Dean Takahashi exposes the inner story of Microsoft's Xbox 360 woes

Dean Takahashi, a tech journalism maestro if there ever was one, has turned in a truly epic expose of Microsoft and the Xbox 360s red ring of death problems. Over the course of six pages, Takahashi paints a portrait of the naivete, incompetence, sloppy planning, terrible design, ambivalence and just all around poor quality control that has been endemic to the 360 from the very first moment of its design.

How bad is the situation? In Spring 2006, Microsoft had 500,000 defective consoles sitting in warehouses: 50 percent of all consoles failed quality tests on first pass. It's now up to an 85% success rate: 15 out of 100 Xbox 360s that come off the factory line just plain don't work.

This is just an incredible read, too good to summarize or blockquote: although a great console, the Xbox 360's quality problems is one of the greatest fuck ups in hardware history. You owe yourself to slack off work for an hour to read this.

Xbox 360 Defects: An Inside History of Microsoft's Video Game Console Woes [Venture Beat]

Discussion

Take a look at this

#1 posted by Gary61 , September 8, 2008 8:01 AM

John, double-check your math .....
15 out of 100 units that FAIL is a 15% failure rate - NOT 85% as you post (it's an 85% pass rating).

John doing math = FAIL

(sorry, couldn't resist)

#2 posted by John Brownlee , September 8, 2008 9:16 AM

That's not really true. It's just not clear from the way I worded it what 85% refers to. 85% SUCCESS is what should have been there. And is now.

#3 posted by BBNinja , September 8, 2008 9:20 AM

I only turn my 360 on every full moon, and I regularly burn a biscuit to the vengeful gods of the red ring lest I be smote too.

Slowly yet surely I'm inching towards finishing...COD2.

#4 posted by Enochrewt , September 8, 2008 10:35 AM

Hah! Sweet vindication provided by Dean Takahashi!! I've been through 7 360s, and every time I mention it someone tells me I'm doing something wrong with them.

That being said, I've never had any problems with MS's customer service when I had a broken console, it's always been top notch. Except for that idiot automated system Max. If Max were a real person, he would be dragged out into the street and shot for being so hip and annoying.