Microsoft Xbox 360 Consoles Fail More Often Than Wii, PS3

Warranty provider SquareTrade analyzed failure rates for more than 16,000 new game consoles covered by one of the company's insurance plans.

After crunching the numbers, SquareTrade found that in the first two years of ownership, 2.7 percent of Wii owners reported a system failure compared with 10 percent of Sony PlayStation 3 owners, and 23.7 percent for Xbox 360 owners. That means that Wii is about four times more dependable than PS3, and about nine times more reliable than Xbox 360.

Disc read errors and output issues were the most common problems with the PS3 and Xbox 360. However, the Wii had more power and remote control issues than the other two systems.

Excluding "Red Ring Of Death" failures, which are covered by Microsoft's three-year warranty, 11.7 percent of Xbox 360 owners reported a failure, SquareTrade said, which then puts it on par with the PS3.

"Just over half of these [Xbox 360] failures were a result of the widely reported RROD ["Red Ring Of Death"] issue. If the RROD issue were resolved, we would anticipate future Xbox 360s to be only slightly less reliable than the PS3."