Has Anyone Noticed console failure rate

I'm one of those people with a launch 360 that has yet to die... obviously, I'm pretty satisfied with it, but most of my friends have had the RROD at some time.

 

I never had any console from MS. But my Rev.2 PS3 quit last time.
After that i buy an REV.3 PS3 and its perfect!
First time the Rev.2 quit i look after an replacement CD Unit. I see Sony makes with the Rev.3 an new BD Unit (two Lens).
I think the newest generation of PS3 is well engineered.

 

Blaming the solder is sort of missing the point - yes, it's probably true that if the 360 was assembled using Sn/Pb solder these failures would not have occured, but all that means is that the old solder is more tolerant than the RoHS stuff (which is well known - and was one of the reasons that the electronics industry fought RoHS).

Like most of these problems, it's a combination of a number of small things - the first is that the GPU had a small heatsink and poor airflow, so it experienced a significant temperature rise, the second was that the expansion coefficient of the underfill material on the chip was not well matched to the PCB it was attached to (and in this case "well matched" is not the same as "equal to", since there is a temperature delta across the interface between the chip and the PCB, and you need to take this into account), and finally you have the lower tolerance of the RoHS solder to stress cracking.

So it probably is true to say that better ventilation would have reduced the incidence of these failures, but in the end they are still down to poor engineering - although it does seem to have been addressed in the new consoles by a combination of better heatsinking, a die shrink (which reduces the power consumption) and a change to the underfill material on the chip.

Incidentally, nVidia had precisely the same sort of problems with some of their GPUs - in that case because their design docs were a little optimistic about the TDP - since I don't have access to the design details about the 360 GPU I can't be sure if that was a factor there, too - but I wouldn't be surprised.

 

been buying consoles since the days of tv plug in games like pong and the first onee i ever had problems with was the phat ps2. everything else ive owned is still working to this day.

the optical drive died in my phat ps2 but i wanted to replace it with a slim anyway and thats still working fine now.

i bought a 2nd hand dreamcast a whil ago and it seems to have suffered some damage as it locks up a fair bit. and i think the system battery needs replacing because i need to set the clock every time i turn it on.

and of course, the 360. first one lasted me 14 months before dying. 2nd one has been going 20 months so far (touch wood)

 

So far in my gaming history:

2x NES blinking problem.
1x SNES with videocard issues.
1x Sega CD PSU dead.
1x Panasonic 3DO spontanious reboots.
3x Playstation's with weak lasers that I had to play upside down...
1x PS2 laser died
1x Dreamcast controller port died.
3x Xbox 360 RROD

 

I've never had a console actually break under my own use. Then again, I definitely haven't put the hours into my later-gen consoles that a lot of people have.

Anecdotes:
-I've played through a few FPSs on my 60GB PS3, which was bought with a bad power supply (best I could say was that it got hit by lighting by my diagnosis, it required some serious effort to get the old PSU working again, and a replacement fixed it in a jiffy). It, along with my Dreamcasts, Saturn, and 2/3 of my Gamecubes were all bought preowned and haven't skipped a beat.
-My good friend had a launch 360 that JUST FINALLY red ringed, and he blames that on how he started watching movies in his bedroom and accidentally leaving it on all night. He's the sort of guy that gets a LOT of hours out of his consoles.
My brother bought a 360 just before the HDMI models came out, or perhaps literally when they did (but got an older one out of ignorance). I've removed the X-Clamps, and reflowed the board twice now. It's now under my ownership and seems to be a lot more solid now, but once again I don't really play it that much.
-I've repaired wayyyy too many PS2s, 90% MK1 models. That's to be expected, as they were the original failing hardware.
-My first Dreamcast, which was a launch unit (but I'm the second owner) has seen WAY too many hours of gameplay and still works perfect. I let a friend borrow it a few years ago as his kicked the bucket, and then one day he tells me MINE had stopped working. I was very upset. But then, I get it home, and it's back from the grave. I'm sure there's many more tens of hours on that same machine by now after it has become a zombie

 

IT should be noted:

My PS3 brings up more bugs than my XBOX 360 has ever done - the 360 just bricks eventually, the PS3 keeps torturing me to no end sometimes - especially when I try to play Marvel vs Capcom 2 online - the system hangs completely half the time. I ve got tons of issues with Outrun online Arcade, and I can't get my remote start to work out as it used to despite not having changed anything on the router.

I don't know what gives, but minor things like that really piss me off because they're so small and undeserving yet accumulate to make a bad image of a console.

 

My Binatone TV Master, which I got new in the 1970's, still works fine, granted it doesn't get used daily, but it has done a hell of a lot of hours.

I bought a brand new Game Gear, when the GG was first released, this failed after little use, just after the guarantee ran out, and was very disappointing, considering it cost a lot of money and SEGA H/W is usually good.

I'm on my 7th Xbox 360, failure of this magnitude is bad, but thats the trouble when there is only one real console on the market for proper gaming :-(

...Apart from the great games on the 360, the fact that repairs have cost zero has helped, in the short term.

 

come to think of it, I think my GB pocket, GBA and N64 have been the consoles that never ever gave me a single issue. Amazing.

 

My first N64 was handed down to cousins and abused like hell, then it came back and moved with me 7 times in boxes and got kicked around and then ended up years in a cold and moist place (garden shed) with spiders and other animals living in it.. but when i hooked it up last year it still worked fine

 

I've never had any console fail on me at all.

I would have expected my old PS1 to fail since it got a hell of a lot of use from 96 when i first got it to late 99 when i started playing it less and it was dropped quite a few times as well as being bashed about quite a bit but it still worked as good as it had from day one although it eventually got smashed up in anger.

 

I'd assume it's the same blasted capacitors that crap out of most GGs, which of course wouldn't be sega's manufacturing at fault but at the very most part selection (I'd assume they didn't know the supplier would give them crap that only lasts short time, but who knows, maybe they went cheap?).

 

thats why iplay n64,those things are built like a brick

 

I dropped my PlayStation and the laser stopped working. Other than that I've never had a problem.

 

wait...i forgot about my atari lynx. it died of unknown causes. shame. it was awesome

 

As far as reliable hardware goes I know that Nintendo stuff will rarely let you down. I've seen children literally abuse their Nintendo DS until the screen hinge is so broken the two halves just hang there all floppy, the DS is so full of scratches that you can't tell what colour it is, there are numerous signs of dropping it and possibly puncturing it. And it still works most of the time. Same counts for all gameboys: super tough.

I know for one thing that the cheaper mass production electronic components do not have a 100% fail proof rating. There's always a chance of a 'bad run' of chips where the specifics are way below the minimum standards. The only way to completely avoid this is to test,test and test again. But that costs money of course... ;-)

 

Ive only had 2 systems break and ds was one of them

the charging port was broken and the system wouldn't charge, and id have to say best customer service ever, i called them, they said they would send me a new one and then when i got it to send my broken one back.

Nintendo hands down has the best customer service ever.

as for the other system, a launch 360 lasted 4 years with about 10 hours a day on it, but i can say it did live its life.

 

I've had a dreamcast since launch and it still works fine. First time retail discs wouln't read after putting in some back ups that were burned at a different speed then usual.

Pulled the ribbion cable out from the controller port plugged it back in and it worked fine.

One time it kept reseting, but cleaned the pins that connect to the psu and it works fine. I do sometimes have to push the controller in harder for it to be recognized but it works fine.

360 had since launch rrod 2 weeks after playing sf4 constantly. Got it back been fine since. As far as my other systems go they all have worked fine. I even got lucky with my ps2, which is notorious for the laser going out.

 

I haven't had much problem with consoles failing. Ofcourse I had the annoying NES blinking problem but thats not really a problem. My PS1 never did break down but it was a 7501 model. My PS2 was fine too, but again it was a 50001 model not an early model. I had a sort of console failure where I messed up my Dreamcast's lid sensor by leaving weight ontop of the system. But that wasn't really Sega's fault.

I'm pretty sure the first system and only one I've ever had die on me without any helpful neglect would be the Xbox 360 which I'm on my 3rd console now. The first two actually lasted for quite awhile. I'm on my 3rd which I hope will also be the last replacement.

 

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