Tiassa
01-25-08, 04:30 AM
Among the reader blogs at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer website is Digital Joystick, which, as its name suggests, covers video game news. Last weekend brought what may or may not be an item of interest. I don't follow the apparently woeful tale of the Microsoft XBox, but readers seemed to find this particular interview, with an alleged inside source, fascinating:
Q: So what do you think the real failure rate of the Xbox 360 is? Some have estimated it as high as 30%. I got my Xbox in early 2007 and so far so good but what do you think the chance is that it's going to die on me one day.
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. Life expectancy is all over the map because the design has very little margin for most of the important parameters. That means it's not a fault tolerant design. So a good unit may last a couple of years, while a bad unit can fail in hours. I have a launch unit and have not had a single problem with it. And it's used a lot. But I don't know anyone else with a 360 that hasn't broken, except you now. There's no way to tell when yours might die. But the cooler you can keep it, the longer it will probably last. So stand it up, keep it in free air, etc. :Note : Xenon was the code name for the first Xbox 360 mother board.
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.
(Digital Joystick (http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/digitaljoystick/archives/129866.asp))
I actually had to look up the phrase. That's how out of the loop I am. Part of me, though, isn't particularly surprised when Microsoft hits a snag. To the other, this one seems to be embarrassing the hell out of them, and there's not much about this interview that is kind.
Q: So what do you think the real failure rate of the Xbox 360 is? Some have estimated it as high as 30%. I got my Xbox in early 2007 and so far so good but what do you think the chance is that it's going to die on me one day.
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. Life expectancy is all over the map because the design has very little margin for most of the important parameters. That means it's not a fault tolerant design. So a good unit may last a couple of years, while a bad unit can fail in hours. I have a launch unit and have not had a single problem with it. And it's used a lot. But I don't know anyone else with a 360 that hasn't broken, except you now. There's no way to tell when yours might die. But the cooler you can keep it, the longer it will probably last. So stand it up, keep it in free air, etc. :Note : Xenon was the code name for the first Xbox 360 mother board.
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.
(Digital Joystick (http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/digitaljoystick/archives/129866.asp))
I actually had to look up the phrase. That's how out of the loop I am. Part of me, though, isn't particularly surprised when Microsoft hits a snag. To the other, this one seems to be embarrassing the hell out of them, and there's not much about this interview that is kind.