Great review! Spot on! I couldn't have said it better myself. Email it to billg@microsoft.com!

Anything with a 30% failure rate doesn't deserve more than a C

@PwnySlaystation: Last I checked, MS extended the warrentee period to 3 years (damn good) and the newer units don't have the same failure issues?

Can anyone substantiate a 30% failure rate on Xbox 360 boxes these days (or even in the past)?

What's the big problem with WM. I have a WM phone and I love it. It does everything, and it has 3G support. I don't see the gripes with windows mobile. Giving it a D is nonsense.

I went to a Microsoft developer event a little while ago. NDA forbids me to say where and when. The host wouldnt stop hitting the same tired points over and over again.
(a)Microsoft does software reeeeaaly well
(b)Microsoft doesnt do hardware

We all know the first one is a crock. I mean maybe in comparison to some DB developers and game publishers they can be called diligent? But yeah Vista is a sluggish pile of poop.
The second is an outright lie. keyboards, mice, Zune, Xbox, not to mention the much touted Polycom killer- Roundtable (which I have yet to see on Giz?).

I just finished setting up my fourth Vista machine for the house - my wife is getting a new laptop for Xmas. My past experiences with Vista have been absolutely trouble-free, setting up a Media Center under the floor of the living room (silent HTPC) in the basement, my own PC (A four or five year old nforce2 based Athlon XP machine) and an identical machine for my wife, which is to be passed to my dad after Xmas. All of the machines have different uses, none have had a hitch of problems. If not for the constant reboots from updates I have confidence that I would easily break my own personal record of 92 days of uptime on the HTPC

However those are all custom built - with the new laptop I may encounter the same issues as other have. We will see. My own theory is a lot of people have heard of issues and have insisted on XP because they were entirely happy with it - I know I was. Really, the only thing pulling me to Vista was Media Center.

XBOX 360 division gets A-? Dudes running around with 9 (lost count of that famous dude) or more broken 360's shouldn't have to deal with that. That's ridiculous. And if all the problems are ALWAYS the RRoD, then something is seriously wrong.

@calaverasgrandes: "(a)Microsoft does software reeeeaaly well" -- If he meant in the same way McDonalds does hamburgers really well, then I agree.

Agreed- I'd mark Xbox 360 down to a "B" or lower for the hardware problems.

@slingblade: You know, anecdotal evidence of hardware problems is complete BS for proving how reliable a product is. I know 3 people that own Wii's. One of them (my boss) had a defective one. Does that mean the Wii failure rates is 30%?

People tend to communicate (read "whine") when things go wrong, not when things work properly.

@PwnySlaystation:

Agree. RRoD has 30% failure rate and that should automatically make the highest rating possible a C for that category. The fact that MS has manned-up and increased the warranty is definitely a smart move-- but does not erase the inconvenience of sending out your Deadbox and waiting for its return. And the noise...Why does everyone forget the screaming of the "cooling fans"? (In quotes because if they actually cooled the machine, the chipset would not heat up and produce the pretty red lights arrayed in a circular pattern)

Kudos for on-line functionality and quality game library. Could have had a slam dunk with XBox, MS, but you blew it and should get a C.

@OldSchoolGadgetLover:
On THAT note, Vista works great for me (and for many many others). Yes, it didn't work perfectly when I got it in February, but these days, drivers and software are designed for Vista. A "D" seems harsh. It seems Giz is still judging it based on Vista's performance earlier in the year vs. today.

we're talking 2007 and in 2007, new xbox360's are fixed, i have ne and it runs fine hel i have one also from a day 1 launch party that works fine. The fact they extended the warranty to 3 years makes their grade go up.....

people like syaing the world of 360's with rrod is still raging, but i know many people with 360's and out of probably 20 of them 2 had a rrod ... and 1 of those was because his da*n AV cable was disconnected.

Good games on a GAMING platform is whats important and the 360 had that in spades this year.

---

As for vista, i have it on 4 custom build computers all running 1-2 gigs of ram with decent video cards actually their a bit old, only 1 of the computers is dual core, and 2 of them are 3ghx p4's... and all 4 of them run vista flawlessly... the issue is stupid ass oem's preloading crap on vista... why do oem's need to install software to manage the wireless network clumsily if windows vista does it for you without extra software.??? Do i really need to buy an OEM that has 2 copies of AOL installed and other crapsoft.

Then theirs the other major issue with software today especially on OEM PC's

WHY ARE ANTIVIRUS PROGRAMS SO HORRIBLY SLOW! If i install Norton on a computer it immediately becomes 40-50% slower, this is with vista and xp but its more pronounced with vista, while god forbid i say it onecare atleast doesnt take the PC to a crawl, yet norton is on every preloaded oem computer hence the computer are DOG SLOW

How were you unable to find a pc that could connect to the internet and allow you to enter text through a web form? I'd say any pc made in the past 10 years should work for that.

Was it really a problem with Vista or were you using third-party software that third-party manufacturers didn't update for Vista? I haven't run into any software that wouldn't run. If there is an issue, you can always run it in compatibility mode.

Only Vista issue I had was with FlashMX-- I had to disable aero when that was running and even that was done automatically by checking a box on the shortcut. I blame Adobe for being greedy bastards. They could have taken care of their customers by offering a quick patch.

@lizard_king

lets just hope ur wife isnt reading this post right now

@OldSchoolGadgetLover:

If you personally knew 10 people with Wiis and knew that 3 of them failed, then your personal experience would indicate that there was a 30% failure rate. Other factors would have to be measured to, but as an example, that's how it works. Since the major retailers nationwide are reporting that 30% of their Xbox 360s are being returned for RRoD syndrome AND the manufacturer itself (MS) comes out with a billion dollar program to repair those machines, you have your answer. It's not about whining. It's about statistics.

Oh and I should add...
My friend and I tried to install Leopard on his Mac and when we insert the disc, it tells us to click a button to restart the Mac and being the installation process. So we click the button and the Mac restarts, but ejects the Leopard disc without installing anything. Oh right, buy a Mac, cuz it "just works."

Pffffffft. My a$$.

ya have to agree, one of my machines did have vista isues at laucnh but apparently was due to some shoddy ati drivers, since i got new ones things are much smoother! NOT MICROSOFTS FAULT, thats ATI/NVIDIA's idiot drivers fault.

Also SORA57, the 360's failure rate was NEVER 30% that was proven to be a complete farse, it was some idiot at ebgames that said his stores failure rate was 30% and microsoft later said that while they did have an issue it was no where near the reported 30% and more in the lines of 4-8% which is only slightly higher than the industry standard of 3-4%... and that was back before they made the corrections in 2007

Also since when is the 360 loud, do you people play your game systems in some form of bubble with no noise around you or whie your mom and dad are outside the door and your trying to sneak a game with the volume on mute or something, because i dont even play with my 5.1 on and just the tv speakers and i can't here my 360 give it a rest, its louder than the wii but its no where near as loud as you azzes act like.

It's funny when gizmodo writes nonsense like Vista is the reason people switched to Linux or Mac OS. Those ignorant writers just don't get that Apples OS market share is less than 2%. GET IT, 2%? And Microsoft's market share is about 98%. Yea, I understand Apple is paying this ridiculous writers to write bad about MS, but try to understand that not the PC users are freaks, no, it's the MAC users who keep on criticizing and not understanding that the WORLD (business, games, movies, music(NASA, Wallstreet, Pentagon, Warner, Universal, Mayo Clinic, GM, GE, Toyota, Samsung, UBISOFT, EA, Intel, SONY,...)) is ran/made on and by PC's. And a recent research showed that the average mac user is 54 years old. Yea, keep on criticizing me, and telling me that I'm a dumb freak, but you know, you are wrong. The statistics are saying that you are a 54 year old freak using a useless OS.

@PwnySlaystation: That about sums it up.

And Sora, when the leader of their gaming division says there is a design flaw in all of them (the moboard etc) thats not 30% in the end it is a 100% defect rate, about 30% get returned to stores because they can be, its realisticaly more like 68%ish but a lot of people don't bother with a warranty. And then you have the refurbs and the "fixed" ones breaking, because you put the broken parts in there instead.

When your best method of fixing a design flaw is wrapping 3 warm towels around a piece of $450 electronic something is wrong and you do not get a A-. Vista was done better than 360.

I don't know why people don't dig the zune though. It is amazing =)

its not statistics and it wasnt a major retailer, it was a single eb games shop ... it wasnt like best buy came out and said it in a corporate news letter.

and a billion dollar program was made to stop the idiots like you from whining, but there you go microsoft offers an un-precidented warranty for the troubles of the users, and instead of being happy people whine that it's not enough.

And i'm sick also of people saying that they have a friend that had 8, 10, 100 360's die on them... yet it's never the person its always a friend of a friend... when in reality 9 times out of 10... that "friend" is a story they red on engadget or gizmodo abou 1 idiot that kept breaking his 360 and then complaining.

8x360's all dieing on 1 person would be the biggest statistical insanity to ever exist even if their was a 30% failure rate... what they all ended up going to that 1 person????

I can't wait to see Sprint Nextels year end report card, lol, i heard the company is Firing people left & right and Loosing customers by the thousands daily at the same time. maybe the idea of being Rude to the customers was not a good idea after all. it might do the trick for the IRS and other government agencies because theres no other choice, but not good for business

I was at CC last night to purchase an Xbox 360. Five salesmen were gathered to answer my tough questions. Four of the five have suffered RRoD, at least two had RRoD on the new HDMI design.

I think a C would be very generous for a design that fails so frequently under normal use. But then, I come from the safety-critical design world where even one failure garners an F.

Bottomline, I could not purchase an Xbox 360, which would support the perpetuence of consumer abuse.

so get a wii... oh ya the games get boring after 2 days

so get a ps3... oh wait the games are all old, or play like crap

ahh back to a 360... ya they probably suffered a rrod for their cables not being connected knowing the idiot sales clerks at CC... besides the point why does it take 5 salesmen to answer questions on a game console?

And did they actually suffer the rrod or they had to deal with a customers rrod... because if they had a 360 themselves i dont see why they would need 5 to answer questions on it....

Customer abuse? a 3 year rrod protection warranty is now abuse? keep the damn machine ventialated and it will last forever mines 2 years old and running flawlessly and i have played dozens of games, and pretty much every demo, whats the secret? simple, its sitting next to my tv spaced so that the top/side/back holes arent blocked and suffocating the damn machine

@phantam:

While I agree with you on the majority of your post, I'd have to disagree with you on the last part.. There are a few gaming sites where staff members have had 3+ 360's break on them.. One even has 9 I believe. I'm on my 3rd one personally, but have only had 1 RROD on me (the 2nd) the first one's DVD drive wouldn't open unless I pushed in on the middle of it.. it wasn't a huge issue, but I decided to get it replaced anyway. my 2nd 360 RROD when Crackdown came out. Now I'm on my 3rd and it's been trucking along just fine. I have about 5 or 6 friends who have 360's as well who haven't had a problem yet. But yea, the only stories you're going to hear about on sites or forums is when one actually breaks then you're going to get a flood of people who have the same issue commenting about it.

lol as my frinds told me when we were talking about it, people dont go on boards to say their 360's are working... ther online playing halo/cod/gears/masseffect/pgr4 etc :)

my point is if it was 30% and microsoft is at 10m that means that we should ahve close to 3 MILLION users online bitching that their 360 is broken.

My guess is that Wilson owns an Xbox 360, an ipod (free from el-jobso) touch, iPhone, and ofcourse Leopard on a Macbook bro... otw, Vista won't have gotten a D. Another person's shortcomings is another person's glory huh?

What a biased post?

Yes, the RRoD are a pain in the ass - but I just sent in my 360 and got it returned in 3 weeks. Paid absolutely nothing. I think that Microsoft gets the credit it deserves: fixing a serious problem with (relative) great speed and costing nothing extra to consumers besides lost gaming time. And the Zune is cool. Still don't know if I want a Zune or a iPod or something else. Hrm. Other than those 2 highlights, Microsoft looks like that same old grumpy beast it's been for years.

@phantam: Ummm... I totally agree with you and you are almost 100% spot on. But my Xbox 360 (a release day purchase) is a little loud, fan wise. Maybe a fluke, but I've heard others talk about it too.

But thanks for summing up a lot of things so well.

@phantam: FYI, more and more CC salesmen were called into the conversation trying to find someone who knew more about the Media Center aspects of the platform. All were hardcore Xbox 360 gamers, but none had used the Xbox 360 as a Media Center Extender.

@phantam:

Very well put.

you got to handed to M$$ the X360 games are great, better than any other console outhere, but Dude the Hardware sucks B**ls really. if apple had dump IBM because the old G5 processors where screwing everything up why did M$$ pick that up?? if they would had use a intel chip it would have been king of consoles without a dought

they had their reasons, intel waned to own the design of the xenon processor... microsoft wanted to own it themselves so they could pick their own manufacturers down the road and reduce cost themselves to lower the console pricing...

ibm allowed them to do that apparently intel and amd wanted to hold the ownership to themselves.

@Sheemo44: heh. She doesn't do the gadget blogs....maybe I oughtta block the URL in the router as a precaution? ;-)

On the grading, Im thinking A- is FAR too high for the 360, and it currently is my favorite gaming system. While the past year has seen improvements that are deserving of a higher grade, the failures, though not confrimed at 30%, were high. Failures happened to people doing things properly - Plugged into a line conditioner, plenty of ventilation, etc - even though production and a warranty upgrade helped quell the issue. Let's look at the upgrades they COULD make - how about letting users use a Keyboard and Mouse (PS3), an official controller that detects motion (Wii or PS3), a web browser, etc. There are improvements to be made. An A would signify they are doing things right - there is a LOT of things done right, but a LOT of room for improvement. The Xbox 360 is great, and this year has seen improvements, but not A- Great.

People keep claiming that the 360 has a three year warranty - it does not, it has a three year repair/replacement policy specifically and only for RRODs.

And of course, the latest generation's only reported failures so far aren't actually a RROD, so they aren't covered after the standard warranty runs out. A simple firmware change gives Microsoft an out on their promise.

And I agree, the failure rate is too high (evidence I've seen points to higher than the 30% claims if you leave out machines <6 months old) for an A-, and it has taken too long for Microsoft to respond to serious design issues in a satisfactory manor (you don't just keep sticking on bigger heat syncs and pray for the best). The 2007 machines are not all safe, and there are still defective units on the shelves.

@devwild: And if you accept that excuse, you need lessons in how to handle a customer service call.

Always remain calm and polite, always take notes, writing down the name and operator number of everyone you speak to, always escalate to the next tier regardless of hold time, and never take "that's not covered" as a final answer.

they better do something soon because people are starting to get tired of this RROD nonsense already. i mean i have been waiting for more than a year to get one but untill they don't get rid of that chip am keeping my money

I'm not a fanboy, but my vista works fine. Sucks trying to network with an XP - that's my major gripe. Once you do some customization to the OS to make it run smoother (and remove some of the non-essential services from starting on boot) it's pretty stable. I don't think I got a BSOD to date, and I've been playing around with it for a while. I still like XP a lot, so maybe the whining is because XP was such a good system by the time Vista came out that people were disappointed with the new OS offer.

LOL i believe the 360 and wii have both proven that the "motion controller" is a GIMMICK, a web browser would be interesting but once again is a gimmick, its a GAME CONSOLE not a webtv...... and a keyboard and mouse... why exactly? its not a computer its a CONSOLE.

And they are making huge steps, the video marketplace, the new interface and the new design for navigating, DIVX AND XVID support that i've heard and seen is a good bit better than even the ps3's new support. Not to mention a price drop i believe was this year as well...

all strong things, topped by a very strong game lineup makes the 360 king of the hill in the end.

Microsoft followed the same tactic they ddid with the Zune... the 360 is a Gaming/Entertainment platform, hence the deep video and gaming experience, without the "extras crap like a browser" ... as they said with the zune that was made for music, its made for music and thats what their going to make it the best at.... the 360 is for games and video... and from what ive seen its the best at videos and games of all the cnsolesbest of both of those. just like the ipod classic vs zune the zune blows it out of the water.

@Lizard_King: That's like saying the Wii should be knocked down a few pegs
because they didn't include a kick ass processor like PS3 and Xbox 360, and a conventional controller for people who want to use one of those.

Companies tend to go in a given direction they think is important, and focus on that, not try to focus on being all things to all people, because that tends to lead to failure.

And could someone pony up the proof that the failure rate for the Xbox 360 is / has been 30% or anywhere near 30%? Except for the EB games store worker that started all of these rumors?

If not, stop saying it. I don't care about your neighbor, your 5 sales people, your fictional friend who bought a dozen systems all of which died... because when you sell millions and millions of anything, even a small percentage of failures equals 10s of thousands of bad units, which is a huge number (50,000 units per million sold for 5% for those of you who don't seem to get this concept). That's a lot of units, and a lot of people complaining, all of whom tell others who tell others about their system failures. It doesn't prove that the failure rate is 30%, despite what you might think.

@PRO7: Boy are you fact-impaired or what?

Apple's market share is over 6 percent, is growing at twice the rate of the industry, and well over 12 percent in the laptop market. In colleges and universities, it's more like 40 to 50 percent and growing.

The military and intelligence agencies are big users of Macs. As is research and biomedical and all sorts of other areas of many industries. Music, video and graphics industries may be alone in being dominated by Macs, but Macs are finding their way into other industries slowly but surely.

Your 98 percent Windows nonsense is just that. Besides, UNIX and Linux are hardly 0 percent.

Here's a quarter, get a clue.

@phantam: When customers, myself included look at the PS3 for features otherwise unavailable on the Xbox, you have to wonder if they are doing everything they can to make this the uber game machine they claim they have.

I agree you can dilute the 360 until it is not even seperated from a home computer, but not having the ability to have those features when other game consoles do (to their advantage) is a little bit blind-sided.

I think the Wii has proved that motion detecting controllers can be amazing.

The marketplace is great, but the blades are becomming a damn mess. howzabout some customizing of the organization.