How come this seems to have happened to everyone except me?

[NinjaDeathSlap]

The Xbox 360 developed a degree of infamy in the early days of its release for the Red Ring of Death. It is always one of the first points made in criticism against it. Literally everyone I know with a 360 has had theirs die on them at some point, many of them multiple times...

and yet my 360 has never ever had a problem.

It's not that I got a more recent version because I got it within the first 2 weeks of its release, meaning it is now over 4 years old, so you would expect at least something to have gone wrong by now. Nor has it had a particularly easy life with me. There are few days when I don't use it and I have on quite a few occasions pulled all nighters playing on it until the noise coming from the fan sounds like it's literally screaming for me to stop.

It's just always struck me as strange that when the 360, especially the earliest version, has a reputation of being the least reliable of all the game platforms, my original 360 has proved itself to be more reliable than any other console or PC that any of my friends own. What is this? Coincidence? A miracle? Science?

So are there any Escapists who own 360's that have endured against all odds? Am I doing something to help extend it's life without even realising, or is my console just the DC superhero of Xbox's, who just cannot seem to die?

 

[Distorted Stu]

Mine is still goign strong, but i sing to mine and tell it bed time stories so it has no reason to hate me....yet

 

[Tib088]

I'm on my 3rd xbox : /

 

[Mossypne]

I had mine for 5 years before it rrod. And this was with me being a 13 year old boy who would literally spend his entire weekend on cod4!!

 

[mastiffchild]

I had mine for 5 years before it rrod. And this was with me being a 13 year old boy who would literally spend his entire weekend on cod4!!

Never mind the fact you could remain a thirteen year old by playing just on shooter every weekend-you say your Xbox lasted too?!! You, clearly, have powers.

 

[Faux Furry]

I've had no problems whatsoever with my XBox 360 thus far, though it is just two and a half years old right now. My first Game Cube had more troubles (mainly because it was a display model I purchased for cheap from Game Crazy, prompting a swift return and a forking over of the full $200 to buy a new system to avoid the same problems with spontaneous deactivation the other one had).

No one ever said that the things had a 100% failure rate, they've just had well over the acceptable 1-10% range of other consoles fail in some way or other. The failure rate of the previous XBox 360 models had about a 23-55% failure rate(depending upon the survey source).
I'm not sure about the Slim's failure rate but it's probably around the acceptable 1-2% range.

 

[dancinginfernal]

I've had my 360 for 4 years, and it's only had a minor freezing problem solved by smacking its side in anger.

I've named him Patrick.

 

[Cheesus333]

I've had mine for two and a half years now, and it hasn't failed me once. And it was pre-owned, too.

I guess it's just how you take care of it, or where you put it, etc. For example, mine is free standing, out of direct sunlight and well-ventilated so it never overheats.

I've had my 360 for 4 years, and it's only had a minor freezing problem solved by smacking its side in anger.

I've named him Patrick.

That's pretty good, cause when people say "is this your broken Xbox?" you can reply with...

 

[The Rockerfly]

Nope, still on my 1st. Had it since Christmas 2007 so I feel I got pretty lucky

 

[LuckyClover95]

It's a miracle! Everyone I know with an Xbox has had theirs red ring or just die.

 

[Snowy Rainbow]

My Xbox 360 lasted ages. Never gave me any grief.

Then one day it red ringed.

And I broked it with a hammer

 

[TwoToTango]

Yeah I hear ya. I've had mine since the start. Never a single problem. Guess I got lucky. Or it's because I don't play with it as much as some people do. I prefer my PC so the 360 gets to gather dust alot. The poor thing.

 

[klasbo]

What is this? Coincidence? A miracle? Science?

Coincidence, which can be explained with science. Here's a short version:
(Note that this is quite simplified, so there are a few details you can nit-pick)

Your 360 is just an outlier. All individual components that make up a machine are made to behave within a certain tolerance (engineering precision, basically), and all components fall within a certain "quality range" around the quality they were aiming for (actual quality = expected quality +/- tolerance). Higher quality components cost more to make, so most companies set the minimum precision needed to pass the tolerance test to be slightly too low (the +/- tolerance part of the former equation becomes quite large, especially the minus part), and rather repair or ship new machines. Yes, production actually costs less that way.

Your machine just so happens to have individual components on the high end of the tolerance scale. Combined, this creates a machine that doesn't break as easily as others. While a large percentage of 360's break, there are a lot of 360's out there, which means that there will inevitably be at least a few machines that have just the right/lucky combination of good components. There are also (about) equally many machines that have the most unlucky combination of parts, and these are the ones that never leave manufacturing, or end up dead-on-arrival.

Engineering, statistics, and economics.
Still not as fun as physics though.

 

[Hamish Durie]

*sheds a tear* mine broke in the first month

 

[scnj]

Lucky. I'm on my third at this point. Only one of the previous ones red ringed though.

 

[TheSaw]

I've only had one break on me, I got it sometime in 2006, and it only recently broke. So that's a good 4 years+.
I do have a new one now. I'd have probably got a newer one anyway even if it didn't break.

 

[Snowy Rainbow]

My Xbox 360 lasted ages. Never gave me any grief.

Then one day it red ringed.

And I broked it with a hammer

"Broke it" you mean?
Personally, I would probably do the same with my 360 if it ever broke.

Nah. I broked it. Totally different to breaking.

 

[GraveeKing]

I gave up after my 3rd one.
There's something like a 25% failure rate+ or something.
Basically. It just means you've gotten lucky.