While investigating the report by Strategy Analytics stating that the PlayStation 3 had an active user base of 43.4 million users (out of 47.9 total PS3's sold worldwide) and the Xbox 360 has an active user base of 42.9 million users (out of 50 worldwide), Alexander Hinkley of The Examiner came across a startling revelation: the Xbox 360 only has a 6% higher failure rate than the PlayStation 3.
Hinkley wrote: Looking at these numbers then, we can deduce that 83.5% of all Xbox 360's ever sold are considered "active" (therefore 16.5% of them have been broken or otherwise gone missing). On the other hand, 89.7% of all PS3's sold are currently active (meaning
This is older but like I said its not a big difference. The RRoD fiasco is a small percentage of 70m+ consoles
It seems to indicate that the reputation built by the Xbox 360's Red Ring of Death issues have given the impression that the high failure rate still exists; the Xbox 360 S was built specifically to kill those issues with a cooler chips, better ventilation, and such. It seems that the only issue right now for the Xbox 360 in terms of failure rate is perception.
