Microsoft Responds to Warranty Report

[Shrygue]

via IGN


Responding to a report issued this week by an independent warranty firm indicating that the Xbox 360 has a 16.4 percent failure rate, Microsoft said today that company officials have not seen the report but question its validity.

Yesterday, warranty issuer SquareTrade revealed the results of its recent examination of Xbox 360 failure rates. The company said that, based on a sample group of 1,000 warrantees it had issued, 16.4 percent had service calls -- more than half for general hardware failures (a.k.a. Three Red Lights) and the rest for disk drive problems, hardware freezes and other issues.

"Microsoft does not comment on hardware failure rates [emphasis by Microsoft], nor do we comment on speculation," Microsoft Joe DiMiero told IGN in an e-mail message today. "We have not seen the report, and are unfamiliar with the agency that filed it. Based on the enthusiast community's feedback yesterday, the methodology of this report is suspect."

In a post on its buyer's blog yesterday, SquareTrade laid out some of the results of its findings but did not provide the entire report and did not mention the sample size and methodology of the study on the blog. A SquareTrade rep told IGN the company used a 1,000-warranty sample.

On its web site, SquareTrade describes itself as "the largest independent warranty provider" and got its start in online merchant verification on 1999 working with retailers like eBay.