The 360 Slim model is the first model to be free of the reliability issues that plagued the previous generations.
I've got the pre-slim one, which is supposed to be OK. Of course, the world was supposed to be flat, the heart was supposed to contain the soul, and Paris Hilton was supposed to be attractive, so...
Both the 360 and PS3 pushed the thermal limits for consoles at the time. They were built knowing that they would produce a high amount of heat but they did not realize that the heat would warp the board over time. As the best fab process at the time was 90nm, it was unavoidable to have a blazing fast CPU+GPU and not produce a lot of heat (hence the noisy fans on the 360 and early PS3s).
The current gen of consoles use 40nm fab processes and produce roughly a quarter of the heat of the first generations so the heat sinks can be smaller and the average heat within the unit is much lower and the boards don't warp.
The fan in mine doesn't produce much noise (the DVD drive is louder, I think*, but since you can install every game to hard drive first this isn't much of a problem).
* I might be wrong, of course, as the two noises (constant fans noise vs. variable squeaking of a DVD drive) are so different that you could subjectively imagine the wrong one is louder. But certainly I don't notice the fan noise when playing on the 360.
I don't think that there was knowing negligence on the part of Microsoft or Sony, but the fact is that any hardware that pushes thermal limits will have a much shorter lifespan than those that operate at a much more reasonable range.
Maybe not, but when they did realise that the problem existed then surely they should have fixed the problem properly, and made sure the fix was final, using proper testing? Instead they continued to release "fixed" revision after revison, letting the public test them, and seeing them fail. It's done untold damage to Microsoft's reputation as a console maker, although since most people who use consoles have the attention span of a goldfish, it probably won't stop many 360 owners buying the next generation XBox when it comes on the market.
They knew this but Microsoft had the additional problem of a faulty heat-sink design that didn't carry away the heat as fast as would be required. This has cost them billions so I can't see a repeat of the same rate of reliability problems in the next generations. No corporation likes to give away money.
Granted they are likely to do almost anything they can to avoid the problem (but not quite anything - I doubt they'd keep the console launch back for months whilst they soak test it completely, and risk not being the first to launch the next generation of consoles), but I don't have faith in them.
Had Microsoft and Sony decided to clock their chips 30% slower, then the reliability issues would never have arisen however we'd be playing games that looked much more primitive than the games we get now on the modern revisions at low heat anyway.
Us retro-gamers do that anyway. But then, we're smart ;)
Moral of the story, don't buy new consoles until at least their third revision (revisions are often not published so wikipedia is your friend).
Or buy a console that uses cartridges! No excess heat generation, no DVD drive to wear out, no loading errors, almost no loading times, and erm, pretty expensive games even when bought used. Mind you, the latter is still true for disc games nowadays, so...
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Why is it that people think that it's not okay that a console breaks often? I don't mind at all.
Especially if it's your console ;)
<sarcasm mode off>
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I've got the pre-slim one, which is supposed to be OK. Of course, the world was supposed to be flat, the heart was supposed to contain the soul, and Paris Hilton was supposed to be attractive, so...
The fan in mine doesn't produce much noise (the DVD drive is louder, I think*, but since you can install every game to hard drive first this isn't much of a problem).
* I might be wrong, of course, as the two noises (constant fans noise vs. variable squeaking of a DVD drive) are so different that you could subjectively imagine the wrong one is louder. But certainly I don't notice the fan noise when playing on the 360.
Maybe not, but when they did realise that the problem existed then surely they should have fixed the problem properly, and made sure the fix was final, using proper testing? Instead they continued to release "fixed" revision after revison, letting the public test them, and seeing them fail. It's done untold damage to Microsoft's reputation as a console maker, although since most people who use consoles have the attention span of a goldfish, it probably won't stop many 360 owners buying the next generation XBox when it comes on the market.
Granted they are likely to do almost anything they can to avoid the problem (but not quite anything - I doubt they'd keep the console launch back for months whilst they soak test it completely, and risk not being the first to launch the next generation of consoles), but I don't have faith in them.
Us retro-gamers do that anyway. But then, we're smart ;)
Or buy a console that uses cartridges! No excess heat generation, no DVD drive to wear out, no loading errors, almost no loading times, and erm, pretty expensive games even when bought used. Mind you, the latter is still true for disc games nowadays, so...