XBOX 360 GIVEN 3 YEAR WARRENTY!

[Gilanth]

Microsoft extending 360 warranty to three years
An apologetic software giant to replace any console suffering "Red Ring of Death" for free; extension applies to every console sold since launch; will take $1.05 billion charge.
By Tor Thorsen, Brendan Sinclair, GameSpot
Posted Jul 5, 2007 1:43 pm PT

Today, Microsoft announced that is once again revamping its warranty scheme for the Xbox 360. After mounting anecdotal evidence of the system's failure rate due to the dreaded "red ring of death" (three flashing red lights on the console's front panel), the publisher is changing its warranty to cover systems affected by the red ring for three years from the date of purchase.

"As a result of what Microsoft views as an unacceptable number of repairs to Xbox 360 consoles, the company conducted extensive investigations into potential sources of general hardware failures," the company said.

[UPDATE] Peter Moore, Corporate Vice President of the Entertainment and Devices Division of Microsoft Interactive Entertainment Business, said he is personally sorry about anyone who's suffered a 360 failure. "We haven't done right by our customers, and for that I apologize," he told GameSpot. "We listened, and we're going to make it right." Moore also posted an open letter to the 360 community on Xbox.com.

Customers who have already paid for repairs that would be covered by the new policy will be reimbursed automatically, according to Microsoft. As a result of this new warranty extension, the publisher said it will report a $1.05 billion to $1.15 billion charge to its earnings for the earnings for the quarter ended June 30, 2007.

From its November 2005 launch onward, Microsoft's Xbox 360 has been plagued by reports of malfunctioning consoles. While the company downplayed reports of faulty hardware for the better part of a year after launch, last September it acknowledged that its original batch of systems was failing at an unusually high rate. Microsoft extended the standard 90-day warranty to a full year, and promised to reimburse all those customers who had already been made to pay for repairs.

In April, the company once again tweaked its warranty service, saying it would no longer charge shipping on repaired Xbox 360 consoles, and would extend the warranty on those repairs.

The new warranty extension arrives atop a growing tide of reports of 360 hardware problems, including a Monday DailyTech.com report quoting retailers as saying up to 33 percent of launch units failing. To help clarify the question of 360 hardware reliability, GameSpot conducted a week-long informal poll of its users asking simply, "Has your Xbox 360 failed?"

Of the 47,934 respondents who said they owned a 360, 27,579 (57.5 percent) claimed to have had no problems at all. However, a startling 25,005 respondents--52.1 percent--claimed to have had at least one 360 fail. Some 13,858 respondents (28.9 percent) said they had one console die: of those, 10,012 (20.9 percent) said their console was replaced for free and 3,846 (8.0 percent) attested they had to pay. Others were even less lucky, with 3,619 (7.5 percent) saying they had suffered two dead 360s and 4,878 (10.2 percent) reporting over two instances of hardware failure.

The poll results are not definitive, and given the open nature of the poll's voting, its results could be manipulated. However, there is a wealth of anecdotal evidence pointing to a high 360 failure rate. Inside the GameSpot offices, 23 editors own 26 360s bought between November 2005 and January 2007. Of those, eight have had their consoles fail completely at least once. Two editors have suffered two complete 360s failures on consoles bought in late 2005 and early 2006. Two others are experiencing ongoing problems, including USB port failure and intermittent cases of the "red ring." The remaining editors have encountered no hardware defects.



Thought i would post this , free fix for your xbox im a happy man

[Cjskater]

Sooooo.... is somebody blackmailing Microsoft or something?

[Po]

Pretty cool, nice that they are actually admitting they have hardware problems rather than pretending it isn't happening like they have been doing the first couple of years.

I would still say it makes more sense to fix whatever is making their consoles doing this rather than keep extending the warranty.

[Exoduso]

So how do you get it...

[Tajin]

Its a design problem really, the xbox gets an insane amount of dust inside,coupled with bad cooling. Im on the 2nd replacement, while my PS2 works just fine .

[Huggo]

So how do you get it...

Call up 1800-4my-xbox and tell them you wanna send in your Xbox because you heard about the warranty thing.

[Po]

So how do you get it...

You just have it retroactively dude. As long as your 360 is registered.

[Exoduso]

Registered where?

[Correction]

Registered?

If your 360 is bricked you just have to call that number. They ask for the serial number and your shipping information. Don't need a receipt or anything as far as I can tell. I don't even think you need to have a Live Account. Just call the number, they're pretty helpful.

The only problem is you kind of want to be home when they eventually ship the box back to you, or leave instructions for UPS to leave it with a neighbor who will be home.

[Po]

Registered on Xbox360.com.

Sign in with your gamertag and there is some tab where you can register it and it just asks for the serial number. And you can get the serial number easily from the System Blade on the Dashboard, under System Information or w/e.

[Eaglestrike]

Ok, maybe I'm just not reading this right, but...

Of the 47,934 respondents who said they owned a 360, 27,579 (57.5 percent) claimed to have had no problems at all. However, a startling 25,005 respondents--52.1 percent--claimed to have had at least one 360 fail.

57.5 + 52.1 = 109.6%

?

[Semitry]

Pretty cool, nice that they are actually admitting they have hardware problems rather than pretending it isn't happening like they have been doing the first couple of years.

I would still say it makes more sense to fix whatever is making their consoles doing this rather than keep extending the warranty.

They have fixed it. I believed they added another heatsink, in any case they believe they have the problem fixed.

[Po]

Ok, maybe I'm just not reading this right, but...

Of the 47,934 respondents who said they owned a 360, 27,579 (57.5 percent) claimed to have had no problems at all. However, a startling 25,005 respondents--52.1 percent--claimed to have had at least one 360 fail.

57.5 + 52.1 = 109.6%

?

lol qft

Unless I'm missing something too

[Exoduso]

You're not.. whoever wrote that article is a dumbass.

[Weeks]

You don't have to have it previously registered. Just got off the phone with them and they registered me and then took the shipping info. Stupid console failed in 5 months, 25 year old NES still work if you blow in the cartridge long enough.

[Tajin]

heh, Brasso works good to cleaning the NES cardridges contacts. I have good memories of opening NES, so they could read cardridges again.

[Sonomaa]

Ive never had a nintendo product go bad on me, on my second ps1, first ps2 isnt that old and hardly used, friend has been through 2 ps2s and 2 xboxs, go figure

[Malaquist]

Ive never had a nintendo product go bad on me

All my Nintendo consoles still run fine, but some of the batteries in my old games died and trying to fix them is sort of iffy. When I called Nintendo they said they wouldn't replace them. I swapped the battery out in Super Metroid and it locks up in the intro part now, I forget if skipping past it with game genie works or not but then there would always be the chance of it crashing and burning somewhere later in the game.

informal poll

So informal they didn't even bother keeping track of the numbers.

[Vish]

Well thats nice to know. As i jus have a feeling my 360 is goin to blow up sometime soon. It wont play dvd's anymore and sometimes when i am playin a game a white screen will come up sayin please insert a 360 compatible disc. But no ring of death yet. Wii working awesome no problems yet. And ps3 well thats jus my dust collector till something good comes out for me to play.