Pressure Mounts On Xbox Red Ring Of Death Admission: Details Here

One in three experiencing the problem, according to some US retailers

Posted by Staff
Pressure Mounts On Xbox Red Ring Of Death Admission: Details Here
By Adam Hartley

Evidence is building that the Xbox 360’s ‘Red Ring of Death’ is indeed more than a ‘standard error’. If recent reports from US retail sources are to be believed, up to one in three Xbox 360s have experienced the RRoD. If this is true, then the failure rate of 306s is six to ten times that of the standard U.S. consumer electronics industry norm.

“The real numbers were between 30 to 33 percent,” a former EB Games employee Matthieu G., told Daily Tech news interviewer this week.

He added that the failure rate was even greater for launch consoles. “We had 35 Xbox 360s at launch I know more than half of them broke within the first six months (red lights or making circles under the game discs). Two of them were dead on arrival.”

An anonymous Best Buy customer service department manager said that failure rates for the console were “between a quarter to a third” noting that: “We see a ton of [Xbox 360s] come back all the time. We strongly push our customers to buy our service plans no matter what they buy, but it is especially important for them with the Xbox 360. It’s a lucky thing for us that Microsoft extended the factory warranty to one year, because we were having a hell of a time dealing with the launch units. Now we don’t have to deal with those broken [Xbox 360s] until their second year, for those who have purchased the two year plans.”

For its part, Microsoft has always to claimed that the Xbox 360 failure rate falls within the industry standard of three to five percent.

You may remember SPOnG’s story of June 29th in which we reported that UK console repair specialists, Micromart, has stopped offering a repair service for Xbox 360s to its retail customers.

SPOnG spoke with Geoff Croft, Customer Support Manager for Micromart up in the north-east of England earlier today. Geoff helpfully detailed the reasons behind the dreaded ‘Red Ring of Death’ and outlined the company’s reasons behind the decision to stop repairing 360s for its UK retail customers.

When we informed him of the news coming out of the US that claims of up to one in three Xbox 360s experienced the problem Croft told us:

“Well, I can’t comment on specific defect rates. All I can say is that we have never, ever before stopped taking in any particular console for any particular reason. Sure, we had issues with PlayStation 1 and 2… there are often teething troubles with most consoles… but we were put in a position with the Xbox 360 where the available resource we had [to fix them] and the anecdotal evidence we were reading about in online reports just made it lead to us to take this decision to refer our customers experiencing this problem directly to Microsoft”

What’s more, he added that, “the reliability following repairs and the reliability of the available repair methods isn’t something that we’re happy with.”

So, SPOnG asked the console repair man, what exactly is the the problem?

“The problem was mainly a motherboard issue, we believe, related to dry joints (solder on the motherboard) overheating. There could be any number of issues why this is happening, but essentially it is a problem with overheating.

Can it not just be re-soldered and fixed straightforwardly?

“No, we’re talking thousands of joints which need to be ‘reflowed’… I’ve seen the anecdotal stuff online as to how gamers have been fixing the problem – with heat guns, towels, hairdryers, shoving the thing in the windscreen of a car in the sunny day, even, quite worryingly wrapping it in tinfoil and sticking it in the oven or the microwave!! - the main point with all of these ‘temporary fixes’ being that the solder reflows and resets into a position that makes the 360 work, temporarily.”

“We’re obviously independent from Microsoft and we recommend our customers go directly to Microsoft to get the motherboard replaced… as this is the only way of repairing the problem, in our opinion,” Croft informed us.

Aside from obvious concerns about gamers sticking broken Xbox 360s in the microwave for 30 seconds in the hope that they will come back to life (top tip kids: DON’T DO THIS!) Micromart informed us that Microsoft currently charges customers £90 for repair of the problem.

SPOnG has put a call in to Microsoft in the UK for an update on the matter – specifically to find out if repaired Xbox 360s are fitted with new motherboards or reconditioned ones. We’ll update you on that shortly.



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Comments

Matthew Watkins 3 Jul 2007 14:11
1/15
I've had three units. My first unit started crashing back to the dashboard with disc read errors. The replacement unit they sent me (not my original console) worked for several days before producing the red ring of death. So far, third is going strong. They are misleading everybody about the hardware failure rate, and need to come clean. Amazingly, some people seem happy for Microsoft to string them along and treat them badly. Most consumers would run a mile when faced with a defective product. So far, the PS3 hardware seems to be utterly reliable from the start. At least sony managed to get things right...
ozfunghi 3 Jul 2007 15:09
2/15
Get things right? I don't know about that, they just spotted the bad ones before they left the factory... i've heard of as many or more PS3's being broken after manufacturing (CPU and BR laser being the biggest problems), but they just didn't let those consoles ship. Either way, that's still a lot better.

I wonder how many of those "sold" 360's are actually refurbished or replacements, instead of actual sales. For all we know, with those numbers (1 on 3 breaking down), Wii has left the 360 in the dust.
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mike hunt 3 Jul 2007 15:28
3/15
Please SPONG or someone - just delete "tinfoil and microwaves" bit in the story asap.

Not a nice thought.
Bob Fossill 3 Jul 2007 15:50
4/15
mike hunt wrote:
Please SPONG or someone - just delete "tinfoil and microwaves" bit in the story asap.

Not a nice thought.


One word - GREMLINS!
TimSpong 3 Jul 2007 16:33
5/15
mike hunt wrote:
Please SPONG or someone - just delete "tinfoil and microwaves" bit in the story asap.


Darwin takes precedence here...
alexh2o 3 Jul 2007 16:47
6/15
Whats the betting Microsoft will admit the problem right as they release their 65nm processor, cooler 360, saying sorry and theyve fixed it all!
Pugizl 3 Jul 2007 17:10
7/15
ahhaha.. good point alex..

Although they will have to flush out all the 90 mm ones

MS Has made a piece of garbage and are selling it.. just like windows vista
craig 3 Jul 2007 19:15
8/15
I've just rang for the fourth time i paid them £85 on the 11/6/07, now when i rang the service says there is a 25 working day repair time.Is there only one person repairing them?? can we draft some Polish in to help?
I just want my xbox back you gypos!

Juno Blaster 3 Jul 2007 20:11
9/15
craig wrote:
I've just rang for the fourth time i paid them £85 on the 11/6/07, now when i rang the service says there is a 25 working day repair time.Is there only one person repairing them?? can we draft some Polish in to help?
I just want my xbox back you gypos!



Snarff!

I'm actually on my fifth console. Not too pissed off since I got a bunch of Microsoft points, two games and a functioning 360 for my trouble. Don't bother with Microsoft though. Bring it back to the shop if your receipt's valid. Twenty five days is taking the piss.

And off topic: Humans Rule OK 'Conversationally, thought, they're just a bit dull.' Errrr..your grammar does not cumpute.
Hypnotoad 3 Jul 2007 23:50
10/15
I've actually 'repaired' more 360's than I care to remember (for friends, not as a business). It's true though, initially, all I was doing was grilling the mainboard with a heatgun for a few minutes and hey presto, working 360. But sure enough, the problem would always return. The issue appears to be with the xclamps that holds the heat sinks on...when the system gets hot (not overheating as such, just hot within regular operating parameters) the board softens slightly and the xclamp flexes the board just far enough to break contact in some of the tracks.

So what the solution appears to be is to replace that xclamp with screws and washers that hold the heatsink directly to the board, without adding any pressure. So far, since I applied this new fix, not a single 360 has died. Also, if you look at the new Elite model 360's, they've added some kind of glue around the GPU and CPU that theoretically should re-enforce these vulnerable areas from flexing when hot...should have just found an alternative to the xclamps if you ask me but that was probably not financially viable.
Zoot Alors 4 Jul 2007 00:12
11/15
Hypnotoad wrote:
It's true though, initially, all I was doing was grilling the mainboard with a heatgun for a few minutes and hey presto, working 360. But sure enough, the problem would always return.


Errrr... and the 360 is a piece of 'consumer' electronics? Man! Mine hasn't gone SPOING! yet... but if it does, I don't have a friend like you to fix it.

What were those.... MegaDrives and SNESes like?

Ouch....

Jason Green 5 Jul 2007 04:07
12/15
I'm sorry, but you guys are claiming a 33% defect rate based on the anecdotal evidence of an ex EB Games employee? This article takes journalism to a new low. This whole situation isn't helped by the myriad of Playstation fanboys who seem to take every opportunity to point out flaws in the 360 regardless of whether they exist or not.
Kaidra 5 Jul 2007 06:21
13/15
Why is it that people dismiss criticism as fanboy posts? If anything, I'm a HUGE 360 fanboy. Absolutely love it! That doesn't help me with my 3 busted 360's though and MS isn't a lot of help either to be honest. I understand that MS is now trying to fix the problem with an added heatsink on the GPU. Hope that helps, as 360's are failing en masse!
tyrion 5 Jul 2007 07:31
14/15
Jason Green wrote:
I'm sorry, but you guys are claiming a 33% defect rate based on the anecdotal evidence of an ex EB Games employee? This article takes journalism to a new low. This whole situation isn't helped by the myriad of Playstation fanboys who seem to take every opportunity to point out flaws in the 360 regardless of whether they exist or not.

So what do you say to the guy who recently claimed 11 broken 360s and had MS support read out his fault history to back up his claim? He's obviously getting a load of enjoyment out of this 360s when he has them, but then he has had 11 of them die on him.

To me that sounds like a fanboy, putting experience aside and still loving the console. Then again, if he can't get his gaming fix from anywhere else he may feel like he has to keep exchanging them. Either way, he has had 11 360s die on him!
vasilii 23 Sep 2009 17:18
15/15
I found this interesting article about how to fix xbox 360 ring of death. Check it out: http://www.1up.com/do/blogEntry?bId=8997386&publicUserId=6058961
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