~43 million

Nope, you are right.

There are a lot of ridiculous statements in this thread, starting with the preliminary assumptions of the OP.

The number of shipped 360's that are replacements for already purchased RRoD's would be MINISCULE!!!

Here are the facts as well as we can know them:

- All Xbox 360's come with a three year warranty, retrospective to those that purchased them before the three year warranty.

- Microsoft repairs Xbox 360's, or offers refurbished ones (repaired ones others handed in).  They do NOT hand out brand new Xbox 360's.

- Reliability rates had DRASTICALLY improved by the time we were three years from launch, to the point that you now hear less cases of recent Xbox 360's failing than you do PS3's and Wii's.

Ultimately, virtually no Xbox 360's from the first three years of the console's life would be represented TWICE in the shipped number.  After the three years, there is no reason to suppose that the number represented twice is any higher than that of PS3's and Wii's.  In FACT given the PS3 and Wii only have a one year warranty a piece, it is not unreasonable to assume that more PS3's and Wii's have been replaced (and hence reflected twice per household in shipping numbers) than Xbox 360's.

RRoD has cost Microsoft a LOT of money, but it's reflection in shipping numbers would be close to non-existence.  If anyone has a reasonable, logic-based refutation of anything I said, I welcome it.

But frankly, this thread should die with this post.

Maybe you can link us?

Search engine got no results on that one...

A repaired console is not a sale what you may have is a very small number of people replacing consoles they could of been repaired but then we will never know that number.

I could easily ask how many PS3 consoles have been replaced due to the YLOD issue. In theory as Sony do not have a blanket repair policy on this potentially it could actually be higher.

Whatever the actual numbers are neither of the points actually matter when taken into the whole numbers sold as both would be small.

Not entirely true.

If a customer buys a 360, has it for more than 3 years and then it breaks, and they decide not to get it repaired but instead to buy a new 360 (or even if they decide to neither repair it nor replace it) then it counts as an out of commision console, and yet will still be counted by VGChartz.

However, the same is true for the PS3 and Wii - these consoles do, admittedly have lower failure rates, but they also have shorter warranties which balances that out.

In reality though, the number is close enough to 0 to ignore, making my entire post useless :P

I was about to almost agree with you until I read the part where you said that more PS3s and Wiis have been replaced. Then I read the poster's name: starcraft, just as I guessed.

I'll stop your calculations right there.

My 360 broke. I was sent a refurbised one... which RODed (after 2 weeks). Does this count as 2 failures? i'm pretty sure it does. and since I still have my warranty, i'll get an other one soon. 3rd 360, only bought one, but have 2 failures. I'm pretty sure in sales it counts as 1 but in failures as 2....

Replacements aren't counted in sales and shipments so far as I am aware, so technically the answer to your question is none.  It's the same with PS3.  I have had a few break on me and Sony replaced them with a refurbished model in a very similar model to how MS handles broken 360 consoles.

However, if you are wondering is the true, individual customer install base less than the total sold?  Sure, for the following reasons (all consoles):

1 - buying second console to replace broken console outside of warranty

2 - buying second (or even third or fourth) console as a limited edition - so 360 owners with a console will buy a REACH 360 or PS3 owners will buy another PS3 because it has a God of War branding, etc.

3 - buying additional consoles across family or different rooms - as a parent I know of others buying 3 360 consoles, one for each teenage son.  I also know of similar activity for PS3s

Now, we know 360 has broken down the most but had longest warranty, PS3 broke the next most, and Wii the least.  I'd also bet the Wii has seen less purchasing for each family member than either 360 or the PS3.

So, sure, the real number of indivudual 360 owners will be lower, and probably the ratio is a bit higher than PS3 and for sure Wii.  But the same goes for the PS3, too.

Without any idea of the percentages for the points I've given it's all a bit of a crap shoot.  All I can deduce is the 360 probably has the highest percentage of rebuy/second console followed by the PS3 with the Wii I think having very little (which makes its sales all the more impressive).

MS doesnt report in thier financials VGChartz sold to consumers. This thread is about the claim that the sold to retailers number MS has reported includes consoles that are replacement consoles for consoles that have gone bad under warranty.  This simply isnt the case these numbers are for investors and investors care about sales and if MS was fudging the numbers to include numbers from operations.  Not to mention the amount of consoles that were under warranty and were in such bad shape that they couldnt be refurbished is miniscule because it makes no sense to send out a brand new unit when they can simply send out a refurbished or repaired unit anyway.

But anyway I do have a new number to replace my original 0.

The answer is 42.