A study by independent warranty provider SquareTrade has found that Nintendo’s Wii is the most reliable of the current generation home consoles, followed by Sony’s PS3 and Microsoft’s Xbox 360.
For its newly released report, titled Game Console Failure Rates, SquareTrade analysed failure rates for over 16,000 new game consoles covered under its warranties.
The company found the Wii to be nine times more reliable than the Xbox 360 and four times more reliable than the PS3.
Looking at the first two years of ownership, 2.7 per cent of Wii owners reported a system failure to SquareTrade, compared with ten per cent of PS3 owners and 23.7 per cent of Xbox 360 owners. Excluding Red Ring of Death failures, 11.7 per cent of Xbox 360 owners reported a failure.
The most common types of problems seen with the PS3 and Xbox 360 were disc read errors and output issues, while the Wii had more power and remote control issues than the other two systems.
“Of the three major 7th generation game consoles, we can safely say that the Wii is the most reliable system on the market, with just one-fourth the malfunctions of the PS3 and Xbox 360. Even when adjusted for the lower rate of usage, the Wii leads the pack by a comfortable margin,” said SquareTrade.
“Our study also found the Xbox 360 to have the highest rate of failure by far, largely due to the Red Ring of Death. While our data indicates that RROD continued to persist as a major problem through 2008, it showed signs of finally abating with the introduction of the latest Jasper chipset in late 2008.”