Xbox 360 hits further production problems

[BR7]

The Xbox 360 HD DVD drive has become more popular than standalone HD drives in the US. A Microsoft representative told Cnet that 155,000 Xbox 360 HD DVD add-ons have been sold in the U.S., making it the “biggest-selling accessory” ever sold for the console.
Microsoft has reportedly informed Spanish website La Trifuerza that the Xbox 360 Elite will be launched in Europe on August 24, which is a day after my birthday Microsoft. Hint hint.
It seems that non-Elite owners may soon be able to use their Xbox 360s via their HDMI enable sets, courtesy of manufacturer XCM. Kotaku has what appears to be a rendering of the XCM cable here.
Meanwhile more horror stories of Xbox 360 failures have seen the light of day in the press this week.
Microsoft’s UK repair centre in Havant is now redistributing faulty consoles to foreign repair centres in order to clear an overwhelming backlog and keep up with the 1,500 to 2,500 Xbox 360s arriving at its doors on a daily basis, according to customer reports.
"A shocking statistic we found out though is that between 1,500 to 2,500 consoles get sent to Havant by three UPS lorries per day, to then be shipped to Prague for repair" reported a reader discussing his repair story with <ahref="http: target="_blank" news.asp?id="1143" www.360-gamer.com="">360-gamer.com.</ahref="http:>
Whilst UK-based repairs specialist Micromart has told GamesIndustry.biz that it has had to refuse to service Xbox 360 consoles that display three red lights, dubbed the Red Ring of Death.
"We were seeing about 30 a week before we pulled the plug on the service," said Jeff Croft of Micromart.
"We saw it over a period of several months and it was just getting worse. It began towards the end of last year. Once the twelve month warranty finished then we started to see more and more machines being sent in to be looked at."

Link to story

[MarcellaL]

I am a member of a tech support site and they have a huge thread with more than 50 comments about the 3 red lights. From the comments its seems like this simple solution called the Eraser Fix seem to work very good.

I don't have an X-box and after reading this I don't think I'll buy one.

[admin]

erase fix - very innovative. The warping of the board due to overheating is what causes the problem. The Xbox 360 is essentially a high end PC squeezed into a very small form factor, and without the latest power saving/heat minimizing features of new processors like the Core 2 Duo, it's easy to see why it will fail (even with a Core 2 Duo, the GPU causes enough heat already to cause problems).

[BR7]

I figured I'd post this here being it relates to this thread

Microsoft Extends Warranty of Xbox 360's Afflicted With RROD to Three Years, Offers Apology

Microsoft will take a $1 billion charge to fix Xbox 360 consoles

[drfsupercenter]

I think I was smart to stay miles away from Xbox.

[admin]

The funny thing is that I know one or two who have had 4 or 5 different Xbox 360's due to the RROD or the disc scratching problem, and I also know many that have never had any problems, even though they got their machines when it first came out. Could it be something to do with usage patterns (ie. using it about 10 hours at a time) or ventilation (stacked under a bunch of other stuff, or in open air)?

Also, when you bring in an Xbox 360 for repair, they either repair it or replace with a refurbished one ... neither is a great solution though, since this increases the chance of ther machine dying again. And I think this is why people who have had the RROD problerm keep on getting it or getting other problems once they get their machine back (or a refurbished one). What they should do is to replace all RROD Xbox 360's with new ones (with the supposed fix to the problem).

I don't know what the return rate for the Xbox 360's are, but the average for returns for consumer electronic devices I think is about 5%, some as high as 10%. Even at 5%, that's still a lot of people with broken hardware (of course with other consumer electronics, you won't get as much publicity, unless the fault manages to kill somebody).