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Specialist refuses to repair 360s
Author: Joe MartinPublished: 29th June 2007
Micromart has refused to continue repairing Xbox 360s as the failure rate is too high to cope with.
"We were seeing about 30 a week before we pulled the plug on the service. We saw it over a period of several months and it was just getting worse. It began towards the end of last year. Once the twelve month warranty finished then we started to see more and more machines being sent in to be looked at." Said Jeff Croft of Micromart.
So, just why are so many Xbox 360s being returned for repairs? Jeff has his theories;
"The work we had done to the console lead us to believe that basically it was a fault with the motherboard and not something that could be resolved easily. And it wasn't going to go away.
"Rather than lead customers up the garden path we'd walk away from it and tell them to go directly to Microsoft because they have the facility to replace the motherboard. If Microsoft has updated the motherboard for the new consoles that it's producing then presumably they've improved the existing model."
Despite writing to Microsoft about the problems, Micromart received no reply and ultimately had to retract the 360 repair service. Some estimate that the failure rate on the Xbox 360 is as high as 30 percent.
"We're not taking that thing on board; we won't repair them. We originally did some work with it but it's labour intensive and it isn't really a feasible repair for us to undertake. We would probably end up charging GBP 100 for a repair and we still wouldn't be happy with the end result," Jeff added, for those that still hadn't quite got the point.
Microsoft has faced massive amounts of criticism over the failure rate of the Xbox 360 and has attempted to secretly address the issue by adding an extra heatsink into faulty systems as the 'red ring of death' problem is commonly thought to be the result of a heating problem. It's still too early to tell if the new hardware is having an effect on the reliability of the console though.
Ever bricked a 360, or do you think it's only as useful as a paperweight/radiator anyway? Let us know what you think.
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Comments (31)Stats: 0.126 seconds
What is an acceptable failure rate for electronics like this anyway? 30% seems very steep
Looks like people should save thier money and buy a quaility system like the PS3 then.
lol
ahem ;)
I think that basically means that even MS is swamped by the number of faulty consoles.
Incredibly, but the newer ones are meant to be a lot better. Mines an Nov 05 and still going though :D
What's up with that? You don't hear about any issues with the PS3 now, do you?
I've had my PS3 for a good long time now and never had an issue with it even though the ambient temp in the room it's in regularly reaches almost 80 degrees Fahrenheit (I also run F@H on constantly while not playing, mind you, so this is pretty much full load 24/7). It's completely silent while playing DVDs or Blu-Ray discs and only becomes audible when folding.
Then As soon as it was out of waranty we started seeing massive numbers of failures, mainly due to the DVD drives packing in. I remember regually having more faulty units out back than new ones.
As long as Microsoft fix the problem than it will be ok, if they don't then there will be problems.
Wait till the PS3 has been out for a year to 18 month and we shall see what happens, Sony dont excatly have a stella record when it comes to reliabilty.
I think a lot of console failure is down to the end user anyway, I'm still on my PS2 that I've had from launch and its had enormas amounts of use. Same with my xbox and xbox 360.
and instead of bolting the heat sink to the motherboard (like more companies with 2 brain cells do), they decided to glue it on with the heat paste that will melt if the temperature is too high, which it gets to if its not vented perfectly
Eh? This is the first time anything like this has happened on such a large scale.
O RLY?
Errr...PS1 and PS2 disc drives?
with the PS1/PS2 the lasers wore out rather quickly, everything else was still fine, but the lasers wore out
And tbh, the lasers wont last forever anyway, but i agree that on the PS1/PS2 the lasers didn't last as long as you would want
Heat, isn't a new issue; Megasoft screwed up big time.
Best way to take care of a 360s is to keep it horizontal and in a completely open area. Preferably with air-con. If the warranty is void (and most probably are.... 90 days my @$%), a simple and cost-effective preventative measure is to pull the fans off the fan controller and splice them into the 12v for the DVD-ROM. They are loud at full speed but move enough air to keep the console alive. If the fan controller can somehow be software controlled, a simple live update would probably save thousands of consoles. I did a simple test once. I took Gears of War and put it in a console that I rigged with a multimeter and a temperature probe. I set the game up in a loop by putting a spring between the joysticks so the dude would run around in circles. Not the most intense thing but it did the job. The temperature of the heatsink rose pretty fast, as expected. On the other hand, the fans didn't change much at all. The max I remember seeing was around 6 volts. The console was getting to an extremely high temp and yet the fans where throttled back. I wish I still had my data but it was in a spreadsheet on a USB drive that was stolen. Still, its a repeatable test for someone with a console.
I've told lots of people about the issues. The response I most commonly get is "My console is fine and nobody I know has a broken console." And thats all well and good. The problem is not in the majority. However, to quote my own response to a statement similar to the one I exampled, "Most don't go bad but there is enough of the ones that do for a little bit of fuss." The failure rate is just too high to be not be cause for concern. When pictures surfaced recently of new and repaired 360's being shipped with a new heatsink and heat pipe assembly, I saw that as unofficial acknowledgment. I don't have a major in thermal properties. I don't pretend to know about the cost/design aspects of a product like this. But I do know the heatsink sucks. Compounding the problem is that the fans don't. There is plenty of room inside the 360 for better cooling and even additional fans. Even the new heatsink seems like more of a band-aid with weakened adhesive than a real solution.
Good luck, 360 owners.
Microsoft however, felt they had to move quick, and move cheap. They were making a loss on each XBOX360, and want to see a profit as soon as possible.... which is fine of course. But not at the cost of the consumers.
Somehow these last 2 years, Microsoft have given people the impression that they'll do anything for money:
- Vista: problems with drivers, taking out the important features like WinFS, 1.000.000 times pressing "Allow" before opening a textdocument.
- 360: Heatingproblems, scratched DVD's, Heatsinkproblems, loudness, various softwareproblems.
They said they learned from the mistakes with the first XBOX, but I really doubt it at this point in time.
because they all know, if they shave £100 off or something, they are going to sell more, and by charging £10 extra on each game, they will make their money back soon enough
The ps3 has had one major flaw before it's launch. It's $600!!!!
The red ring was lit in all but the top right corner of the ring, and was continually flashing, the console seemed as if it was off, no fans were spinning, and the green power symbol was still lit in constant green....