DRE comes to mind.

That's actually the only reason why I've given MS a pass on my XBOX RROD'ing.

I called them, and about 8 min. later, I was of the phone.

I went to my computer, and printed the UPS label.

Drove down to the UPS store and dropped it off.

Exactly 7-days later I got a new one (not a refurb).

So, MS gets a pass on the failure because they showed ownership of the problem, and it didn't cost me a dime.  All I ask for in a company that I buy a product from is that they stand behind that problem and fix it.  They did that, and because of the accountability the showed me, I'll will remain their customer.

Microsoft.  Truly, paragons of virtue.

Yea, people should go through the trouble of warranty crap. Good quality products should not fall back on warranties, only if some accidental damage is done or a very small percentage like .003 are defective. The question is a legit question, as consumers we should know what products are defective or low quality in any way. Xbox is just famous for RROD.

I'm not sure if Xbox is the highest in fail rate, don't think there were many forums to discuss Atari, NES, and SNES during their time. Still, considering the fame of RROD maybe no other console has had this many problems.

Now some people may think I'm an xbox hater so I'll just say Wii has lots of crappy games and PS3 library is small and too expensive. There bad things about all consoles.

I do believe sir, that there is just a hint of sarcasm in your voice.

I was going to say that. Those controllers were known to break if you looked at them the wrong way. You did not even have to play the games for the controllers to fail.  And since they were unique to the system (and unique for their time) ... it was just as if the entire system had failed. (There were some limited, costly, third-party options -- but nothing like today).

Mike from Morgantown

I remember that actually.  My friend Josh had gotten one for Christmas long, long ago, and we played the 5200 like crazy for two weeks straight.  Then him and his family left out of town for two weeks, and when they came back, him and I tried to play... and the controllers were non-responsive.  They just didn't work anymore.  That was one poorly made system.

It's weird... I don't remember anyone ever showing me how to do that, but I did it that way too.  Like some gigantic NES collective unconscious.

The NES was absolutely finicky -- twesterm's right -- but otherwise rock-solid.  I don't know how many times the thing was hit, kicked, dropped, but it just kept on working.  I didn't even believe in "console failure" till the PS2s started going belly-up.

 I would bet money that the 360 doesn't have anything close to the highest fail rate. Those early cartridge based systems seemed to have a lot more problems. I'm thinking back to all of the broken Intellivisions, Colecovisions and Atari systems that people have stored in boxes that became unusable for one reason or another after a few years. Early controllers also always died quickly compared to the NES and beyond.

If I recall, the Sega 32X was a device made of glass and porcelain that balanced on stilts over the Genesis and required a hammer to press the power button. The console add on had a 98% fail rate and there was at least one class action lawsuit from kids with 32 X shards lodged in their eyes.


Of course I might just be making that up.