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Rumor: insider reveals truth behind 360 failures, says new SKUs will come

Posted Jan 19, 2008 at 6:01PM EST by QJ Staff

Listed in: Xbox 360 Tags: Dashboard, GPU, Microsoft, motherboards, Ring of Death, xbox 360 titles

In a rather lengthy interview, someone who supposedly worked with Microsoft for years to develop the Xbox 360 shared a few things about the console known for hardware failures. Specifically, the man went into detail regarding Microsoft's ill-advised decisions that led to a faulty gaming machine and what the world's biggest software company intends to achieve using its multimedia platform.

According to this insider, the red ring of death which plagues Xbox 360 units is "caused by anything that fails in the 'digital backbone' on the mother board." However, this does not exactly mean changing boards (from Xenon to Zephyr to Falcon) will eliminate the RROD threat entirely.

The insider cited other causes of the dreaded red ring, including bad parts, incompatible parts that lead to timing problems, bad manufacturing process resulting in flawed solder joints, misapplied heat sinks or thermal interface material, missing parts, broken parts, parts of the wrong value, and missed test coverage.

Even units that are in good condition when they leave the factory are subject to fail early, he said. "The main design flaw was the excessive heat on the GPU warping the mother board around it," explained the insider. He continued, "This would stress the solder joints on the GPU and any bad joints would then fail in early life."

Most people believe the Xbox 360's failure rate is around 30%, and if this person who claims he's an insider is to be believed, the number hit the spot. "This quarter [Microsoft is] expecting 1 M failures, most of those Xenons. Some of those are repeat failures," he cautioned.

Unfortunately, there seems to be no way to tell if your 360 is near death. "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," the insider advised. He also mentioned that dashboard updates periodically brick boxes.

Owners of Xbox 360 units with Falcon motherboards need be warned as well. Quoting the insider, "I've heard that the failure rates for the current design is sub 10%. Much much better, but still too high imoh." He added, "...those designs haven't seen much life yet, so no one knows if that failure rate will hold."

Rumors of the Xbox 360 Ultimate's existence are rampant, and they may not be without merit. "[Microsoft] will come out with new hardware at least once a year until they retire this design. That's the console financial model," he stated. The insider believes Microsoft will keep on churning out new models of the Xbox 360 with key features intact, but with reduced cost and price; and perhaps improved quality if needed.

Gamers will not be happy with new SKUs every year, you say? Microsoft may very well be willing to risk that. Here's what this insider said:

Xbox's mission statement is to preserve the Windows monopoly and extend it into the living room, as a media extender for a Media Center PC, along with a host of other MS and other company's hardware devices that fit into a digital entertainment lifestyle. MS has the bucks to keep losing money on Xbox for a long time, maybe forever. They've already lost around 6 billion dollars.

It's interesting to note that this statement adds up when you consider Bill Gates' keynote speech at CES 2008 about taking high-definition entertainment everywhere. The Xbox 360 is said to be at the roots of home entertainment.

The insider doesn't think Microsoft expects profit from the Xbox, and believes it's all about integration. Citing Microsoft's decision to offer Ford vehicles voice recognition as example, he predicts the giant company will come up with a strategy that involves "integrating their offerings into a digital lifestyle universe" which will be implemented for years to come.

When asked about the possibility of a successor to the Xbox 360, he had an interesting answer: "I understand they are working on it right now. But don't look for it any time soon. It's years away. News flash: Sony and Nintendo are working on their next boxes in some way too."

It's also worth noting that Microsoft could've created the Wii if this insider is for real. His final remark was:

In the middle of '03 I tried to convince our director of "innovation" that we needed to do motion control, simple and intuitive controllers, and focus on family oriented and just plain fun content. Well before the Wii came out. He completely disregarded it.

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So how do you explain all the people with DOA units and all the failures in less than 30 days?

Quality is not high on the depth chart.

But the article is bogus though. Nothing was said that hasn't been on the internet for years already. And it's so vague I don't understand why it was even posted as news.

But the low ball manufacturing process MS uses to make 360's is very well documented on business sites already!

It's just the teenagers that come here that don't understand that there's people in business who could care less if their single system breaks down.

# Falcon — Guest 2008-01-20 03:47

I see.... Father Bill why have you forsaken my Falcon unit?

Oh well, I guess I can sell it at a good price now and wait for the next SKU. Nicolo S. can't do the same coz he owns that old Xenon. LOL!!!!! I won't touch that with a 10-foot pole.

Seriously, this is a shame coz the Xbox 360 has such good games and I've been enjoying them all the way.

# Dude — theaceoffire 2008-01-20 04:38

Is it really worth it? I can't imagine using a device designed to fail 30% of the time... I would be scared to play it.

# ... — mohaas05 2008-01-20 05:11

microsofts already lost like $500 million on the original xbox. as long as they continue to roll in money from windows they don't care. they just want to keep the market away from competitors.

# let's face it... — lavino 2008-01-20 06:49

chances of you buying a Ford and it breaks down in some main part is a lot higher than having it happen on a 360. My co-worker even have that modded slogan "Having towed a Ford lately?"

# damn it! — na2rul 2008-01-20 09:41

I kept my 1 horizontal all this time under the glass stand. carpet too soft to stand vertical.

# what i'll do... — Guest 2008-01-20 11:06

I'll keep mine upright from now on. And I'll buy an industrial exhaust fan for it too ro suck out all the heat!

And maybe I'll move to Siberia sometime soon.

# :) — Guest 2008-01-20 15:25

...I've always been playing with the console upright. I've heard that placing it on a carpet is a bad idea because it heats up faster.

# well — Binary 2008-01-20 17:47

I guess I gotta keep my limted edition Halo 3 standing upright but I hear that stuff will mess with your disc?

# Thanks to Phil for this info... — Binary 2008-01-20 18:15

Disc Drive - Having the console vertical may eventually cause some hassle with your drive as when it loads the disc in it needs centering inside (against gravity). Whereas horizontal the disc is much more central to start off with. On the plus side tho the laser actually reads better Vertically.

CPU Cooling - Heat rises. The Heatpipe on the CPU Heatsink is curved in a way that the bend will be at the bottom and the two ends will be up meaning the heat pipe is redundant. The heatpipe only serves a purpose when the 360 is Horizontal.

GPU Cooling - Heat rises. Hence the heat from the CPU being badly cooled now falls onto the GPU heatsink. The GPU heatsink is already less than adequate (especially if your 360 is older and doesn't have the add on heatsink) so adding more heat from the CPU isn't going to help matters.

Solder melting - The heat inside the 360 can cause the solder balling under the GPU and CPU to soften, in a vertical position this means the two processors will be wanting to move down due to gravity (pray to god this doesn't happen because thats a RRoD for sure).

Having said all that I have my 360 vertical as it fits in my setup that way. It's directly next to an equally hot PS3 and works fine (I try not to run them both at the same time). Plus I'm not modding this one so I've got the warranty to fall back on.

# lavino — Stealth! 2008-01-21 10:56

Actually that slogan is full of $hit. You have a higher chance of a 360 RRoD compared to cars. I have a friend who has a ford, and his rarely craps out.

So keep that crap out of here Ford cars are more reliable compared to 360. However from what i know the 360 console hasn't even gotten the RRoD and i say its way more reliable than it was.

I can't see it craping out now.

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