I turned on my secondary Xbox 360 last night to get ready to watch something, and lo and behold, the 3 red lights appear. I tried turning it off and on a few times, but it was down for the count. I was pretty shocked, since this 360 was a Falcon model, and I always assumed that Falcon’s were a lot less impervious to melting down. But alas, my secondary 360 bites the dust, only two months after my primary one did. My percentage numbers don’t exactly equal the 54.2% 360 failure rate that GameInformer has reported (and Microsoft doesn’t deny it) – it’s actually greater. Of the five different 360′s that have come into my possession, 4 have RRoD’ed on me, while the 5th one I returned because it scratched my discs. That sets the tally on my 360 fail rate to 80%, at least from a RRoD perspective. It’s 100% if you count a faulty disc drive as a console that has failed.
This latest one to fail on me is a Falcon model, which surprises me since it should be less susceptible to failure than earlier models (and I guess it was, since it lasted longer than all of the others). It’s funny because people that aren’t “serious gamers” don’t understand how people like me can go through five or more 360s failing and still continue to buy the system. My secondary 360 failed last night, so I just printed out the shipping label and packaged it in the box that Microsoft sent me with my other repaired console, and will drop it off at UPS today on my lunch break. The PS3 cannot offer what the 360 does, so I’ll just keep replacing and/or buying new 360s because the games and the software are just too good.
For those considering buying a 360 but are getting scared off by my tales of woe, keep in mind that I’m not paying for any of these repairs, so it’s really a two week inconvenience. In a sense, that’s why I have two 360′s – because I expect them to break. Of course, the newest hardware revision is definitely the safest one yet, so let me alleviate your fears a little by pointing you to the chart above.
First of all, I believe the primary reason why 360s give the 3 red lights/RRoD is due to the GPU chip getting too hot so it just melts down. Note that the original Xenon model (the 2005 launch model) had a 90nm CPU chip, a 90nm GPU chip, and 175W consumption. The Zephyr was no different hardware-wise when it was released months later, save for the HDMI port. Those two models died a lot, and are probably the brunt of the 54.2% that GameInformer reports. When the Falcon came out in the latter half of 2007, it sported a smaller and cooler CPU chip, running at 65nm, and thus a lower power consumption of 120W. This helped in keeping the 360 a little bit cooler, but in the end, my Falcon Arcade model just died so the Falcon isn’t exactly impervious. After all, it’s the GPU that melts down, and its size hasn’t changed. Finally, the most recent released model (end of 2008), the Jasper, now contains a cooler and smaller 65nm GPU chip, resulting in even less of a power consumption, at 100W. With the shrinking of the GPU, the 360 should be quite reliable now – but even if it were to fail, remember that there’s a 3 year warranty on it.
If you buy a 360 today, you are most likely buying a Jasper unit since they’ve been out on the market for almost a year now, giving plenty of time for the older revisions to get cleared out. In any case, if you’re worried you might buy a 360 that’s not a Jasper, try to buy it at a store where the inventory moves quickly, such as Amazon.com or Dell.com (people have reported Jaspers from Dell). I think if the failure rate poll was run today on just 360 Jasper models, it’d be a lot closer to the standard, and not the staggering 54.2%. As for me, I don’t even use my secondary 360 for gaming – just streaming media so I’ll be ok in this two week interim.
