Since the launch of the Xbox 360 one of the major topics on Xbox 360 forums has been about the dubious manufacturing quality of Microsoft’s Xbox 360 console – never before has a console attracted so much attention for the this reason.
Everywhere you turn, there’s another story of a broken 360 and anyone you speak to has either had their console fail on them, or knows of many others who have. It really is the problem that simply won’t go away.
Well, with Microsoft sticking to its 4 – 5% failure rate story, we figured we’d have another look at our survey, which has at the time of writing attracted 3780 submissions and 2355 comments – the majority of which are from angry owners who feel cheated by the Xbox 360’s build quality and Microsoft’s after sales service.
One example of this was left by Gamertag Jarandco, who commented: “Had original Xbox 360 [die] after about 14 months. Due to it being out of warranty had to pay £80 for it to be fixed, well for them to send me a different one anyway… I disagree with having to pay that after they repaired the American 360s for free, they weren’t very helpful on the phone either!â€
At the time of writing, 2,315 (61 per cent) responses to the survey have complained that they’ve got through at least one console, with many having got through even more than that.
Obviously we accept that our figures are probably skewed towards the negative, but such a response is still unprecedented and we’re sure that if in a year's time we ran a similar survey on our sister site PS-Gamer.com we wouldn’t get anywhere near such a response. In fact, we may well do this…
Anyway, it’s not just us who believes this problem is beyond that of other consoles, after getting through 3 consoles, Gamertag henk live left the message: “MS dare to say they don't have a problem (Yeah right), I have been a gamer for 25 years and I never have seen this kind of reliability with a console.â€
In addition to lacking consumer confidence, you have to wonder how many people are actually giving up on the Xbox 360 altogether!
“This system is poorly manufactured and should have never passed QC. The only reason it passed QC was because MS wanted to launch first so they could make a profit… at the disregard of the consumer,†begins Gamertag mantis01, who then concludes: “Shame on you, MS. I will now switch my gaming loyalties to Sony.â€
In fact, during our latest trawl of the comments section, we only came by one comment left in defence of Microsoft.
“Having worked exclusively in the games retail sector since well before the launch of the 360, in my experience there has been just as many 360s reported faulty as there has been with any other console,†reckons Gamertag MightyGogita.
“In the past few months I have seen more PS3s coming back faulty than 360s actually.â€
