Xbox 360 defects: an inside history of Microsoft’s video game console woes

[Final-Fan]

You know, come to think of it, there's a much more on-point question and answer from that interview:

"Q: Of all five videogame systems on the market now (PS3, PSP, PS2, DS, Wii and 360)only the Xbox 360 has had such major hardware failure problems. Microsoft being the only company based in the US making a videogame system. What part of Microsoft's way of doing things do you think caused this situation to happen[?]"

A: "First, MS has under resourced that product unit in all engineering areas since the very beginning. Especially in engineering support functions like test, quality, manufacturing, and supplier management. There just weren't enough people to do the job that needed to be done. The leadership in many of those areas was also lopsided in essential skills and experience. But I hear they are really trying to staff up now based on what has happened, and how cheap staff is compared to a couple of billion in cost of quality.

"Second, MS was so focused on beating Sony this cycle that the 360 was rushed to market when all indications were that it had serious flaws. The design qual testing was insufficient and incomplete when the product was released to production. The manufacturing test equipment had major gaps in test coverage and wasn't reliable or repeatable. Manufacturing processes at eall levels of suppliers were immature and not in control. Initial end to end yields were in the mid 30%. Low yields always indicate serious design and manufacturing defects. Management chose to continue to ship anyways, and keep the lines running while trying to solve problems and bring the yields up. Whenever something failed and there was a question about whether the test result was false, they would remove that test, retest and ship, or see if the unit would boot a game and run briefly and then ship. 360 is too complex of a machine to get away with that.

"In the end I think it was fear of failure, ambition to beat Sony, and the arrogance that they could figure anything out, that led to the decision to keep shipping. That management team had made some pretty bad decisions in the past and had never had to pay a proportional consequence. I'm sure they thought that somehow they would figure it out and everything would end up ok. Plus, they tend to make big decisions like that in terms of dollars. They would rationalize that if the first few million boxes had a high failure rate, a few 10's of millions of dollars would cover it. And contrasting that cost with a big lead on Sony, would pay it in a heartbeat. They weren't even thinking about Nintendo.

"Compare that to Sony, who delayed their launch, even though they were behind, when their box wasn't ready."
(same source; emphasis added)

Now this is coming from an insider who clearly has deep knowledge of what the situation was with MS both internally and strategically. He is very clear that (1) "bad luck" had little or nothing to do with the RRoD making it to customers; (2) RRoD would have been avoidable had MS not been rushing to market heedless of all danger; (3) The problem might have been exacerbated by particularly reckless management; (4) Sony was not "lucky" to avoid a similar fate (nor was Nintendo for that matter).

Unless you plan to attack the credibility of this guy I think you had better pack it in Squilliam ... after all, consider what I was responding when I started our exchange:
"OT: Nvidia recently fucked up and got a 40% failure rate on their GPUs. What does this mean? RROD could have happened to Sony just as easily. Its not that Microsoft is a screw up, its just that either Sony is Lucky or Microsoft is Unlucky depending on how you spin it. (Nvidia is the supplier of GPUs to Sony btw)"
(emphasis added)
It's clear that unless this guy is a complete liar this is just not true.