The XBox 360 is amongst the most faulty electronics of all time, especially for one with such a massive appeal and release. Consider this: approximately 39 million XBox 360s have been sold (brand new, mind you) to people across North America, and yet, recent polls put the failure rate between 24% (statistic provided by the warranty provider) and 53%, according to a Game Informer survey. The real figure is of course somewhere in the middle, but in any case, both of those figures are way, way above the acceptable standard. Even using the lowest figure, one-quarter of all XBoxes sold have had the dreaded "Red Ring of Death" (or generalized system failure) happen to them.
I became interested in this topic fairly recently; I've been a Wii-only owner for the past two years, and while I would never categorize myself as one of those people who complains that their Wii "sits in a closet collecting dust" (which by this point is a total cliche), I just felt that to be able to truly understand and analyze the gaming landscape, I would need one of the HD consoles. I'm still primarily a Nintendo player, and I definitely use my Wii more when I just want to play a game to kick back.
I chose an XBox over a PS3 simply due to cost. Even used PS3s are running anywhere from $250 to $400, and that's just not money that I have. I'm fully aware that there are a number of amazing exclusives to the PS3, and both of our other editors have XBoxes already, but it just wasn't feasible. So. The XBox.
The first XBox I purchased, just about a month ago now, had the Red Ring of Death. I knew that going in – I saw this incredible deal on usedregina.com (basically Regina's community for all secondhand wares – it's a great, great place) for a RROD console for $20 that included a harddrive, a controller, and a power brick. Seriously, even the harddrive alone is worth about $40. I knew that I couldn't pass that up, and was more than willing to try to find a solution to the RROD problem.
Well, that did turn out to be a problem. The console was from 2005 and the warranty had long run out. Sending it into Microsoft wasn't really an option. So, further delving into usedregina seemed to be my only solution. And once I got there, this entire underground world seemed to open up.
Perhaps as a Nintendo-only owner for so long, I was completely unaware of this separate industry (well, industry seems a little bit insignificant to describe the level of activity that I'd uncovered. Maybe more like a whole 'nother economy) of people who make a decent living, or at least a second paycheque, modifying, repairing, and enhancing consoles. Nintendo consoles have always felt like little inscrutable boxes – especially something like the Gamecube for instance, because its design and footprint seem so out there.
Having searched out someone to fix my XBox (that someone being a guy who also builds superpowered gaming computers out of his basement), it became clear to me – the XBox and, to a lesser extent the PS3, is really a gaming computer. That's all they are – a gaming computer hooked up to a TV and played with a gamepad (which makes the fact that PC gaming has died oh so very clear. Namely, who can afford it?). The fact that someone can take apart the guts of the XBox and modify or repair the motherboard, for instance, doesn't seem like something that people would even think to do even just five to ten years ago. Sure, there were people who did it, but more as a hobby.
The plot thickened when said guy was unable to get the parts he needed to fix the XBox. There were more expensive options, but I thought it best to turn to usedregina again for the solution. What I discovered was that there are people who literally scour the website looking for XBoxes with the RROD to fix up and turn a profit on. It's the videogame equivalent of house flipping. Instead of waiting for my repairman to find his parts, I decided to sell the console I had and try to find a replacement one. Within three hours of putting my XBox online, I had fourteen emails from people who wanted to buy it and, presumably, sell it. One guy offered to buy it or to fix it for me for $60, so it was clear to me that these were people who were looking to profit. And you probably could profit from it; a refurbished, personally repaired XBox probably has more of a lifespan than one built by Microsoft does.
It's unfortunate to see that people have to sort of resort to these types of things because such a major technology provider so clearly dropped the ball. Yet, for people looking for some sort of bargain, this may be the way to go, and I'm a hell of a lot more willing to pay someone who legitimately loves what they do and does a good job of it than a multinational corporation who put such a faulty thing out there. It's almost like the electronics equivalent of the little deli taking back business from the Walmart down the block.
UPDATE: So I have a replacement XBox now, and it's just about to go into its RROD phase. It freezes up after about ten minutes of gameplay, and my original repairman is going to take a look at it. The person selling it to me probably knew all about this when he was selling it, which makes me really frustrated. That's a problem with used console buying – no recourse if things go awry. Anyways, hopefully after this repair it works, but those reports of people going through six or seven consoles clearly aren't exaggerations – would that have perhaps inflated the XBox's sales totals?