The Xbox 360 has become almost synonymous with hardware failure and "Red Ring of Death" since its launch in late 2005. While anecdotal evidence suggested that the rate of E74 errors was decreasing, a recent survey by Game Informer, which claimed that as many as 55 percent of Xbox 360 owners had suffered through a hardware failure, rekindled the debate. Speaking to GameSpot, Xbox Live and Xbox 360 director of product management Aaron Greenberg acknowledged the problems with earlier versions of the hardware, though emphasized that current Xbox 360s are of "fantastic quality."
"I can tell you the consoles we're making today have lower-heat chips and better cooling, and we're seeing fantastic quality in those consoles today," said Greenberg. "That said, I know people have had issues with systems which were bought earlier in the life cycle and that's part of the reason why we implemented our unprecedented three-year warranty for anyone who gets the three red-ring flashing light error or the E74 error."
"So I think we've made it clear we stand by the quality of our product and we will make it right by fixing the problem at no extra cost to you," he continued. "But at the same time, we've been working hard to make improvements in the products we're currently making, so I really feel like most of this is well behind us."
This is one of the first times we've seen Microsoft admit to making the Xbox 360 better heat controlled, although it still dances around the issue of the quality of early-gen Xbox 360s and what the console's failure rate really is.
2 Comments
August 27, 2009
How about just getting a reliable product out in the first place. The 3 year warranty is no excuse. It is still a pain in the butt to send your xbox back and wait for a new one. It's been years since the release of the Xbox 360 and they are just now getting it right?
August 28, 2009
What exactly do u want them to admit to? We all know the early adopter failure rate is a healthy 99.9%.