30 Percent Failure Rate for the 360

Apparently, Microsoft is still letting customers down on the reliability of the Xbox 360, despite the addition of a new heatsink to repaired consoles to help cope with heating issues. The Elite has recently been spotted with an epoxied CPU and GPU as well, so it looks like Microsoft is still actively trying to address the dreaded 'red ring of death' problem which has been plaguing the console throughout its existence. Incidentally, we've had two die in the office already from the same problem.

A manager at an Australian EB Games store recently spoke up about the issue, though he/she wisely chose to remain anonymous in an attempt to avoid The Eye of Gates;

"We are definitely getting faulty hardware returns of the Xbox 360, but nowhere near as much as we used to when it first came out," he/she said. "On initial launch, it was close to 30 per cent of our 360s were coming back faulty".

Another Sydney-based retailer gave a similar report;

"Out of the Nintendo Wii, the PS3 and the Xbox 360, the Microsoft product is the only one that we have had constant problems with. In fact when we sell the Xbox 360 we tell customers to contact Microsoft if they "Ever have a problem".

"At one stage we were getting calls everyday however this has slowed down. The failure rate must be well over 30 percent which when you look at a PC or iPod the failure rate is less than 2 percent."

No doubt the new heatsink which has secretly added to repaired console is doubtlessly behind the drop in repairs as the Xbox 360 was notoriously prone to heating issues and gamers had been driven to all sorts of methods in order to solve the problem.

Ever had a problem with your 360? Let us know about it in the forums, which are delightfully fan-boy free!