Inside Source Reveal the Truth About Xbox 360 "Red Ring of Death" Failures

[Icemage]

First off, I want to preface this post by saying that I don't know how accurate this interview is, so please don't take it and run with it unless you're prepared to back up your assertions with proof.

Hopefully the regulars here know me well enough to know I don't go out of my way to troll on the 360 even though I don't own one, but this particular article caught my eye because I can't find any holes to poke in it. Everything mentioned in there seems logically and technically consistent.

There is a lot more to this interview than I'm quoting here, but I'll highlight the comments that struck me most. Hit the link to read the full interview, which covers the circumstances around the Red Ring of Death, the development of the Xbox 360 hardware itself, and Microsoft's philosophy behind their 360 strategies.

Make of it what you will.

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SOURCE:
Inside Source Reveal the Truth About Xbox 360 "Red Ring of Death" Failures

Q: So what do you think the real failure rate of the Xbox 360 is? Some have estimated it as high as 30%. I got my Xbox in early 2007 and so far so good but what do you think the chance is that it's going to die on me one day.

It's around 30%, and all will probably fail early. This quarter they are expecting 1 M failures, most of those Xenons. Some of those are repeat failures. Life expectancy is all over the map because the design has very little margin for most of the important parameters. That means it's not a fault tolerant design. So a good unit may last a couple of years, while a bad unit can fail in hours. I have a launch unit and have not had a single problem with it. And it's used a lot. But I don't know anyone else with a 360 that hasn't broken, except you now. There's no way to tell when yours might die. But the cooler you can keep it, the longer it will probably last. So stand it up, keep it in free air, etc. :Note : Xenon was the code name for the first Xbox 360 mother board.

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Q: In your opinion what do you think the main cause of the Red Ring of Death failures have been?

RROD is caused by anything that fails in the "digital backbone" on the mother board. Also known as a core digital error. CPU, GPU, memory, etc. Bad parts, incompatible parts (timing problems) bad manufacturing process (like solder joints), misapplied heat sinks or thermal interface material, missing parts, broken parts, parts of the wrong value, missed test coverage. Any one or more, on any chip, or many other discrete components, would cause this. And many of the failures were obviously infant mortality, where they work when they leave the factory and fail early in use. The main design flaw was the excessive heat on the GPU warping the mother board around it. This would stress the solder joints on the GPU and any bad joints would then fail in early life.

There are also other significantly high failure rates in other areas, like the DVD.

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Q: How much more reliable are the current generation of Xbox 360 than the previous designs? Original Xenon, Zypher and Falcon.

I've heard that the failure rates for the current design is sub 10%. Much much better, but still too high imoh. And those designs haven't seen much life yet, so no one knows if that failure rate will hold.

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Q: How many times does an Xbox 360 unit have to be sent in and repaired before they will replace it with a completely new unit?
That's not how it works. You send in a broken box, you get back a working box (hopefully). So there is a rotating stock of the original units that get repaired and returned to service. Plus, they keep finding these cashes of launch units here and there and using them too. Didn't you hear during the holidays that bundles were found with units made in 06? Those were pulled back from the retail channel last spring when the new heatsink was done, and had the new heatsink placed on them and then put into the shipping flow like any other box.

Back to the rotating inventory of launch units. You risk getting one of those back until the last one is out of the system. I imagine the next big outrage will be when some of the folks who waited till Falcon to buy a console for reliability reasons, and has to send it in for service, gets a Xenon back! Even when all of the Xenons are gone, you will likely get a newer gen repaired one back rather than new. Unless the fail rate gets so low there are none available. I'm holding my breath...

[vinnie97]

lol, that puts you off the 360 altogether I suspect.

[Icemage]

Originally Posted by vinnie97

lol, that puts you off the 360 altogether I suspect.

Actually it doesn't. Hardware issues have been problem #1 with the 360 for me, but even when I assumed the fail rate was 30% it's been on my list of things-I-want. More of an issue in my case is that every time I get a new reason to buy a 360 (Halo 3, Mass Effect, Alan Wake), I lose one (Eternal Sonata coming to PS3, getting a new PC that can run Bioshock on High). It just hasn't hit critical mass for me yet.

At some point, I'll get comfortable enough with the odds, and there will be enough truly exclusive content that I can't get on my PC or PS3 to make it worth buying, but that day isn't today.

[goldmember]

Man oh man, I hope that Microsoft's next console after the 360 has backwards compatibility, for the sake of all the people who want to play their 360 games in the years to come, after the 3 year warranty is done with.

[BCA]

It was a good idea for Microsoft to release the console early, even if it meant RROD. They would have been crushed by PS3 if released at the same time.

[Power666]

I think I posted this a few days ago in IRC.

Anyway, releasing early didn't necessarily mean they had to cut quality like they did. Modern CPU's and GPU's have internal thermal diodes and I do not believe the Xbox 360's components are an exception. They new how hot the thing got and just ran with it. Sure, using a cheaper heat sink on the GPU saved a bit but the whole RRoD fiasco has cost MS more than what they would have originally spent to put a proper cooling solution in place. Further more, the RRoD has cost MS more than just money, but tarnished the Xbox brand.

[Fyrus]

I don't really see the problem. THey fix it for free. Sony didn't with the PS2.

[Power666]

The PS2 problems appeared often when the systems were out of warranty and/or the amount of time purchases are protected under consumer laws.

The problem with the Xbox 360 is that it has a high failure rate while in warranty. Even though MS will fix the problem for free, you still have to go through the hassle of sending it in for repair and waiting to get one back. If the system was reliable, you'd wouldn't need to go through this hassle in the first place.

[Fyrus]

Originally Posted by Power666

The PS2 problems appeared often when the systems were out of warranty and/or the amount of time purchases are protected under consumer laws.

The problem with the Xbox 360 is that it has a high failure rate while in warranty. Even though MS will fix the problem for free, you still have to go through the hassle of sending it in for repair and waiting to get one back. If the system was reliable, you'd wouldn't need to go through this hassle in the first place.

If the PS2 was reliable I wouldn't have mine lying in my closet.

[goldmember]

Originally Posted by Fyrus

If the PS2 was reliable I wouldn't have mine lying in my closet.

So just because the PS2 is unreliable then the 360 can't be?