ones, it’s because people are replacing the ones that are breaking on them, that is the only reason xbox 360 sales are over PS3

I am also on my 2nd Xbox. They did send me a different console in return. I probably spent around 2+ Hours on the phone with tech support about getting my arcade games working. The only complaint I have now is they gave me 25 digit codes to replace the points. You must rebuy the arcade games on the replaced console. I was given 9 Sets of xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx in increments of 1600, 200, and 100 points. Thats alot of typing with a controller.

HAHA.. Take care of your … I am on my first xbox 360 since launch, and have had no problems… I take care of my stuff.. Besides everyone should get an extended warranty on any expensive peice of electronics, if it be a PS3 an Xbox 360, a TV, a Computer.. Protect your

First of all, I am not one to complain and write comments on forums like this, but I am furious. I hardly play my X-box 360 and I purchased it in April of this year. It’s in a well ventilated area, lots of room for it to “breathe”, and then the thing crapped out on me three days ago.

There are way too many people that are having this problem, and yes it is a design flaw. I had called x-box customer service and the first lady was great, there covering the cost for packaging to and from for this “REPAIR”. Which i thought was great. Mind you I am out of a system for 4 weeks. I heard that they may send you out a refurbished machine as a replacement, and that the same issues were occuring, and asked the guy if this was the case. The reponse which wasn’t clear, and all he would say was “The technicians will look at it, and they will decide. Which was what response I expected.

When it comes to the guy going on his 8th x-box, and they are sending out refurbsihed systems and not fix the fundamental problems. It would be very possible to go through eight. Why would he just stop, and get PS3? The same reason as to why we didn’t get it in the first place, too expensive, and the online play is nowhere compared to xbox live. The questions that I think that you need to asked yourself so what if this guy has gone through 8 systems, how many friends do you know whose’s 360 have been replaced? a group of six of us,, and three systems have been sent back to Microsoft to fix. Nothing Modded, it is exactly the same as when it came in the box.

Explain that!

i have a group of friends here locally.. around 12 people.. not one has had a unit replaced, so you can’t explain that either. A lot has to do with luck and also how well you take care of things. 8 is just a number I cannot sit down and believe without questioning what they user has done to the systems.

I also wonder why someone would go through 8. After several, I think I would have given up.

Well I’m sorry people but I bought my 1st 360 console mid Nov 06, it constantly gave RROD from day 1. I had it swapped out after 5 weeks by the store I bought it from.
I bought my daughter a 360 console in Jan 07 – this had a smashed fascia, so was replaced by the store. The replacement unit (Brand new boxed) lasted 4 days before it started to fail reading disks. The same disks would work on my unit.

This unit was replaced (her THIRD in less than 2 weeks) the unit was DOA, if you removed the HD the unit would work. This unit was replaced the following day.
So Far SIX BRAND NEW UNITS.
My 360 then started giving RROD I’ve got to say, it was well old by now…. It had been running for almost 4.5 months!!

My unit was replaced again by the store for a brand new unit.

SEVEN BRAND NEW XBOX 360′s in order to get two working consoles.

I am a computer engineer, I rack, build & maintain HP, IBM, DELL servers for a living & have done so for the past 12 years. All consoles were in the open both vertical & Horizontal – neither seems to make a difference. Airflow to both units were NOT an issue.

The issue is shoddy goods. Poorly implemented & built to the lowest cost and it shows.

I won’t even go on to mention the amount of people on live who had had numerous replacements & one guy has had to have his repaired 4 times & he’s still got 3 months to go before it’s one year old.

This article sucks & as long as there are people that are prepared to put up with basically ty goods then it’ll only get worse. Why is it that Americans are getting out of warranty 360′s repaired for free, when the rest of the world are having to pay (I’m told) £85 a pop to get them repaired?

I for one will never buy another 360 if these two fail again.

I got mine near launch. I’m on my 2nd, which i got around March 07. It runs perfect and it has been on for several hours at a time. All my other friends with 360′s have had absolutely NO problems and are all on their 1st ones still. This is way overblown. It’s quite possible everyone that is having problems is online complaining or talking to the media. Out of the 10 million out there, what 3% is failing? That is 300,000 people right? I really don’t know if 300,000 consoles is that much. I mean c’mon, it’s a computer! It’s gonna have problems eventually. This is a complicated machine. I remember I had more problems with my original Nintendo than the 360, and my PDA now is more powerful than that thing.

Jeremy Anderson is an idiot! What kind of person keeps buying something that is not working for him. If my Xbox froze up I would get it fixed, if it happened the 3rd time. I would flip MS the bird and go buy a PS3.

I guess I am just lucky. I have had my 360 for a year and have played upwards of 10 hours straight. It gets a lot of use and I have had no overheating issues. I have been happy with it since day one. If it did give me problems, there is no way in hell I would keep getting the same system over and over again.

Ok, do the math, 8 360′s means an average of 4 weeks worth of not having a 360 x 8=32 weeks. 32 weeks, and this all started from launch? We have 2 launch systems and an Elite and no problems btw.

360s got the games I want to play,,and only a fool looking for trouble would pass on the no questions asked 1 year return/swap for new at EB for fifty bucks..Im on my second and it was the cheap disk drive that went,,,no overheating at all

Ok you have to be kidding me. I know of 1 person who has had 360 problems and it was at launch. Everyone else hasn’t EVER had an issue. This includes myself and my launch unit which DOES get an awful lot of use and I even leave it running when I go places because the reliability is simple NOT an ISSUE AT ALL! Everything I’ve ever heard is on the net besides the one time with my friend from school. I will be getting another 360 when they go down to 65nm as well and I wouldn’t even think twice. I will agree that M$ customer service is ty though, that is very true. But the fact of the matter is, the number of damaged units is FAR outweighed by the number of working units. Wii Has also had quite a few issues since lanuch along with PS3. It’s what’s expected… They are new electronics. The reason everyone is going on about all the red rings of death and whatnot is because so far, it seems like it’s the only thing they can gripe about. It’s the only mis-step M$ has made in the 360 endeavor. And with them supplying new heat-sink and piping to the GPU that may not be a problem much longer. Then what are you going to complain about?

@ SwissArmyBud: Statistic polls are about as accurate as the Wii being the most powerful machine ever built. Isn’t even far, let alone close.

@ Dan: You said “After my 2nd XB360 blewâ$¦ I’m done” Yet you continued with 2 or 3 ps2′s and gamecubes.

Guess what, I’m on #8 console too. The hard drive has yet to be replaced, I’m hoping this might be part of the problem. I’ve had several different issue.
I purchased my xbox 360 at Bestbuy 12/18/05, after being one of your many customers who spent the night outside Bestbuy to get a system before christmas of last year. I called with one of my first problems back in 2/06. System was freezing up. Sent system in for repair. Received system back 3/7/06. Had to call several times in May with problems, Had to reformat my hard drive, due to errors.
Freezing again. Xbox 360 Communitor quite working. Finally May 26, they told me to send it in again for repair,
-xbox 360 console . 2nd repair
-headset
Received different console 6/9/06
6/24/06 Game error
7/6/06 purchased extended warranty through XBOX, because of so many past problems.
7/14 problems with chat
7/28 4 player error light
7/20 red lights again and noisy.

8/3/06 set up another repair 3rd repair8/18 3rd different xbox received.
8/30 2 left side red error lights– spoke with supervisor Yolanda
Repair center down of two days- updating system.
9/1/06 Contacted the BBB. About all my problems, hoping to get some help!

Received a call the next day, from the repair center,
Spoke with a supervisor Kennesha. 4th problem Who wanted me to fax a copy of my extended warranty. Which I told her I don’t have a fax machine. I quess she couldn’t see that I have a extended warranty, due to the fact my system has been changed and I have a different serial #. But when I received a different serial, I receivced a letter stating that it would be transfered, to the other xbox 360. Anyways, finally after she noticed all of my problems. And the fact I was requesting a New System, or another repaired system. She said that you would send in a request for the NEW SYSTEM.
She said to give them a week and I should hear something.

9/20 called again, since I haven’t heard anything. They said still waiting for an answer.
10/2 Headset stop working again.
10/4- Supervisor Andrew called still waiting
10/20- Supervisor Andrew called to setup another repair,
Microsoft will not issue new system.

11/1/06 Received back 4th different system,
this one 3/30/06 Manfur. Date
System doesn’t work, when you put in an xbox 360 game, it gives you a message, to place game in an Xbox 360.

I also have a call log of my calls to xbox repair between
6/24-10/5- their is a total of 17 calls.

My call 11/2 to Xbox repair was for 60:28 minutes.
Supervisor Yolanda – will requested again for a NEW SYSTEM.
Should hear back within a week.
11/10 received a called from repair center, still waiting from Microsoft.
11/20 Derek from Xbox support called. I should hear something in about 1 week.
11/27 Joe called – suppose to send new system, power supply and headset.
Will find out about sending new hard drive.
12/13/06- Received another xbox 360 (6th box from repair center), supposed to be a new unit, not a repaired unit.
But unit has scotch tape on found on unit. Unit works currently.

12/27- 1,3, 4 player red lights appear. Restarted system. Fixed problem.
1/16/07- 4th player light- error E67. Restarted system twice. Fixed problem.
2/6/07- profile has been corrupted 3 times since December.
2/22/07- New Crackdown game will not play. Tried two different copies on my machine.
They both play on my friends’machine. Called Xbox- Spoke with
Tom- Clear Cache on hard drive. Game played after this.
Asked again about replacement hard drive that I was told I would be getting.
Transferred to supervisor Rebecca. about hard drive issue
I should receive a call in a couple of days.
3/5/07- Called Xbox again, Game is freezing and 1,3,4 player red lights again . Spoke with Daniel, than transferred tosupervisor-Gary, Was told I would receive a call tomorrow about complaints. System remains to freeze and red lights with or without hard drive installed.

3/07/07-Received call from Adam @ XBOX.
will sent yet another (#7) box to repair unit. Also asked about hard drive again, since this is the original hard drive, that has never to replaced and I was told â$” it would be replaced â$” just to make sure that it was not the problem. He told me, let’s wait and see how this unit does first.
4/16/07, 1/18/07, 5/1/07 and probably one other time- received E74 error with 4th player light on.

6/22/07 called again this time spoke with Sean, who has setup up yet the 8th repair, and also setup to replace hard drive, which I will have to pay to send in. I just hope this is the last time.
I also know two others, who have both had two repairs. So if you are one of the lucky ones, who hasn’t had a repair, Feel very LUCKY. Most of us are not that LUCKY. I just hope, I get one that works. I feel MICROSOFT owes me a full refund.

Statistically speaking, 8 consoles is not out of the question for the failure rate reported elsewhere (up to 30%). Lets just say that the failure rate is 15%, that means 15 out of 100. So regress this down.

If 10,000,000 (a subset of Microsoft sales figures) units are out there with 15% failure rate, that is 1,500,000 that could be sent back.

For grins, lets just say that 1,000,000 send it in and it it swapped (Their 2nd xbox).

Of those people, 150,000 fail. 100,000 Get sent back and swapped (3rd Xbox).

Of those 15,000 Fail, 10,000 send it in for swap (4th xbox).

Of those 1,500 fail, and 1,000 send it in/swapped out (5th Xbox).

Of those 150 fail, and 100 send it in (6th xbox)

Of those 15 fail, and 10 send it in (7th Xbox)

Of those 1 fails and gets swapped (8th xbox).

The likelyhood of a specific individual having this happen is low, but the likelyhood that SOMEONE will have it happen is pretty high.

Granted this is simplfied. If MS is using refurbs for swapping, are they more likely to be problems? Are there more or less than 5% who will forego the process (i.e. go out and buy a Wii or merely just say “screw it”)? What is the actually return rate (microsoft has been pretty tight lipped, probably to prevent this kind of analysis)?

Hi I had the 3 red lights as well, it is hard to believe he had 8 of them but I know that when I had mine the warranty was already over and I had to find on the web some alternative. I finally found a great tutorial with photos of how to fix this. Here is the page for the 3 red lights solution

Good luck to you all

I will admit that ms rushed this peice out, but dont say they dont have crappy customer service. I have had nothing but fast and freindly service.
Like I said i am on my 3rd one as well. I have mine in a basment and they still failed.
My home theater is worth about 50 times more than what I have into my 360 and none of it has failed.
I cant say that he didnt take care of his, but I do. And mine still failed.

you are an idiot