View Full Version : Don't Panic! Reports of 360 Defects Overrated (Probably)
AaronGF
11-23-2005, 11:38 AM
The aftermath of the 360 launch has a lot of people reporting that their Xbox 360 units have gone up in smoke. Many major websites have included stories on the frequency of Xbox 360 errors. But don't panic! There's an article (http://www.gamesfirst.com/?id=1011) up at GamesFirst (http://www.gamesfirst.com/) that talks about why system launches always appear to have high defect rates; it has to do with early adapter demographics.
Don't be too quick to go off telling your friends about the death of the 360. The words "recall" shouldn't slip out your lips just yet. In short, don't panic; chances are that error rates are skewed by the hardcore demographic of early adopters eager to share their 360 experiences, not actual high failure rates.
jonchaos
11-23-2005, 11:46 AM
It's still funny. Well, sorta:
http://www.officialwdc.com/comic.php?id=72
*Legion*
11-23-2005, 11:47 AM
Can you say, "duh"?
We see this all the time. If, say, half of one percent are defective, but you're moving 900,000 units, well, that's 4,500, and every single one of them hits the Web and bitches about it, and it looks like an epidemic.
And fanboys and idiots ignore the obvious facts and use it as argument fodder anyway.
Like the posts that will no doubt follow this one.
Look down there!
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CapnBob
11-23-2005, 11:56 AM
Can you say, "duh"?
We see this all the time. If, say, half of one percent are defective, but you're moving 900,000 units, well, that's 45,000, and every single one of them hits the Web and bitches about it, and it looks like an epidemic.
And fanboys and idiots ignore the obvious facts and use it as argument fodder anyway.
Like the posts that will no doubt follow this one.
Look down there!
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Sorry to "ignore obvious facts" but I feel like I should point out that 45,000 units is actually 5% of 900,000.
Cyotik
11-23-2005, 11:57 AM
We sold 17 at our store and we haven't got any back defective yet. Hopefully this is a very isolated problem.
*Legion*
11-23-2005, 11:57 AM
Sorry to "ignore obvious facts" but I feel like I should point out that 45,000 units is actually 5% of 900,000.
I didn't say I'm above accidentally adding an extra 0 in my mental math. :)
Fixed!
The point, of course, remains intact.
Sorry to "ignore obvious facts" but I feel like I should point out that 45,000 units is actually 5% of 900,000.
Ssshhh, stop ignoring facts you fanboy! :)
I think there is a genuine problem with heat here, even if it is being overblown a bit. I don't mind that much as I will be able to put in a well ventillated place, but its a bit of a bad showing from MS. Consumer electronics should be able to work in the places where customers expect it to work.
I didn't say I'm above accidentally adding an extra 0 in my mental math. :)
Fixed!
The point, of course, remains intact.
Intact, but quite a bit weakened. Of the 4500, how many would you expect to bitch in a forum about it, half, 10%? Probably something like 10%, only the very eager post in gaming forums, and most of those will be posting to the forums that they are comfortable with.
Yeti2005
11-23-2005, 12:03 PM
I haven't had any problems with heat. I had the machine on from 3:00pm to around 3:00am yesterday and the disks weren't hot and the back of the machine was lukewarm. It does kick off about as much hot air as a PC (which is definitely a lot more than the typical console).
*Legion*
11-23-2005, 12:12 PM
Intact, but quite a bit weakened. Of the 4500, how many would you expect to bitch in a forum about it, half, 10%? Probably something like 10%, only the very eager post in gaming forums, and most of those will be posting to the forums that they are comfortable with.
How many were posted at the Xbox forums that were used in a news piece on this here very site?
A lot less than 4500.
So, your argument's not really holding up.
Plus, you're splitting hairs on made-up numbers. The 900,000 is about right (took that from a news article), but the defective rate of half a percent is pure low-end guess. It could be as high as 1 or 2 or 3 percent, leaving 97% or more systems in perfect working order.
CapnBob
11-23-2005, 12:12 PM
Ssshhh, stop ignoring facts you fanboy! :)
I think there is a genuine problem with heat here, even if it is being overblown a bit. I don't mind that much as I will be able to put in a well ventillated place, but its a bit of a bad showing from MS. Consumer electronics should be able to work in the places where customers expect it to work.
I expect it to work in the microwave while I am reheating an eggroll.
DigitalFirefly
11-23-2005, 12:14 PM
I expect it to work in the microwave while I am reheating an eggroll.
lol, i agree
How many were posted at the Xbox forums that were used in a news piece on this here very site?
A lot less than 4500.
So, your argument's not really holding up.
Plus, you're splitting hairs on made-up numbers. The 900,000 is about right (took that from a news article), but the defective rate of half a percent is pure low-end guess. It could be as high as 1 or 2 or 3 percent, leaving 97% or more systems in perfect working order.
I don't really care that much, but I was pointing out that the weak point of your argument was, "and every single one of them hits the Web and bitches about it, and it looks like an epidemic", in which case my argument kinda does hold up. I would say that the web bitch rate, (WBR), would be about 1% of defective unit owners. So if there were 4500 bad units, you could expect 45 forum posts.
But I have my 360 on preorder (2nd december for UK), and I'm looking damn forward to it. I'm just posting to try and fill in the time from now till then...
novicius
11-23-2005, 12:21 PM
Played over 13 hours of PGR3, PD0, and Kameo yesterday between my wife and I. PGR3 gave me DDE's so I exchanged it (it's not that bad now -- the system will ask you to reboot itself); haven't had a problem with the new disc.
No overheating issues here.
Major Scud
11-23-2005, 12:22 PM
my brothers system is working great, have been playing it almost non stop all day, but my system wasnt so lucky... :(
Captain Awesome
11-23-2005, 12:25 PM
that the web bitch rate, (WBR)
hahaha thats great.
and to qoute myself from what I said about 5 hours ago about all this....
Let's do some hypotheical math.
The mentioned form post has about 24 overall replies. Out of those about 10 are unique users complaining about the problem. Now lets assume that about 1% of the X360 lucky buyers read and post in the forums. That makes it raughly 1000 people overall that will have those problems.
Over a million unit sold. quick math will say that there is less than 0.1% of the systems that might be faulty (still don't know if it is a user error or system error). Now for the hack of it lets make it 0.5%. Still very low, and pretty acceptable, amount of systems that might have a problem.
Of course internet forums tend to overhype things.
Oh well.
damn I should be a journalist and state the obvious.
Kelegacy
11-23-2005, 12:33 PM
Played over 13 hours of PGR3, PD0, and Kameo yesterday between my wife and I. PGR3 gave me DDE's so I exchanged it (it's not that bad now -- the system will ask you to reboot itself); haven't had a problem with the new disc.
No overheating issues here.
It's not so bad now? So you're still having issues occasionally? That's something I wouldn't want, even if it's infrequent, after owning it for only a day.
I don't know the exact numbers of defects out there, but hopefully we get some in the next couple days.
Suddenly the PSP's dead pixel launch problem looks nice by comparison.
Ahh you can trust Kelegacy to spread the panic.
EDIT: feel free to wish me death Kelegacy, I know you want to. :rolleyes:
novicius
11-23-2005, 12:36 PM
DDE's are not so bad now (with the 360, as opposed to the original Xbox, when you had to get up, eject the game, shutdown the system, power it up, reload the game, and pray you didn't have to do it all over again).
Thanks for making me type out exactly everything I didn't want to. :p
No overheating problems here (and no further DDE's with PGR3 yet), and my place is kept toasty with the fireplace roarin'...
XenonCJ
11-23-2005, 12:36 PM
Anyone know what the 2nd round of availability will look like? Are the 2nd shipments comming in anytime soon?
Major Scud
11-23-2005, 12:36 PM
dead pixel problem not as bad? ugh... at least microsoft is fixing this problem...
novicius
11-23-2005, 12:38 PM
DDE = Dirty Disk Error.
Reanimated
11-23-2005, 12:56 PM
Can you say, "duh"?
We see this all the time. If, say, half of one percent are defective, but you're moving 900,000 units, well, that's 4,500, and every single one of them hits the Web and bitches about it, and it looks like an epidemic.
And fanboys and idiots ignore the obvious facts and use it as argument fodder anyway.
Like the posts that will no doubt follow this one.
Look down there!
|
|
\/
Truer words have never been spoken.
absolut taco
11-23-2005, 12:57 PM
I played about 5 hours of PGR3 last night. One time I booted it up there were some really bad graphic errors. Like I'd eaten some bad mushrooms ;) . bad polygons everywhere, road disappeared, buildings disappeard. Car looked like ghost. I thought I could just exit out of that race but the problems persisted. Only thing that helped was to shut down the xbox. Haven't seen the problem again, but it was disappointing to say the least. My wife said "That looks worse than the errors we get on the PC" and I had to agree.
Kelegacy
11-23-2005, 12:58 PM
dead pixel problem not as bad? ugh... at least microsoft is fixing this problem...
Didn't Sony fix the problem, too? Or at least exchanges were made.
And dead pixels < broken machines.
Speed_D
11-23-2005, 01:01 PM
Of the 4500, how many would you expect to bitch in a forum about it, half, 10%? Probably something like 10%, only the very eager post in gaming forums
You do realize, you are talking about people who are willing to stand in line 11+ hours for this thing. I'd expect more than 10% of them to be spewing venom if they got a defective unit.
Sloth
11-23-2005, 01:15 PM
My original xbox dvd is glitchy. I had one of the first run xboxes too. I didn't buy a first run xbox360 for primarily that reason. I'll wait for some stability.
Kelegacy
11-23-2005, 01:15 PM
Ahh you can trust Kelegacy to spread the panic.
EDIT: feel free to wish me death Kelegacy, I know you want to. :rolleyes:
I scream FIRE! in movie theaters all the time. And sometimes I tape fake explosives to my body and cover up with a heavy coat, step into a packed elevator and open up for everyone to see.
Also, yes, I am a bit of a drama queen. If only because I like to see people miserable, especially the lopsided gamer community we have here. Sony can do no good, MS, no wrong.
I honestly had no real affiliations before these past couple weeks/months, but suddenly I decided to become pro-anything other than MS just to try to balance out the community, editors. Not that it helps much.
score
11-23-2005, 01:17 PM
It's still funny. Well, sorta:
http://www.officialwdc.com/comic.php?id=72
hehe.
Looks like MS stole Sony's PS3 George Foreman grill idea.
hehe, I thought that both Sony and MS can do no good. Only nintendo are number 1.
You should become pro-Phantom. I think that will definetly balance things out ;-)
LiquidRain
11-23-2005, 01:30 PM
I'm surprised nobody caught this yet.
The word is adopter, not "adapter".
Stormeh
11-23-2005, 01:30 PM
There's isolated hardware failures any time a new product launches. In many cases, issues are overstated because the media focuses on the vocal minority. I think it's unlikely that there's a serious issue here.
This same kind of thing shows up when a shark kills someone. Because "shark related deaths" are so highly reported in the news, everyone believes the probabilty of being eaten by a shark is significant. However, it has been calculated that the odds of being eaten by a shark are 1 in 300 million. Compare that to the odds of being hit by a meteor is 1 in 1.2 million. Who has ever heard of something being killed by a meteor?
Everyone should be forced to take a stats class at some point. I'd make people a lot less silly.
carneconcarne
11-23-2005, 01:44 PM
I'm surprised nobody caught this yet.
The word is adopter, not "adapter".
oh we caught it, you were just the first guy to tell everyone that you caught it, too. Nice work.
Hewie
11-23-2005, 02:01 PM
! P A N I C !
ziola
11-23-2005, 02:03 PM
all i know is that mine was dead on arival. really pissed me off good,.
G-Man
11-23-2005, 02:40 PM
I don't really care that weak point of your argument was, "and every single one of them hits the Web and bitches about it, and it looks like an epidemic", in which case my argument kinda does hold up. I would say that the web bitch rate, (WBR), would be about 1% of defective unit owners.
We also have to take into account the Misleading Internet Liars Faction or MILF. These "MILFs" get on forums and post whatever they want, true or not, just to put over their system of choice...
...they also seduce young boys.
Stormeh
11-23-2005, 02:56 PM
Microsoft issued the expected statement: http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1720&Itemid=2
jwbxx
11-23-2005, 04:12 PM
all i know is that mine was dead on arival. really pissed me off good,.
Ouch, I could almost hear your scream as the dagger struck your heart.
I'm praying for you man.
TrackZero
11-23-2005, 05:02 PM
Intact, but quite a bit weakened. Of the 4500, how many would you expect to bitch in a forum about it, half, 10%? Probably something like 10%, only the very eager post in gaming forums, and most of those will be posting to the forums that they are comfortable with.
You're forgetting the percentage of Sony fanboys who'll be in forums just making stories up to make things look worse than they are. There's no proof any of those people even own 360s.
Reanimated
11-23-2005, 05:14 PM
I scream FIRE! in movie theaters all the time. And sometimes I tape fake explosives to my body and cover up with a heavy coat, step into a packed elevator and open up for everyone to see.
Also, yes, I am a bit of a drama queen. If only because I like to see people miserable, especially the lopsided gamer community we have here. Sony can do no good, MS, no wrong.
I honestly had no real affiliations before these past couple weeks/months, but suddenly I decided to become pro-anything other than MS just to try to balance out the community, editors. Not that it helps much.
It helps make you looke like a douchebag.
If that's what you were going for, you've succeeded.
Reanimated
11-23-2005, 05:15 PM
Anyway let's also keep in mind that a lot of these people got delivery to the door. I think we all know what UPS packages look like when they arrive on your doorstep.
Kelegacy
11-23-2005, 05:20 PM
Let's put this story in a magical washing machine and spin it.
Who's the douche?
TrackZero
11-23-2005, 05:29 PM
Let's put this story in a magical washing machine and spin it.
Who's the douche?
Yeah, no need for people to go attacking K here. It's valid for him to want to play Devil's Advocate. It definitely won't hurt (much).
mister_slim
11-23-2005, 05:44 PM
Anyway let's also keep in mind that a lot of these people got delivery to the door. I think we all know what UPS packages look like when they arrive on your doorstep.
Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with your logic centers?
That's fucking absurd.
Wonka
11-23-2005, 07:43 PM
I have had no problems whatsoever with mine. And I have given it quite a workout. But I do have mine on "top" of my other CE devices. And it DOES pump out a fair bit of heat out of the back. The unit itself is cool to the touch, but the back pumps out air that is really quite HOT. Also, if you don't get the AV cables plugged in all the way it will sit there and blink red lights at you, untill you get them all the way in. And by "in" I mean you have to really push them in a very very very LONG way. You can quite easily think that you have them fully inserted/seated when they are only about halfway in. This happened to me anyhow. And so it's a good thing that I checked the cables carefully before storming off to the store. If you buy a 360, you will probably want to be wary of this.
Jaybo
11-23-2005, 08:46 PM
There is absolutely nothing wrong with my Xbox 360. Played it for hours, did everything except the Media Center PC thing since I only have XP SP2.
Gamespot also states the net is exaggerating this supposed issue.
Kelegacy
11-23-2005, 08:56 PM
There is absolutely nothing wrong with my Xbox 360. Played it for hours, did everything except the Media Center PC thing since I only have XP SP2.
Gamespot also states the net is exaggerating this supposed issue.
To be fair, Gamespot is stating that the defective units are an exaggeration "according to Microsoft".
And why is Gamespot reviewing Live Arcade games? Nothing like reviewing decades old games. Jeesh.
Reanimated
11-23-2005, 09:08 PM
Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with your logic centers?
That's fucking absurd.
lol, is it, moron?
I ordered the Office Space special edition DVD from Best Buy online a few weeks ago and when it showed up at my house from UPS the package looked like it had been handled by Ace Ventura. It was LITERALLY smashed, the coffee mug was in a million pieces, and the DVD case was smashed to hell.
Phades
11-23-2005, 11:37 PM
Didn't Sony fix the problem, too? Or at least exchanges were made.
And dead pixels < broken machines.
Except when Sony says that dead pixels are normal and they or retailers won't replace the machine (happened to me). At least if it's broken you can return it.
Jaybo
11-24-2005, 04:44 AM
To be fair, Gamespot is stating that the defective units are an exaggeration "according to Microsoft".
And why is Gamespot reviewing Live Arcade games? Nothing like reviewing decades old games. Jeesh.
Um, who else should they go to to find out? You explain that to me. Also, I too would rate those games since emulation can be poor at times as we've seen on some of those compilations in the past. I only saw the Geometry Wars one and that by the way is a blast to play.
Ajezz
11-24-2005, 06:27 AM
I ordered the Office Space special edition DVD from Best Buy online a few weeks ago and when it showed up at my house from UPS the package looked like it had been handled by Ace Ventura. It was LITERALLY smashed, the coffee mug was in a million pieces, and the DVD case was smashed to hell.
Are you sure it wasn't supposed to be like that some SE packaging is pretty weird :p
mister_slim
11-24-2005, 10:23 AM
lol, is it, moron?
I ordered the Office Space special edition DVD from Best Buy online a few weeks ago and when it showed up at my house from UPS the package looked like it had been handled by Ace Ventura. It was LITERALLY smashed, the coffee mug was in a million pieces, and the DVD case was smashed to hell.
Your anecdotal UPS thing somehow demonstrates that only people who mail-ordered 360s are having problems?
It is certainly possible that people whose 360s were shipped to them are more likely to have problems, but the assumption that every problem is due to UPS not only has no evidence but is also idiotic. Seriously, take Intro to Statistics or something.
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