On Jan 21, 5:30 am, Jerry McBride <jmcbr...@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Roy Schestowitz wrote:
> > Inside Source Reveal the Truth About Xbox 360 "Red Ring of Death" Failures
>
> > ,----[ Quote ]
> > | It's around 30%, and all will probably fail early. This quarter they are
> > | expecting 1 M failures, most of those Xenons. Some of those are repeat
> > | failures.
> > `----
>
> http://www.8bitjoystick.com/archives/jake_inside_source_reveal_the_tr...
<snip>
> Only Microsoft would do something this stupid... just to try and keep it's
> name in the public eye...
>
> Not to mention the problems it's having with xbox live...
>
> One thing Microsoft knows how to do well and that's pissing investor money
> in the toilet.
>
> Whay to go dudes!
>
> --
>
> Jerry McBride (jmcbr...@xxxxxxxxxx)
Interesting article. Here's a longer quote:
<Quote>
Q: Of all five videogame systems on the market now (PS3, PSP, PS2, DS,
Wii and 360)only the Xbox 360 has had such major hardware failure
problems. Microsoft being the only company based in the US making a
videogame system. What part of Microsoft's way of doing things do you
think caused this situation to happen.
First, MS has under resourced that product unit in all engineering
areas since the very beginning. Especially in engineering support
functions like test, quality, manufacturing, and supplier management.
There just weren't enough people to do the job that needed to be done.
The leadership in many of those areas was also lopsided in essential
skills and experience. But I hear they are really trying to staff up
now based on what has happened, and how cheap staff is compared to a
couple of billion in cost of quality.
Second, MS was so focused on beating Sony this cycle that the 360 was
rushed to market when all indications were that it had serious flaws.
The design qual testing was insufficient and incomplete when the
product was released to production. The manufacturing test equipment
had major gaps in test coverage and wasn't reliable or repeatable.
Manufacturing processes at eall levels of suppliers were immature and
not in control. Initial end to end yields were in the mid 30%. Low
yields always indicate serious design and manufacturing defects.
Management chose to continue to ship anyways, and keep the lines
running while trying to solve problems and bring the yields up.
Whenever something failed and there was a question about whether the
test result was false, they would remove that test, retest and ship,
or see if the unit would boot a game and run briefly and then ship.
360 is too complex of a machine to get away with that.
In the end I think it was fear of failure, ambition to beat Sony, and
the arrogance that they could figure anything out, that led to the
decision to keep shipping. That management team had made some pretty
bad decisions in the past and had never had to pay a proportional
consequence. I'm sure they thought that somehow they would figure it
out and everything would end up ok. Plus, they tend to make big
decisions like that in terms of dollars. They would rationalize that
if the first few million boxes had a high failure rate, a few 10's of
millions of dollars would cover it. And contrasting that cost with a
big lead on Sony, would pay it in a heartbeat. They weren't even
thinking about Nintendo.
Compare that to Sony, who delayed their launch, even though they were
behind, when their box wasn't ready.
</Quote>
I expect the management of this project were doing what they thought
Bill Gates was telling them to do. Beat Sony, get market share, at
all costs, make technical excellence bottom priority. Just the way
he's managed software projects all this time.
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