Are current consoles more unreliable?

J

Jospeh

[H]ard|Gawd
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Just wondering. Did older consoles fail as much? Or is this something new?
 
The Xbox360 did have an exceptionally high fail rate due to a flawed design. Presumably the later design revisions and changes to their manufacturing process has eliminated the problem in new runs(but obviously the older units are still in circulation. Had 3 bricks thus far.)

But for the most part, there's just more discussion of the subject thanks to the proliferation of the internet. The internet has been awhile, but the broad population has gotten to using it for discussions, not just niche computer geeks on a listserv.

Lots of consoles have been screwed up. Anyone who has owned a Nintendo can vouch for blowing themselves blue into those goddamn cartridges. And banging on the nintendo, and bouncing the game up and down on the spring, and resetting constantly to a grey screen, only getting the main menu once in 10 tries...leaving the game on once successfully booted to avoid having to fight to get it load again later...
 
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I had to buy a new ps1 since the cd drive went out, worked upside down for a while, then finally died.

Plus the warranty's sucked back then - 90 days i think.

don't even get me started on the OG NES - "please work this time!! *blows on cartridge* "
 
More powerful consoles means more heat production which means higher failure rate.
 
The higher fail rates may also be attributed to the surge in console popularity with this generation. Besides the Xbox 360's abnormal fail rate I'd say the fail rates for the other consoles are roughly the same proportion as previous generations. It's just that the more units being sold, the more reports of failed consoles there will be.
 
Trying to stuff more powerful"PC like"components into a small box to please Joe 6pack will generate way too much heat.I think part of the reason that there may be no new consoles is due to that fact.
 
The 'blow in cartridge' thing wasn't really the solution, though. The real issue was with the connector on the console's PCB which would become somewhat loose after many cartridges had been inserted and removed. Swapping this connector out with a new one will fix the issue. Removing the corrosion and any other junk on the connector pads on the cartridge will help too.

Back on topic, current consoles are many times more complex than the old ones. The SNES and NES were basically the same hardware as the Atari 2600 from the 70s (6502-based) aside from the graphical chip. With current manufacturing techniques we could put a SNES and NES on the same chip. With increased complexity comes increasing possibility of failure. However, one can engineer around this. MSFT chose not to do this with the XBox 360 the first time around (ignoring cooling issues) and paid dearly for it. The failure rate on consoles in general has remained fairly constant, around 3%.

So in short, modern consoles are more complex, yes, but with proper engineering there's no reason why they should be more unreliable than an 80's NES. If anything the software is more of a potential issue, especially with the modern 'patch it later' attitude.
 
I remember jumping on my NES to get it to work. The thing had a broken case and it still worked. Sometimes.
 
Anybody remember the Thomson drives in the first one or two generations of the original Xbox? God, those sucked.
 
Does anybody remember having to blow in games disk for the NES? Or the door trick where you had to basically just alternate popping the cartridge in, beating the side, taking it back out, and beating again until it agreed to start up? That was every single NES system (at least all the NES systems among my friends.) So no, i don't think it's any different.
 
pigpen said:
Does anybody remember having to blow in games disk for the NES? Or the door trick where you had to basically just alternate popping the cartridge in, beating the side, taking it back out, and beating again until it agreed to start up? That was every single NES system (at least all the NES systems among my friends.) So no, i don't think it's any different.
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Indeed, nowadays we wrap our consoles in towels to make them work :p
 
lol no. I still remember having to replugin a game 20 times to get it to work on many of the older systems.
 
I never had a problem with my PS2, Dreamcast, Genesis, Wii (although I didn't have that very long), Xbox failed once, and disc drive in PS3 failed. So I guess you could say the newer ones failed more but with so many new features and more powerful hard drive I would say it's more possible for them to fail. But my 360 failed after maybe 2 years or so, and same story with the PS3.
 
To touch on the "blow in the cartridge" trick-- that didn't help, in fact it deteriorated the connectors over time which probably added to the game's malfunction. As for consoles being more unreliable, I don't think thats the case. I've never had an issue with my PS3, not a single one and I've had it for a while now. The 360 however.. thats a different story.
 
I noticed with cartridges though it got better with the n64. I remember the nes was really a pain though. You couldn't put the cartridge all the way in. Had to be just right. Snes was easier but still once in awhile you had those days.
 
Cartridge based RPGs (or any game with saves) were always a gamble as you never knew when your save game would be wiped out due to the cartridge not making proper contact. Lost many o' hours of gameplay that way. :(

I still remember my long gone used copy of Zelda for NES in which the battery never saved (the game even told me this when I tried to save that it might not hold) so I had to beat the game in one sitting or leave the console on overnight.
 
my dreamcast and fat ps2 work perfectly to this day. still play rush 2049 on the DC and still hit up twisted metal black on the ps2 all the time.

havent bothered with the current gen of consoles... my brother bought a 360 on launch and hes had to send it out for repairs twice.
 
Still have my NES from 6th or 7th grade, 1987 or 88.
Works fine.
Have had Atari's, Genesis's (w/cd attachment) PSX's, TG-16/Duo's, XBOX, PS@, PS#, etc....I'm sure you get the idea. Never had anything give me issues except the PSX/PS1. I have like 11 PS1's at one point. Every time one broke, I kept it for spare parts. Eventually filled up a huge garbage bag and brought it to the electronics recycling center.

Now watch, i'll go home tonight after work and my BR drive in the PS3 will be dead. :(
 
See the thing is this.I have a launch NES console.I cannot remember when it was made but I know my dad bought it for me back in the day.

Take into consideration that it still works today,I say it is damn good.
Wait until the 360 is as old as a nes is now and see if the damn thing still works.Probably not
 
I'd say current consoles are more unreliable: optical drives seem to cause a lot of problems after a short while, BGA chips and lead-free solder cause tons of problems, and hard drives can fail. Also, there's a whole bunch of electrolytic capacitors that can fail on new consoles. Slot connectors are often the only problem on older consoles (And Slot 1 systems). DeoxIT does magic on those connectors.
 
Dragon masters got a point. Everything is better with lead...... well maybe not babies but everything else.

Rather than taking lead out of all of our products and making them suck we should have spent our research $$ on how to build up a better tolerance to lead. lol
 
I never had an SNES game not load.
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That's what happens when you use a reliable cartridge system with gold plating on the connector as well.

Rather than taking lead out of all of our products and making them suck we should have spent our research $$ on how to build up a better tolerance to lead. lol
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Lead was removed from electronics to make landfills cleaner. Well, shouldn't electronics be recycled in the first place? They say people will always keep throwing out electronics in landfills anyways. Exactly, then why are those same persons trying to ban incandescent bulbs, and replace them with mercury-filled CFLs... :rolleyes: They've just made electronics less reliable, and force consumers into buying expensive, resource-intensive(at manufacturing) and highly toxic lightbulbs that fail prematurely after two months.
 
lol I've always loved those "environmentally friendly" mercury filled light bulbs. We all know most people don't dispose of them properly. Why does every one have to be such newbs.

That bad thing is most hippies or even normal people I know don't believe you when you tell them. F the surgeon generals warning on cigarettes we need them on light bulbs.
 
gameboy.jpg


confirmed mine still works perfectly fine
 
Elledan said:
The 'blow in cartridge' thing wasn't really the solution, though. The real issue was with the connector on the console's PCB which would become somewhat loose after many cartridges had been inserted and removed. Swapping this connector out with a new one will fix the issue. Removing the corrosion and any other junk on the connector pads on the cartridge will help too.

Back on topic, current consoles are many times more complex than the old ones. The SNES and NES were basically the same hardware as the Atari 2600 from the 70s (6502-based) aside from the graphical chip. With current manufacturing techniques we could put a SNES and NES on the same chip. With increased complexity comes increasing possibility of failure. However, one can engineer around this. MSFT chose not to do this with the XBox 360 the first time around (ignoring cooling issues) and paid dearly for it. The failure rate on consoles in general has remained fairly constant, around 3%.

So in short, modern consoles are more complex, yes, but with proper engineering there's no reason why they should be more unreliable than an 80's NES. If anything the software is more of a potential issue, especially with the modern 'patch it later' attitude.
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no the SNES was not like the NES and the NES was not like an atri 2600 just becuase they used the same family of CPU does not mean they were even remotely related
 
Someone mention Dreamcast? Thank god the laser in that thing is easy to adjust, I've had to do so to nearly every DC I've run across.
 
Unless they're reliable, which isn't often the case with consoles and optical drives in general: take a box of old CD-ROM drives, how many still work and read every discs without problem? A few units will stand out, but a lot are failing.
 
dezertrat said:
don't even get me started on the OG NES - "please work this time!! *blows on cartridge* "
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I kinda have to agree with you... but not totally. At least you could make the console works. Now in the age of advanced electronics , when your console die.... its over!
 
DragonMaster said:
That's what happens when you use a reliable cartridge system with gold plating on the connector as well.

Lead was removed from electronics to make landfills cleaner. Well, shouldn't electronics be recycled in the first place? They say people will always keep throwing out electronics in landfills anyways. Exactly, then why are those same persons trying to ban incandescent bulbs, and replace them with mercury-filled CFLs... :rolleyes: They've just made electronics less reliable, and force consumers into buying expensive, resource-intensive(at manufacturing) and highly toxic lightbulbs that fail prematurely after two months.
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lol wut?
 
YeuEmMaiMai said:
no the SNES was not like the NES and the NES was not like an atri 2600 just becuase they used the same family of CPU does not mean they were even remotely related
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Please back your statement up with some evidence. All those consoles used the same basic architecture, nearly the same (slightly customized) CPU, with the only major difference being the graphics processor.

The 2600 used the 5206, IIRC, without a separate graphics processor, meaning that the game had to figure out what to draw when and how much with each scanline. Later Atari consoles (5200, 7800) used a dedicated graphics processor for that as well, as did the NES and later the SNES. The graphics processor in the SNES added a lot more colours to the palette, more simultaneous sprites and so on. It also had a fairly advanced sound processor and of course expansions via the cartridge (like a better sound or graphics (3D) processor).

The original Gameboy (Z80-based) actually is a lot like the 2600's design too.

One of my best friends is an avid (nuts) homebrew Atari dev (2600 through 7800) and I have discussed architecture and implementation details in depth with him. Emulation of consoles has also been a long-time hobby of me (still is) and I have studied many details of various consoles in-depth. At one point I was working on a Saturn emulator (kind of gave up, not enough games and an absolute horror of a system to emulate and program for).
 
DragonMaster has it right. Moving parts makes thing more unreliable. It's just luck of the draw and what conditions there are in the location of the hardware. The manufacturing process also comes into play.

One of my brothers finally had our original NES die about a month ago and that was due to a power surge. The fool wasn't using a protector I'm guessing. But we got that NES for Christmas in 1988. Nearly 21 years is pretty damn good and it was still working if my brother hadn't let it fry.

I still have a working Atari 2600 that my sister got me for Christmas a few years back. This is one of the original Atari 2600's too. The fugly black and brown with a little orange stripe and metal stick buttons. Works like a champ as does the 14 or so games I have for it.

I had friends go through 4 or 5 of the original PS2s. My slim PS2 has never given me an issue. But the manufacturing process for the slim PS2 was more perfected then the originals. This can be said about any console though.
 
its not even just the moving parts or heat. The fact is there are A LOT more components that could fail in newer consoles. I recently bought a snes for my sister, and I turned it on, and was like, is this thing on? No noise, or heat for that matter, were apparent. But then the dog came over and tapped the game cartridge and we had to start super mario world allll over :(
 
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