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Many Xbox 360s fail within three months

SquareTrade stats uncover more faults

Agentless Backup is Not a Myth

Electronics warranty firm SquareTrade has already claimed that the Xbox 360 has a 16.4 per cent of breaking down, but more stats released by the firm show that the console is most likely to fail during its first three months of use.

The figures are based on its recent study into Xbox 360 failures, which examined 1040 warranties sold made regarding the Microsoft console between 1 April 2007 and 31 July 2007. Of the 171 people who filed claims on their warranties, 102 were caused by the infamous Red Ring of Death(RRoD).

Disc read errors accounted for 18 per cent of the additional 69 claims made to SquareTrade, in addition to 13 per cent for video card failures and the same figure for frozen hard drives. Power problems and disc tray malfunctions also accounted for ten per cent and seven per cent, respectively. Other, lower-scoring failures included overheating without the RRoD, and controller problems.

SquareTrade’s sample size consisted 956 owner of the Premium Xbox 360, while only 57 came from folk who own the Core console and the remaining 27 for the flagship Elite. Why did so many Premium owners take out extra warranty coverage?

The company boasts that most of the problems, such as disc tray malfunctions, wouldn’t have been covered by Microsoft’s extended warranty, which was increased from one year to three in order to cover RRoD-related problems – a ‘goodwill’ gesture that’s estimated to have cost Microsoft more than $1bn (£500m/€650m).

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Latest Comments

Well now the numbers are out

Well I remember from the other article about the xbox getting the RRoD caught on the BBC. What's his face said that 16% (and seems like he's right about this number) was good. Well it seems that according this article SquareTrade doesn't see it as good!

LOL anyways we all know that those stupid extended warranties are only profitable when nothing happens. But it seems like its costing them a lot.

Oh well.. what I'd like to see is a comparison between the xbox, playstation and nintendo consoles. Just to see over all how much difference is between microsoft and the others. If it's not so large then OK .. but if the difference is huge.. then microsoft is, in the words of Steve Jobs from the Triumph of the Nerds documentary, "giving us 3rd rate products."

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A new mainboard by MS, now broken again & they won't touch it

I had 3 red lights & subsequently got MS to fix it about 3 months back. They replaced the mainboard, its now Red lighted again & they say they will not fix it....

How do i know it wasn't a duff or refurb mainboard they put in it? Absolutely disgusted with MS & so glad I gave up my IT job last year ! W@nkers. The old Xbox 1 is still working like the day I got it....2002

Currently using the PS3 for games but I think gameplay is way better on the Xbox unfortunately

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Just me then

My first one failed within exactly three months, but I've forgiven it :-)

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