http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=33565

Red Ring of Death apparently accounted for 10% of all warranties

Following a statement earlier in the month from SquareTrade, an electronics warranty company, that claimed 16.4 per cent of Xbox 360s in its sample group of 1040 machines failed, the company has now released more information on the study.

The report, which tracked a test group of consoles for warranties purchased between April 1 and July 31 last year, details the 171 claims made and notes that only one of the 27 Elite SKUs and eight of the 57 Core SKUs were claimed on.

The rest of the failures were down to the 956 Premium models examined, and showed that 102 of all claims were due to general hardware failures resulting in the 'Red Ring of Death', representing around 60 per cent of all failures, and just under 10 per cent of all warranties

Other failures included disc read errors, video card failures, hard drive freezes, power issues and disc tray malfunctions.

However, SquareTrade did note that the sample group used was unlikely to have included any of the consoles sold more recently that were intended to counter many of the failures of the original models.

Microsoft told GamesIndustry.biz in response to the initial report two weeks ago that: "The majority of Xbox 360 owners have had a great experience with their consoles.

"We do not disclose internal hardware repair data and we do not comment on speculation."

Microsoft has committed an estimated USD 1 billion to extending consumer warranties and fixing any Red Ring of Death issues that occur.

Again, this is what happens when you rush to the market.

^yep that about sums it up

I think with the new models, the RROD will become less and less common, generally only occurring in the ones that people already owned before the new ones were available. MS is not so stupid as to allow a problem like this to continue indefinitely.

Sounds like the Premium is by far the most popular. Aren't consumers able to bypass such companies and deal with Microsoft directly for repairs?

^^I don't think they actually repair the consoles--they just track and gather data on warranties.

Well its much worse than this article seems to make it:

"The new report does note that this only tracks up to 10 months after the warranty purchase, and once a longer period of time is given, the failure rate is likely to increase. It's also worth pointing out that since Microsoft's Red Ring of Death warranty extension was introduced last July, some users may be going directly to the parent company instead."

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3166656

1. Only 10 months
2. Some are going straight to ms

@ thekitchensink

According to their website they provide warranty services for retailers. But Microsoft also provides warranty to XBox 360 customers.

So consumers can either claim warranty repairs from them or Microsoft, right? If so it would be interesting to know how this "study" was conducted. Did they call all those customers to make sure they didn't bypass their service?

Repeat failures also seem pretty high, would have been interesting to know more about this as well. And the covered time frame, a lot of unclarities.

"The majority of Xbox 360 owners have had a great experience with their consoles."

See!! They even poke fun at them for having to go through more than one console.
:P

I wouldn't call this a study then....