I really WANT to support the 360... But its getting harder to/

[HankRaptor]

Come home today, want to settle in with a little Splinter Cell..... and the CD tray motor has dropped dead. This is my THIRD 360 in the past 12 months.

The good news is they will send me another after I ship this one back on my dime.... Its nice that they are fixing it...

But this is insane. REALLY insane. This is my FOURTH 360. With low to moderate use this is just too much.

IS there any question that this thing is built like ABSOLUTE CRAP? I have so little faith that the next one will be any better at all...... I wish I bought this at costco.

[Laner]

My October '05 keeps on truckin...

[Kurt Stevens]

My October '05 keeps on truckin...

Your a brave soul saying that out loud. I'm afraid to talk about my launch day console. It may be tempting fate too much. 

[Kobra]

A) Buy it at Costco, just keep refunding it.

B) Wait for 2ndGEN hardware version towards the end of the year.

C) Both A and B

I am opting for C sometime late this year, or next.

[Ralph-Wiggum]

My October '05 keeps on truckin...

Your a brave soul saying that out loud. I'm afraid to talk about my launch day console. It may be tempting fate too much. 

But you just did! OMG U R D00M3D!!!!!

[Kurt Stevens]

My October '05 keeps on truckin...

Your a brave soul saying that out loud. I'm afraid to talk about my launch day console. It may be tempting fate too much. 

But you just did! OMG U R D00M3D!!!!!

Dammit!!!  I'm hosed!!

[Hetz]

Come home today, want to settle in with a little Splinter Cell..... and the CD tray motor has dropped dead. This is my THIRD 360 in the past 12 months.

The good news is they will send me another after I ship this one back on my dime.... Its nice that they are fixing it...

But this is insane. REALLY insane. This is my FOURTH 360. With low to moderate use this is just too much.

IS there any question that this thing is built like ABSOLUTE CRAP? I have so little faith that the next one will be any better at all...... I wish I bought this at costco.

Yeah, for all the crap that Sony has gotten with the PS3 lately, at least it WORKS and doesn't have a 75% chance of going up in smoke within the first couple months like the 360's seem to do! 

[Calvin]

Come home today, want to settle in with a little Splinter Cell..... and the CD tray motor has dropped dead. This is my THIRD 360 in the past 12 months.

The good news is they will send me another after I ship this one back on my dime.... Its nice that they are fixing it...

But this is insane. REALLY insane. This is my FOURTH 360. With low to moderate use this is just too much.

IS there any question that this thing is built like ABSOLUTE CRAP? I have so little faith that the next one will be any better at all...... I wish I bought this at costco.

Yeah, for all the crap that Sony has gotten with the PS3 lately, at least it WORKS and doesn't have a 75% chance of going up in smoke within the first couple months like the 360's seem to do! 

Not that I disagree that the PS3 appears to be better constructed than the 360, but it really hasn't been out long enough to get a sufficient sampling of PS3 failures or failure rates to quite know yet.

[rrmorton]

As I recall, there was talk from day 1 about problems with the 360. I haven't heard any buzz about PS3 failures.

That just sucks, Hank. But obviously you're using it wrong. I told you not to put the lubricant directly on your DVDs (or Tomb Raider: Legend disc) but would you listen? NoooOOOOooo.

But thanks for starting this thread. It's quite unusual and refreshing to find Hetz defending the PS3 and Kobra giving purchase advice.

[Lee]

I want my 360 (12/05) to break when the new one comes out, will give me an excuse to buy a new one.

[ATB]

Come home today, want to settle in with a little Splinter Cell..... and the CD tray motor has dropped dead. This is my THIRD 360 in the past 12 months.

The good news is they will send me another after I ship this one back on my dime.... Its nice that they are fixing it...

But this is insane. REALLY insane. This is my FOURTH 360. With low to moderate use this is just too much.

IS there any question that this thing is built like ABSOLUTE CRAP? I have so little faith that the next one will be any better at all...... I wish I bought this at costco.

Yeah, for all the crap that Sony has gotten with the PS3 lately, at least it WORKS and doesn't have a 75% chance of going up in smoke within the first couple months like the 360's seem to do! 

Of course with only four available since launch, what'd you 'spect!?   

[Jarrodhk]

My 12/05 broke early this morning.  Also my 3rd one.  Not paying shipping or for the repair.  Which is good because I might have lost my temper if they had said I needed to pay for anything.

For the record, Gamestop will give 60 dollars credit for a broken 360.

[Scoop20906]

I got mine on January 2006 and no problems. It has froze up on me once or twice during a game but thats it. Guess I am real lucky. 

[metallicorphan]

mine had disc tray problems as well...bloody thing never closed....one reason why i hope they get rid of the disc tray in the upcoming version(so no faceplates if that happened)...disc trays seem old now....look at ps3 and wii...cant talk for the ps3,but the wii one is cool..any size disc,and it just eats it up,lol

[Nth Power]

Mine has been giving me the "E67" with increasing frequency. 

[Calvin]

Mine has been giving me the "E67" with increasing frequency. 

My second box is doing great so far...it freezes every once in a while, but thats it so far.

[Soulchilde]

A) Buy it at Costco, just keep refunding it.

B) Wait for 2ndGEN hardware version towards the end of the year.

C) Both A and B

I am opting for C sometime late this year, or next.

Change Kobra tag from Gaming Trend Senior Member to Costco Pimp Extraordinaire

[ATB]

I fear that every time I turn mine on it's the last time it'll turn on.

Mine has been going strong since I bought it in Oct. I think it's an Aug 06 manufacture.

However, I dont' know that only 3 months in play counts as going strong...

[bluntman72]

I have had two systems and never had a single problem, one was a launch and one was bought when gears of war came out and my roomate and two of my coworkers have had 360's since launch with no problems. I bought the EBGames replacement plan incase i had problems since you get a brand new one, i think people who are sending them to MS must be getting refurbished ones that are still defective back since i havent had any problems so far

[mikeg]

I agree with the originator-the 360 is a piece of crap.  Like the games I have played, but the system is atrocious.  As many returns as they have I can't see them EVER making money on it.  But I could care less if they ever make money so long as they honor my warranty for the next two years.  By then, I will have my new pc built and will be on that exclusively most likely. 

[Gratch]

Here's a snap poll I did a while back to see how many people have had 360 problems.  Out of 56 people, 30 had problems, which is a 53% failure rate (if I did my math right).  And that number is probably low, considering many of the people who voted yes were on their second or third system. 

There's no way I'm buying one of these until it gets at least a little more stable.

[Thin_J]

A few days ago I would have chimed in with a "My almost year old system is still going strong"

But now I have to join the crowd with dead systems. I started my 360 up on Monday night, got all the way to the multiplayer menu in R6: Vegas, and then got massive graphical corruption and then it froze. I turned it off, waited a minute, turned it back on.. and got the three blinking red lights of death and no picture on the TV. After much testing on my part, including switching from the VGA to Component cables, removing the hard drive, checking the light on the power supply.. all that jazz, I called Microsoft.

On the positive side I spent less than 10 minutes on the phone with microsoft and my 360's coffin should be here by Friday, all paid for by them.

[Canuck]

Judging by the number of complaints on this forum I suspect that (for this forum at least) the fail rate might be even higher than 50%!

[Hetz]

Judging by the number of complaints on this forum I suspect that (for this forum at least) the fail rate might be even higher than 50%!

I think it is well higher than 50% at this point on this forum. It's incredible how something like this could happen, unless they just did away with QA when they were racing the system to market. It's got to be costing them a ton to replace all of these things.

[HankRaptor]

I agree Hetz, has to be insanely expensive to keep repairing these damn things. Shipping alone is a FORTUNE

[Jarrodhk]

Well.. of course if they are just swapping systems out, shipping is all it costs them.   

[semiconscious]

Judging by the number of complaints on this forum I suspect that (for this forum at least) the fail rate might be even higher than 50%!

I think it is well higher than 50% at this point on this forum. It's incredible how something like this could happen, unless they just did away with QA when they were racing the system to market. It's got to be costing them a ton to replace all of these things.

my take - in order to beat sony to market, they basically took what would've traditionally been considered a 'prototype' model, & put it into mass production (certainly explains 'the brick'). cost (& inconvenience to customers who 'want to support the 360' & therefore continue to play ball with them) means absolutely nothing to microsoft - crushing sony/playstation means everything (microsoft doesn't 'share' marketspace - it dominates ('microsoft explorer', anyone? this is nothing new...))...

so if you really do want to support the 360, understand that this is the business model you're supporting, package up that defective unit, hope for the best, & go with the flow, realizing that by doing this, you're simply enabling them to continue doing things their way...


(can you tell i'm really tired of the ps3-bashing )...

[Gratch]

Judging by the number of complaints on this forum I suspect that (for this forum at least) the fail rate might be even higher than 50%!

I think it is well higher than 50% at this point on this forum. It's incredible how something like this could happen, unless they just did away with QA when they were racing the system to market. It's got to be costing them a ton to replace all of these things.

I'd love to see what the percentage is with a higher sample number.  I tend to put more stock into what the GT crowd has to say (since we're all pretty much hardcore gamers who know how to take care of systems), but it would be interesting to see a larger number surveyed. 

Of course, my personal theory is that ATB put a curse on GT'ers which causes their systems to fail and his to keep running.   

[Kobra]

Well, my pal is a DM now with Gamestop, and when I said I "Believed" their hardware failure rate shortly after release would probably amount to 30%+ he called me crazy.  (I was just guessing, based on complaints from launch)

When further failures mounted, he still called me crazy.  Saying it was less than 5%.

3 of his personal machines replaced later and countless hundreds of complaints from his stores, he now thinks the rate might be as high as 50%.   

[Destructor]

3 of his personal machines replaced later and countless hundreds of complaints from his stores, he now thinks the rate might be as high as 50%.   

Good lord. Now this is something that Microsoft wants to keep a secret.

In the end though, I wouldn't be surprised at all if the failure rate (meaning the number of people who have replaced/repaired one or more 360 consoles) was in the 20-30% range.

[HankRaptor]

1 in 4 sounds right.

[kathode]

I fear that every time I turn mine on it's the last time it'll turn on.

That's called Medical Students' Disease

Brian Hetson of Bad Religion laid out the Ten Commandments of Punk Guitar many a year ago.  Commandment #1 was "Treat your guitars like shit and they'll respect you."  I apply that to my 360 - leave it on all day, keep it cramped, played all the way through Over G Fighters - the works!  My December 05 unit might as well be brand new and wouldn't dream of disappointing me by bricking

[Austin]

A) Buy it at Costco, just keep refunding it.

B) Wait for 2ndGEN hardware version towards the end of the year.

C) Both A and B

I am opting for C sometime late this year, or next.

Change Kobra tag from Gaming Trend Senior Member to Costco Pimp Extraordinaire

Especially on the 360 I can't imagine wanting to buy it anywhere else.  I have no worries if mine breaks.  It'll cost me 1.5 hours or so to pack it up, return it, grab a new one and hook it back up.  I don't have anything purchased on my hard drive so that's not a big deal either.  I maybe could have got a slightly better deal at TRU when they had the $100.00 gift card or something, but I paid $470.00 iirc.  That came with an extra controller, a play & charge kit and Live Arcade Unplugged.  Oh yeah and a heck of a lot of peace of mind. 

- the church of Costco

[Purge]

my take - in order to beat sony to market, they basically took what would've traditionally been considered a 'prototype' model, & put it into mass production (certainly explains 'the brick'). cost (& inconvenience to customers who 'want to support the 360' & therefore continue to play ball with them) means absolutely nothing to microsoft - crushing sony/playstation means everything (microsoft doesn't 'share' marketspace - it dominates ('microsoft explorer', anyone? this is nothing new...))...

so if you really do want to support the 360, understand that this is the business model you're supporting, package up that defective unit, hope for the best, & go with the flow, realizing that by doing this, you're simply enabling them to continue doing things their way...

1) "The Brick" also is on laptops, the Wii, etc... they took the heavy heat-generation out of the box. Good or bad, I don't feel it has anything to do with "prototype". There are a TON of electrical and electronic devices that have the power source outside of the box (look at the location for electric transformers for cordless phones, they're generally at the plug in the big-assed connectors).

2) MS is working their way to profitability in emerging markets, just like every other company. Sony hasn't exactly been the benevolent market leader either; I don't think your memory is recalling all the PS2s that died or the upside-down PS1s. 

3) I am supporting games and gaming, not one particular company. I am supporting game devs; if no games were on the 360, I'd not have one.

(can you tell i'm really tired of the ps3-bashing )...

I'm just tired of the bashing. I don't think turning it around on some other product makes it any better.

[jblank]

my take - in order to beat sony to market, they basically took what would've traditionally been considered a 'prototype' model, & put it into mass production (certainly explains 'the brick'). cost (& inconvenience to customers who 'want to support the 360' & therefore continue to play ball with them) means absolutely nothing to microsoft - crushing sony/playstation means everything (microsoft doesn't 'share' marketspace - it dominates ('microsoft explorer', anyone? this is nothing new...))...

so if you really do want to support the 360, understand that this is the business model you're supporting, package up that defective unit, hope for the best, & go with the flow, realizing that by doing this, you're simply enabling them to continue doing things their way...

1) "The Brick" also is on laptops, the Wii, etc... they took the heavy heat-generation out of the box. Good or bad, I don't feel it has anything to do with "prototype". There are a TON of electrical and electronic devices that have the power source outside of the box (look at the location for electric transformers for cordless phones, they're generally at the plug in the big-assed connectors).

2) MS is working their way to profitability in emerging markets, just like every other company. Sony hasn't exactly been the benevolent market leader either; I don't think your memory is recalling all the PS2s that died or the upside-down PS1s. 

3) I am supporting games and gaming, not one particular company. I am supporting game devs; if no games were on the 360, I'd not have one.

(can you tell i'm really tired of the ps3-bashing )...

I'm just tired of the bashing. I don't think turning it around on some other product makes it any better.

You're my hero Purge, well said on all points. 

Why WOULDN'T you want the power supply outside? I'm confused why this is a problem for some.

[warning]

Not to mention Sony's slimline PS2 has "the brick" out side the machine itself.  And I'm glad as the dang thing's pretty much silent.

[semiconscious]

I'm just tired of the bashing. I don't think turning it around on some other product makes it any better.

1) as am i
2) if i finally broke down & did it, it's only because it's been so goddamn lopsided anti-sony up here for the last 3 months (unless, of course, you actually consider all the 'my 360 died' threads ms-bashing?)...

anyway, that's it for me - as you were...

[Hetz]

I'm just tired of the bashing. I don't think turning it around on some other product makes it any better.

1) as am i
2) if i finally broke down & did it, it's only because it's been so goddamn lopsided anti-sony up here for the last 3 months (unless, of course, you actually consider all the 'my 360 died' threads ms-bashing?)...

anyway, that's it for me - as you were...

+1

It's like Sony is the Anti-Christ or something around here for many people.

[jblank]

I'm just tired of the bashing. I don't think turning it around on some other product makes it any better.

1) as am i
2) if i finally broke down & did it, it's only because it's been so goddamn lopsided anti-sony up here for the last 3 months (unless, of course, you actually consider all the 'my 360 died' threads ms-bashing?)...

anyway, that's it for me - as you were...

+1

It's like Sony is the Anti-Christ or something around here for many people.

Huh? Explain please.

This is directed at nobody in particular, but it just seems that a few people seem to take criticism of the PS3 launch, as a personal insult, or as insult to THE COMPANY itself. Neither is accurate, and as someone who owns 2 Sony HDTV's, a Sony home theater system, and 2 Sony upconverting DVD players, I hope I am not included in the minds of some as a Sony "hater". That doesn't mean I necessarily like some of the things they do, especially in regards to user rights of media, but as far as my opinion of the company is concerned, it is for the most part a favorable one.

[denoginizer]

I am not afraid to admit that I do no not like Sony products in general.  I think they have always been over priced and unreliable in my personal experience. That has not stopped me from buying a PSP and 3 PS2s.  I have not yet purchased a PS3 for many reasons.  I think Sony has make so many bad decisions regarding the PS3 it will be hard for them to even come close to the market share that the PS2 enjoyed last generation.  I think they were destined to lose market share to Microsoft regardless of what the did, but they have made it much worse.

I have never been a big fan of Microsoft either.  But I think the fact that they went from not even being in the console business to being on nearly equal footing with Sony in 2 generations is amazing.  I think Microsoft has made many solid decisions with the 360. (1 year head start, Live implementation, warranty extension, etc)