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Leibson's Law

Steve LeibsonLeibson's Law: It takes 10 years for any disruptive technology to become pervasive in the design community. This blog is about the disruptive technologies that either have or will win over electronic engineers, some that won't, and why. Please feel free to link to these blog entries! Written by Steve Leibson, a freelance content creator and marketing/lead-generation consultant specializing in high-tech companies, former VP of Content for Reed Business, and former Editor in Chief of three publications including EDN. See my consulting Web site at www.sleibson.com and my history site at www.hp9825.com. You can email me at steven.leibson followed by the magic email symbol @ followed by att.net.

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Thursday, July 5, 2007

Microsoft’s Billion-Dollar Xbox 360 Snafu

Jul 5 2007 2:12PM | Permalink |Comments (7) |


Today, Microsoft announced that it is extending warranties on Xbox 360 game consoles to three years because of the abnormally large number of general hardware failures its customers are experiencing. Purchasers have been reporting quality issues with Xbox 360 consoles all over the Internet for a while now. Microsoft also announced that it will take a $1.05 to $1.15 billion pre-tax charge against earnings for anticipated costs associated with Xbox 360 console warranty repairs.

Most of us don’t get to design products where there’s $100 million dollars just in the uncertainty of warranty repairs, much less a billion dollars worth of repairs and replacements. However, this episode stands as a not-too-gentle reminder that designers ignore manufacturing margin and manufacturing quality at their peril.


Related entries in: Business and Marketing | Convergence | 

Reader Comments



at 7/5/2007 4:07:27 PM, JB said:
Given the spike in failures, you have to wonder if a major batch of counterfeit components made it into these XBox consoles. Anyone heard anything to this effect?

Warranty and repair costs are just another line in calculating the cost of counterfeit.



at 7/5/2007 4:36:33 PM, Steve Leibson said:
Everything I've read online indicates that the root cause of the failures is inadequate heat removal. The most common thread of observations suggests that the failures are due to board warping and solder cracking caused by overheating. The credible fixes include better thermal compound on the graphics processor, heat-sink lapping to better affix the heat sink to the processor die, better fans to exhaust the waste heat, and (incredibly), gummy-eraser-based spacers stuck to memory chips to prevent further board warpage.

Counterfeit components do not appear to be factors, although they can never be ruled out these days.



at 7/5/2007 5:15:39 PM, Brian Dipert said:
In EDN's July 19th issue, both online and in print, I'll have a complete Prying Eyes teardown both of the Xbox 360 Elite and its Core/Premium predecessors....including lots'o pretty pictures. Among other things, they'll reveal some of the interim fixes (think epoxy) MS made on the Elite to fix the GPU solder joint reliability issue....along with the more drastic measures (think additional heatsinks and airflow control) being added to consoles sent in for repair. Stay tuned....



at 7/6/2007 1:14:49 PM, Darrell Ray said:
I am looking forward to the teardown. Gives us fellow engineers a chance to learn from other's mistakes...



at 7/6/2007 3:33:52 PM, JH said:
I'm not really suprised... based on M$ software! Why would they think they could design hardware when they can't get software correct?
www.ackv.com



at 7/10/2007 7:45:04 AM, Plumbum said:
If this is a RoHS compliant product it could be a combination of things including tin whiskers.



at 7/20/2007 1:13:47 PM, Brian Dipert said:
My Xbox 360 Elite teardown link is here: www.edn.com/blog/400000040/post/940012094.html

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