
We ran a story earlier this week about Dead Rising killing off 360 consoles. That post seems to have struck a chord with lots of our readers, as it has drawn more comments than any other blog post the internet has ever seen. Okay, so that last sentence is completely false, but we did receive a lot of comments. More comments than we've seen in a while. Is one game really destroying 360s? Probably not, but it is evidence of a wider problem for our beloved console. So, here's the big question: have you had any problems with your 360?
Tell us about your experience with your 360. Has it been fine? Has it been hell? Are you just a Sony fanboy who's trying to scare people away from the 360? Place your votes and tell us your story. We'll discuss the results and highlight some of the more enlightening comments next week.
Oh, and, for the record, I finally got a chance to fire up Dead Rising on my 360. Played it for five or six hours on Saturday. I had one incident of a load screen that just hung there, but otherwise the game ran flawlessly.
Update: This poll is now closed. Click here to see the results and commentary.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
8-20-2006 @ 7:46PM
Ed said...
I haven't had any problems with my Xbox 360. I bought mine like a month ago. I truly love my 360. Now i have to buy a HDTV, which I'm going to get later.
My opinion is that does who have problems with there 360 playing dead rising, could be because they have the early models, which came with some problems.
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8-20-2006 @ 7:47PM
Mr BoomStick XL said...
Well I will not bad mouth this sytem but I have to tell everyone that thursday morning I turned on the system to play Dead Rising and everything was going great......I pressed start, it started loading and it froze, no big deal right....wrong!! I tried to reset it and the dreaded three red lights of death!! This will be my thrid 360 and I REALLY go out of my way to take care of it!! Why me??
Now I e-mailed Major Nelson Re: Software Vs Hardware, can a game kill a system?? I asked him to have one of the tech guys on to answer this gripping question. I hope someone can, I LOVE the 360 and will continue to support it but damn what a month for the system to go down, Madden, N3,Saints Row and EchantArms!!! Crap!! Tell me what you think!!!
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8-20-2006 @ 7:49PM
Bumble said...
I didn't have a problem with mine until I accidently supercharged mine with a can of full throttle. Now, my dvd-drive doesn't always wanna cooperate.
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8-20-2006 @ 7:54PM
Rayner said...
I'm sorry to say this but that poll-site was just infested with malware trying to install itself.
You should pull this back ASAP!
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8-20-2006 @ 8:40PM
analogue said...
Sometimes, Quake4 hangs on a load screen between 2 levels.
I just reboot the Xbox and it's OK.
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8-20-2006 @ 9:05PM
lolersticks said...
Rayner: sounds like you've got problems with malware that doesn't have anything to do with this poll. Scan your system, stop using IE, stop being paranoid, and then look at the site. Hasn't that poll software been used for a while now? kthxbye.
On the flipside: I've had a couple of freezes, but that was with oblivion and GRAW, so I marked the second option.
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8-20-2006 @ 9:14PM
Xfan said...
Had mine a couple of months, and have played 28 different games. No problems encountered thus far.
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8-20-2006 @ 9:17PM
Don Wilson said...
I had to completely reformat my harddrive in order to play Dead Rising.
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8-20-2006 @ 9:22PM
JonathanR said...
yah... I'm sick and fed up with trying to get Dead Rising to work. First was the demo - I downloaded it, and it was so choppy, that it was completely unplayable. So I deleted it and downloaded it again, to see if I had a bad download or something. still I had the same problem. I figured maybe the full game would work fine (I had it preordered and paid for) so when it came out, I stuck it in the 360 and guess what??? Same thing - it ran, but incredibly slow (unplayable still). So, I bought an XSATA drive, to backup my savegames to my computer. Next I wiped my 360 harddrive (thinking it was too fragged to play on). I popped dead rising in again and it still wouldn't play right. Finally fed up, I sold my XSATA and Dead Rising on eBay. I don't know if my Xbox needs repair, because I've had no ring of death and all my other games work totally fine.
I'm done ranting, but I did vote "all games work fine except ________"
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8-20-2006 @ 10:09PM
Doug said...
I've had very few problems with my 360, and i've had mine since launch, all of my friends' 360s have had problems like the drive scratching a disc to death and the other having to be replaced. The only problems I have ever had were due to the massive amounts of heat the 360s seem to manufacture. When I had massive 8 hour gaming binges it would all of a sudden freeze on a pause screen or something, and all I had to do was turn off the system and let it cool off for a little. Now i have a little USB fan that I have aimed a the back of the console , and besides the negligible amount of noise it makes, it keeps my 360 *relatively* cool!
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8-20-2006 @ 10:11PM
GLewis said...
I guarantee that half of the votes that are under the problems options are the same people who came up with the bogus rumors about Xboxes dieing from certain games. I know hundreds of people who have not had any sort of problem, the only person i do know who had a problem droped his xbox on his way home.
I may be bias but I think most of these "games that kill my 360" things are just made up by microsoft haters. Maybe one or two people will get red lights because their running their 360s in a low ventilated areas and tell one person. Who makes a blog post about their 360 having the same problem, who doesn't even own a 360, causing a trickle effect.
The votes support what i think also...
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8-20-2006 @ 10:17PM
Jason said...
Need for Speed Most Wanted freezes my 360 about once a day.
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8-20-2006 @ 10:26PM
Dan said...
got my 360 on launch day and have had not one single problem.
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8-20-2006 @ 11:09PM
Rivithed said...
My launch 360 died about 2 weeks ago. Oddly, many posts about dead 360s I had linked on xbox.com have vanished. Just look at these posts for a sampling of people reporting dead 360s: http://forums.xbox.com/6093130/ShowPost.aspx
http://forums.xbox.com/6119864/ShowPost.aspx
I love the 360 console, but I have never heard of such hardware failures on any gaming system. I think that 3-5% initial failure rate has gone up.
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8-20-2006 @ 11:21PM
Derek said...
My only problem was with the xbox 360 starting up, I could never do it from the controller, until i shut it off, and did it again, then it worked.
That all has been fixed with the spring update!
Now 0 problems with my Xbox 360!
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8-20-2006 @ 11:22PM
DocX GAMC said...
I recently traded in my XBOX 360 with Wal-Mart, did the ol buy a new one, bring back the old one.. they dont scan seriel numbers there, i just couldnt wait weeks for M$ to fix my X360, and I had to play Dead Rising. I was getting a 3rd quadrant red light, either that or it would start to load and freeze out.. it was an original from launch day and the only game that ever made it freeze was FIFA World Cup 06, when me and my roomate would play 45 mintue long half games, it woudl always freeze with like 10 mins or so left to play, I think it was over heating.. but since I got the new system it never has any glitches, and in fact I had a party here saturday that lasted 13 hours and people where playing Dead Rising the whole time, not with one freeze up. I am super happy with my X360, just sucks that they are electronic components and all electronics have a small failure rate.
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8-21-2006 @ 12:07AM
Dylan said...
Frogger killed my 360=(
It's in repair right now actually.
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8-21-2006 @ 12:08AM
mietha CAG said...
I have a launch day system. It's had some freezing problems since the first week, but only on certain games (NFS:MW, MotoGP '06, and ES4:O. It may have happened on others too, but those are the only ones I remember.). It's not common, and it's never really caused me to lose much, so it's not that big of a deal. I've always been scared it would develop into something worse, but luckily, so far at least, that is not the case. I think I've also had a single DRE, but I can't even remember the game. DOA4 maybe, not sure though.
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8-21-2006 @ 12:14AM
ZeroCorpse said...
I've had a 360 since winning it at launch, and it has NEVER given me a problem, overheated, or scratched a disc. Not once. I've put hundreds- even thousands- of hours on it between DVDs, games, XBLA, and just messing around with photos and music.
Of course, I read the manual and treat it like what it is: A sophisticated piece of computer hardware. I don't have it in an enclosed entertainment center, or on the floor, or sitting atop an already-warm component like a TV or audio receiver. I have the power supply sitting where it can get airflow. I have the unit on a very nice surge strip. I don't move it while it's running. I don't abuse it. I dust it regularly. I care for it like I care for my computer, my digital camera, or my iPod.
When I quit Best Buy a few months ago, we had sold hundreds of Xbox 360 consoles, and we had gotten very few as defective exchanges. I believe it was about five, in total, that were defective. That's pretty normal for consumer electronics, and I don't doubt that at least one of those five was abused in some way by the owner.
You see, children, you have to learn to take care of your nice things. If you read the manual, follow the rules, and treat it with care, your Xbox 360 could last as long as my Atari 2600 or Odyssey2, which are both working fine and looking good to this day.
I also want to point out that I have had my 360 running from noon until three in the morning, between movies, music, long gaming sessions, and downloads, and it still doesn't get much warmer than any other DVD player. All these "it's SOOO hot!" claims are utter B.S. as far as I'm concerned. I've personally witnessed a 360 sitting inside a poorly-ventilated plastic display case, in Best Buy, running the demo disc 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for seven months straight without a single issue, and certainly not overheating! When it finally did have a problem, it was because the wired controller developed a short from customers screwing with it, and wigged out. The console is still fine.
So just shut up. Some of you might have had faulty consoles, but I'm betting at least half of you are Sony shills spreading lies and rumors.
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8-21-2006 @ 12:17AM
gombard said...
I was one of the unlucky few who was having problems with the demo.. I downloaded that aswell as SF2 during the same week. Since i purchased this machine on day one, it had no problems with demo games, etc. Until i downloaded those two items. Then it started locking up, finally resulting to a complete system failure. On this board (well Joystiq) i was told to check to see if the power bar might be at fault, which it wasnt. Asides from doing all the troubleshooting on the website aswell as the Customer Service Rep, nothing seemed to work. I've only had this machine for only 7.5/8 months and it's dead. Originally they were going to charge me full price for repairing the machine (160 cdn), however upon speaking to a supervisor got the price down by half, which still i find for what ive spent on the machine, games, equipment i should have this done for free.. She went on to explain to me that they extended the warranty to 60 days (as to impress me) - i interrupted her to let her know WHY they extended it with major issues, etc.. Nevertheless, i called back to make the payment and talked to another supervisor, and i asked her, would it be from the demo/items i've downloaded, and if it were, would i be compensated for this? She said it wouldnt be the demo's/items that id ownloaded, it only pushed the system that had an issue to fail.. So there you have it, im now awaiting for a new machine in roughly 4-5 business days, however in my neck of the woods im giving it 7 days.. Im still happy with my purchase and they were nice to deal with, im FOR SURE getting the extended warranty as soon as i get my new machine, aswell as any form of extended waranties for either my soon-to-be purchased wii & ps3...
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