A print-only survey published in Game Informer found that Xbox 360 owners were five times as likely to have a fatal hardware error as PS3 owners, seeing the dreaded RRoD at an astounding rate of 54.2 percent.
Game Informer surveyed approximately 5,000 gamers about hardware failure issues to put the omnipresent stories about the infamous Red Ring of Death into its proper context, reports Consumerist. The answers were slightly stunning: More than half of all Xbox 360 owners have seen their console die on them – 54.2%, in fact.
This figure is five times as high as its nearest competitor, with Sony’s PS3, which clocks in at 10.6%, with the plucky little Wii the most healthy at a 6.8% failure rate. While the Consumerist points out that Microsoft’s numbers might be a bit inflated due to the 360 being used the most out of the three, I’m not quite buying it – yes, 40.3 percent of 360 owners use the console three to five hours a day, but that’s just a smidgen ahead of the PS3’s 37 percent. Not nearly enough to account for the discrepancy.
While the number is certainly high, when you think about it, it almost feels a bit low – 45.8% of Xbox 360s haven’t ever broken once, which doesn’t seem to fly with all the horror stories about everybody and their mother’s 360s bricking. There may be a simple explanation for this, though: The survey counts 360 owners new and old, and if we assume that the first generation of 360s had a much higher failure rate, but that modern Elites are more sturdily built, that might just average out to the number we have here.
Or, maybe it’s just a matter of personal luck. I’ve had two 60GB PS3’s fail on me since April, and my 360 Elite is still chugging away just fine. Go figure.
Still, despite the high failure rate, and despite Microsoft having the “worst” customer service of the big three, the Xbox 360 somehow maintains strong brand loyalty – only 3.8% of 360 owners surveyed said they’d never buy an Xbox 360 again. I guess we gamers are a forgiving bunch.
(Game Informer (Print) via Consumerist)
Published: Aug 17, 2009 09:37 pm