Wow. Good on Microsoft for upping their quality standards. From almost 25% to around 4% failure rate is a pretty good drop.

Bear in mind that the 4% could simply be because most of those newer consoles are still under manufacturer warranty (MS did extend it) and are not being serviced by this third party warranty service that collected these figures. It wouldn't surprise me at all if the failure rate had decreased, but a decrease of that much... seems a bit like wishful thinking.

From personal experience and reading this plus other surverys, I believe that the XBOX 360's were essentially a 100% fail. The only ones that did not "fail" were ones that were never or only lightly used.

Use mine all the time and its a few years old and its never had an issue. Other than the new retarded XBE home screen its worked fine.

Mine sits under my TV and has plenty of air flow. I guess Maybe I'm doing something wrong.

Don't forget that the 25% figure is an average that includes the new 4% consoles. I wouldn't be surprised to see a failure rate above 100% for the first couple of 360 generations. Every single person I know who bought a 360 during the first couple of years they were available has had to send it back to MS at least once, multiple times for most of them.

I am on my fifth xbox, the last three being Elites. Luckily for the first four, I was covered by a product replacement plan. I just got my current Elite back after getting the E74 error. I am not a power gamer by any means; four or so hours on every other Friday, and about 4 hours average a week. Ridiculous. Microsoft is engaged in a "lazy" recall, meaning they know there are problems but it's cheaper to simply fix those that break.

I too am a casual gamer 4 to 8 hours a week of play and on my second elite after E74 error. I was told this was an internal issue and that was all. Best Buy honored full warranty and gave me a new unit, but I do expect this to happen again on the new one. Way to go MS I love my 360 but quit making systems that break its a enough to make me trade everything in for a PS3 and be done with it.

Yea, my launch PS3 is on all day, everyday. No problems at all. God, I love machines that work!

Like kizer, I have one from a couple years ago that I use regularly, and it works like a champ. Only problem I ever had was that it was sitting right on top of my HD TiVo, and the heat caused the TiVo to crash. A little gap between them for air flow fixed that, and the 360 itself never has had any issues.

Just lucky, I guess?

i am on my second xbox, as are three of my friends, i does not seem like microsoft is losing any money seeing as how at least four of us bought second consloes, i seems to help their buisiness, i for one love my xbox, the games, the market place and of course the DLC options. i sits beside my still working Sega Saturn and PS2.
now that the PS3 is $300 i might consider one, but they need to come out with better exclusive games.

Oh yeah, i forgot, microsoft xbox costomer service sucks, it is like they are told to give you so much trouble that you say F***it and go buy another, i got my first one fixed(in only nine days, can you belive that) but i had to be very stern with the people i talked to and threaten to swich to sony of nintendo, that did get there attention. watch out for them claiming that whatever address you give them is not a valid address, this is their basic tactic to deter you.
don't give up on your console, if you do make sure to tell it that you are going to sell it to north korea for missle parts, that always gets mine working right.--tough love

I've put over 500 hours into Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion alone under my nonlive screenname Reaper. I purchased my Xbox in March or April of 06. No problems whatsoever. So please spare me the bs about every 360 failing. That doesn't discount the high failure rate but I question how people are truly taking care of their systems. That goes for Ps3's and Wii's as well, though the Wii isn't pushing any hardware limitations by any means, so those things shouldn't be failing whatsoever. Ps3's are, yet the failure rate is lower, which says something about quality as well.

A timeframe would help. All electronics have a 100% fail rate if you don't associate any particular duration of use with it. What quantifies a "newer iteration"?

I have seen other reports that push that fail rate to 50%. These are reports from users, not just from someplace that offers their own warranties. Check out the September issue of Game Informer also. My local game retailer claims that they see 3-5 360 returns a week, as opposed to 1 PS3 every couple.

I have had 4 XBox's in the last 3 years. I am on my 5th one. Several of the failures had laser drill patterns in the CD and ruined the game CD.

The last XBox death was not covered under their warranty.

I was told by a retailer that after installing the modem they experienced 100% failure within 2 hours. They had to replace over 100 units in a 3 month period.

Interesting!

I work on 360's on the side and dealing with these complete pieces of fecal matter detured me from ever buying one. Oer the past 3 years I've worked on numerous 360's, but only one PS3.

I've had 2 ps1's fail, and one ps2. I'm not buying anymore sony systems. My xbox 360 did fail once after 18 months. Microsoft fixed in in one week at no cost to me. Nintendos NEVER break!

I have used my Xbox 360 everyday for 3-4 hours a day (sometimes more) for 2 years and never had a problem.

Micros@ft isn't getting any money from me for an Xbox... I'm getting a PS3 and be done with it, period.
Having one Micros@ft product that's dodgy is enough...

My launch day 360 is still working to this day. I am the only one of friends who hasn't had their first 360 die though. I play it around 10 to 15 hours per week.