new consoles - coming in HOT!

"I love the smell of a new console in the morning."  

If you’re looking to buy the PS4 or XB1 in the coming weeks, you’d be wise to take a stroll down memory lane.  Why?  Because the past might be a good indication of what to expect here.  In the last generation, two thirds of first models of consoles were simply buggy little machines that had been rushed to market.  Let’s take a look at the overall failure rates of the last generation[1]:

If you remove Nintendo from the mix, which did a great job and it should be commended there haven’t been any major issues with the WiiU yet, the failure rate of Sony’s and MSFT’s machines are unacceptable and in the case of the 360 high, ridiculously high.  And it’s important to note that these failure rates don’t tell the whole story.  Remember when the PS3 was compatible with (some) PS2 games?  Yeah that didn’t last so long and was abandoned all together in the slim models due to the amount of incompatibility issues.  Also, the initial PS3 hardware was rather difficult to develop for so the PS3 had not only weak launch titles but for a lengthy period of time didn’t have a lineup worth much (a problem that Nintendo knows all to well right now with the WiiU, but for different reasons).  

But as hardware failures go, MSFT bore the brunt of the criticism and rightfully so.  The 360 had major problems, with the most infamous being the Red Ring of Death.  Because of these issues, and it should also be noted that MSFT knew about these problems before hand but still decided to ship, MSFT offered to fix the defects as part of a new three year warranty program, costing the company over a billion dollars.  That’s a lot of money.

Of course the last generation wasn’t the only one.  The PS2 had the “Disc Reader” problem and in the mid 90s the PSX has a similar issues.  But the last generation has been the worst by far and as Sony and MSFT rush to bring their new products to market, like the last round they are once again coming in hot.  

Perhaps both companies should take one page out of Nintendo’s playbook and just release their new products once they are ready.

[1]http://www.gamespot.com/articles/xbox-360-failure-rate-237-ps3-10-wii-27-study/1100-6216691/