Microsoft Admits Xbox Problems Bigger Than First Thought

EXCLUSIVE: David McLean the Regional Director of the Microsofts Entertainment Division for Australia and New Zealand has said that he is well aware of the decision by Microsoft Corporate to allocate more than $A1.3 billion dollars to fix Xbox 360 Ring Of Death problems that has seen hundreds of Australians forced to return their Microsoft gaming consoles.

He said, “I am currently on my way back to Australia and as soon as I am back, we will address the issue and work out how to best help Australian customers.”

David McLean, Regional Director of Microsoft’s Entertainment Division for Australia and New Zealand

 McLean told SmartHouse last week at the GFK Conference in Sydney “We have been having issues with the Xbox 360 due to some hardware problems. We are working with retailers to help customers, and I urge customers to contact Microsoft directly on this issue”.

He added, “We are also aware that a lot of people have had problems just as their warranty is running out, we are still looking at this issue”.

Initially Microsoft tried to claim that the Xbox failure rate was limited to between 3 to 5% of all units sold. SmartHouse reported that the failure rate was as high as 30% according to Australian retailers.

Peter Moore, the global head of Xbox in the USA told Wired Magazine, “I think the 3-5% came within the first twelve months of launch. I don’t remember the timing, I can find out, in fact. So the possibility is that as you get these things in the field and you start to learn — we’ve only been in the field a year and a half, eighteen months, with this product — the learning that we have about failure rates in the field based on all the information we have now that is coming through has given us the substance to be able to be sure we fix these things, and to capture all of the cost, to be sure we knew entirely what we were going into: from fixing, to repairing, to reimbursing, to an investment in the hardware to make sure that we have got these problems under control”

He added, “So I’m not going to comment on specific failure rates, but I think that the 3-5% is a pretty old statement and that clearly as we learn more about things, that things change. And hopefully people will see that we’re trying to do the right thing here. All anybody needs to understand is that we’re recognizing these issues, we’re fixing them. We’re continuing to make more reliable hardware, and at the same time, cost reduce the hardware moving forward so we can be competitive in pricing throughout the lifecycle with the consumer”.