Rudimentary statistics tells us that the probability of this happening are the failure rate to the power of 11 ...

If we assume that this was a 1/10,000,000 situation we could calculate the appropriate failure rate by taking 0.0000001 to the 11th root ... this gives us a value of 23.1%

If the failure rate was 10% (high but reasonable) there would be a 1/10,000,000,000 chance of having 11 failures of a system ... 

The fact that M$ is adding heat sinks to there product goes to show you that it was poorly designed. As a company they should show some morales and do a recall so they can fix them. The problem is M$ is not a moral company and they look at it like if they dont admit there is a problem, there must not be a problem. They will never openly admit there mistakes, only mask it. With the failure rate this large, they will never win the console war. The Wii and PS3 dont have anywhere near this failure rate.

I'd love to see Microsoft just bite the bullet and apologise for this mess. I very much doubt that will ever happen though, they won't even admit there is a problem. The important thing is that it looks like they are trying to fix things, or ''update console components'' as they call it.

If the failure rate was 10%, and you grabbed 11 units off a shelf, the chance of all of them failing is one in 10^11, yes.  The chance of one customer out of 10,000,000 having 11 failures is a lot higher.

If Microsoft is already losing money, per console (less so than Sony is with their console), than they are losing a lot more with all of the replacements that they have sent out. How do they expect to profit?

I know 4 people who own 360s and none had a problem (Including me) so I honestly don't believe this guy. Or let me correct myself. I do believe him, I just think at this point he's the problem and not the system. Could it be overheating? Even if it ain't I just seriously have a hard time believing he got 12 in a row, and it has nothing to do with him.

LMAO

some quality hardware right there.

Well he doesn't have a Wii so I have little sympathy for him!! :0P

When my son's xbox360 broke down customer support in the UK were very good and we had the console back in about 10 days, so I had no complaints there.

Read the post.  He had the wiring checked first by his father (an electrician) then professionally by a carpenter.  He sounds like a very responsible gamer to me... and the fact that he's not posting this with any animosity towards Microsoft makes me doubt he is lying. 

 True enough, but that is why I initially choose 1/10,000,000 as the probability of having 1 person who had 11 defects (because we know of 1 person out of 10,000,000 who has had 11 defects); if we assumed that Microsoft was remarkably unlucky and the actual probability of having 1 person with 11 defects was 1/1,000,000,000 the probability of having 1 defective unit would still be 15%