^ Then it can break down again in a day or two. lol.

It in my opinion it likely cost them millions in sales. The billion+ dollars being used to fix the problem could have been used for many other things that would have helped the 360 and would have added to the sales it would have gotten if it had no hardware problems.

Take Japan for instance, that billion dollars could have funded 40 or more high quality exclusive JRPGs or Japanese centric games that likely could have helped the 360 dramatically in Japan. Or it could have gotten 20-40 high quality third party exclusive games from all regions and made the 360's lineup very formidable. Or it could have funded a $100 price drop across all SKUs and made the 360 much more attractive, especially coupled with no hardware problems.

I think the problem cost Microsoft from being guaranteed to finish this generation in at least second place.

Comeon man, the only thing that will do is void your warranty or burn your house down somehow. Never believe anything you see on youtube when it makes no sense.

I dont understand how the towel trick works, it like catching your arm on fire and and then throwing gasoline on it but after the flames go out your arm is as good as new. Anyways im just curious how much it costs MS to fix broken consoles and if 1 billion was enough or not. I dont think we'll ever know.

if rrod didn't happen, the console would have been released a year later.

kenzomatic said: How do you think the failure rates have effected the 360 sales? Where do you think they could be with out them? Please don't get into a debate over what the rates are because reality doesn't effect sales image does and the image is that they fail a lot.

I don't think RRoD affected their sales very much, it looks like the virus never got spreaded outside Internet and hardcore gamers media. And there, offset of RRoD company was that is was used cleverly against piracy and mod-chips on Xbox.

The 1 billion cost for extended warranties could have been used for a price drop, or to purchase Bioware. That would have increased sales by more than the RROD hurt sales.

The RROD itself has affected sales, but i doubt by more that 5-10%.

@ Legend11

Guaranteed? Sure the 360 sold very well its first year, but mainly because of the XBox being retired early, pushing people to upgrade. 25-35 million sales for its lifecycle were to be expected, with the bulk of sales happening within its first years of release (upgrading XBox fans).

Sales comparison

IMO this chart clearly shows the PS3 is already starting to lead over the 360 despite an early retirement of the XBox, despite higher entry pricing for the PS3 and Sony mainly experimenting with new franchices before releasing anticipated sequels while all popular XBox games already saw sequels on the 360 early. This all before the PS3's better technology has put its stamp on this generation.

The 360 was and is destined to end selling much less than the PS3.

I'm talking about if the Xbox 360 had never had the RROD problem. You honestly don't think that the RROD has negatively impacted sales of the 360? There are a lot of people, I know some in person who have basically said they wouldn't buy a 360 because of the hardware problems.

Also I mentioned that the $1 billion dollars could have bought a lot of exclusives or even a $100 price drop, both of which if coupled with the the RROD having never occured would have practically guaranteed the 360 to finish in at second place or better.

As for the PS3 having "better" technology, in my opinion it's better to have technology that is easier and quicker for programmers to use rather than something which forces programmers to write their code in a particular way and ends up costing unnecessary delays and expenses for developers.

MikeB said: Sales comparison IMO this chart clearly shows the PS3 is already starting to lead over the 360 despite an early retirement of the XBox, despite higher entry pricing for the PS3 and Sony mainly experimenting with new franchices before releasing anticipated sequels while all popular XBox games already saw sequels on the 360 early. This all before the PS3's better technology has put its stamp on this generation. The 360 was and is destined to end selling much less than the PS3.

 

That chart is too short to get the big picture. Try http://vgchartz.com/hwlaunch.php?cons1=PS2&r1=All&cons2=PS3&r2=All&cons3=X360&r3=All&weeks=120

As you can see from the chart, PS3 won't catch up with X360 for quite some time. And what is "much less"? 10% less? 50%?

Edit: We need a way to reduce the cluttering on the x-axis. Just an option to show labels each N ticks?