New details revealed on Xbox 360 failure rates; percentage not just about red rings

Eager to find out just what all these figures and percentages from SquareTrade and Microsoft mean to you, the typical Xbox 360 owner? Then head on over to the full article as we find out just what sort of hardware failures that the 16.4% failure rate is actually made out of, as well as what could it mean for your next-gen console. Bring your calculators when you go to the full article.

If you’ve been following the deal with SquareTrade and Microsoft a few weeks back, you’d know that Microsoft has pretty much reacted in quite the negative fashion toward SquareTrade revealing the Xbox 360’s failure rate ( that is, 16.4%, the highest among all three consoles). Now, in this update of the matter, we find out the exact numbers. Brace for some math, this is gonna get bloody.

So, to the figures: SquareTrade’s actual sample size – the warranties purchased – is 1040. The claims weighed in at around 171. The claims make up 16% of the sample size, with a little bit of calculator magic. Some 60% of the claims were found to be of the infamous Red Ring of Death – but what about the remaining 40% of the claims?

It turns out that they were made up of other malfunctions – such as disc read errors, video card failures, hard drive freezes, power issues, and disc tray malfunctions, to name a few. Ouch.

Where does this leave the typical Xbox 360 owner, though? Well, we’re not quite sure, but the new report does say that the findings were the result of keeping track of Xbox 360s ten months after the warranty purchase – and the longer an Xbox 360 goes without failing, the higher the chances of it to fail in the near future. At the very least, though, we have Microsoft’s three-year warranty extension to fall back on.