"You've spoken, and we’ve heard you. Good service and a good customer experience are areas of the business that we care deeply about. And frankly, we've not been doing a good enough job." - Peter Moore, Microsoft VP Entertainment in an open letter to the gaming community

Holy crap!?!  Did you just hear that? 

Respect.

During the last week, we've seen more and more stories circulating about failure rates of the XBOX 360 console.  According to some retailers, near 30% of XBOX 360 consoles were failing.  "We had 35 Xbox 360s at launch I know more than half of them broke within the first six months (red lights or making circles under the game discs). Two of them were dead on arrival" said an EB Game employee.  Microsoft has always maintained that the failure rate was under 5%.  That's a major difference.

Oh.  And then there was the story of the guy who is on his 11th (eleventh!) console.  Talk about bad luck (or bad quality assurance?).

Hmm.  The report that some XBOX 360 consoles are being sent back to owners with additional heat sinks installed in the case also made the rounds recently.

And finally, there's the story about Forza developers deleting forum posts of fans who have reported that Forza 2 causes the "red ring of death" to occur on some consoles.  Over 900 posts were moved or deleted.  Was it a cover up?

Microsoft has taken a beating of late.

Here at the Hushed Casket we've seen our share of broken XBOX 360s.  Yours truly is on his second console.  I can count over 10 people close to me that have had to send XBOX 360s in for repair.  If I think a little harder (or perhaps pay more attention to our forums), I bet I can increase that number to 20.  I've always felt that the failure rate was a lot higher than 5%.

Today, Peter Moore sends out an open letter to the gaming community.  While they don't admit that their estimated failure rate is higher than 5%, they are dishing out 3-yr warranties to all XBOX 360 consoles.  "As of today, all Xbox 360 consoles are covered by an enhanced warranty program to address specifically the general hardware failures indicated by the three flashing red lights on the console. This applies to new and previously-sold consoles...Microsoft will repair the console free of charge—including shipping—for three years from the console’s purchase date. We will also retroactively reimburse any of you who paid for repairs related to problems indicated by this error message in the past. In doing so, Microsoft stands behind its products and takes responsibility to ensure that every Xbox 360 console owner continues to have a fantastic gaming experience."

I'm satisfied.  While I think Microsoft is a little shady with the failure rate, I'm very excited to see such a sincere letter to the community that delivers good news for 360 owners. 

Now, where's my apology for the Zune, Windows Media Center, Windows ME, and Games for Windows - Live?