Microsoft as promised that the total repair bill for the clearly faulty Xbox360 has reached the golden billion – and that they’ll pick up the bill. The actual failure rates for a new console should be around 5% or less to be seen as acceptable. Whilst Microsoft has not revealed figures some are citing it to be a lot closer to 33% for Microsoft’s latest console. So what on Earth is going wrong?
One of the issues could be the factor where the processor graphics card is made. These sorts of extremely fragile items tend to require a clean room (a sterile environment) during their fabrication process. This is to ensure that all no air or dust enters the delicate chipset. Even still, problems can arise in batches, which can result in errors and or damage.
The second main issue is that the 360 is potentially overheating. From the first faulty batches this looked to be the case. Now though there’s too many for this to be the case, unless of course there is an intrinsically poor design. Some have noted that you shouldn’t put anything on top of your 360 and in fact there have been a variety of ‘cooling’ systems that have been created as third party peripherals to capitalise on this.
I guess what really bothers me is the reputational damage. I honestly feel that the 360 is a good product and it annoys me that Microsoft has seen it okay to continue producing them in same manner when there’s a potential fault. I feel bad for those who have had issues, and frankly I feel very lucky that my 360 has only crashed twice. Each time it did I can tell you though my heart skipped a beat!
Of greatest annoyance is a comparison between the original Xbox versus the Xbox360. The former could act as a server; even take a bullet. Shame about its successor then. It can barely play the games sometimes. Come on Microsoft, you can do better than this!