Source details Xbox 360 design flaws, Red Ring of Death

The same site that reported the impending split between Bungie and Microsoft a full week before the official press release has now posted an in-depth interview with an anonymous member of the Xbox 360 development team. 8Bit Joystick posted the interview yesterday (January 19, 2007) in an e-mail question-and-answer format. Lengthy and technical responses to questions posed by “Jake,” the post’s author, seem to confirm that the inside source is legitimate and well informed. When asked about the estimated 30% failure rate of the Xbox 360:

It’s around 30%, and all will probably fail early. This quarter they are expecting 1 M failures, most of those Xenons. Some of those are repeat failures. Life expectancy is all over the map because the design has very little margin for most of the important parameters. That means it’s not a fault tolerant design. So a good unit may last a couple of years, while a bad unit can fail in hours. I have a launch unit and have not had a single problem with it. And it’s used a lot. But I don’t know anyone else with a 360 that hasn’t broken, except you now. There’s no way to tell when yours might die…