SquareTrade, the largest independent warranty provider, have analyzed the failure rates of over 16,000 new consoles at random covered by the company for the last two years. The company provided additional information, saying the breakdown was: 2,500 PS3s, 2,500 Xbox 360s and 11,000 Wiis. The study highlights the many prevalent hardware issues and errors found in today's consoles.

One main point highlighted is that since the inclusion of the smaller, cooler chipsets, often referred to as 'Jasper' chips, the Xbox 360 console has seen less 'Red Ring' errors.




"When looking at over 500 units purchased in 2009, fewer than 1% of customers have reported a RROD error as of Aug 2009," the report states. "It is still too early to definitively assert that Jasper has given RROD a knockout punch, but such an argument may be pronounceable in the coming months." 

The study also shows, however, after two years of useage, the Xbox 360 becomes the most unreliable of the three consoles compared to Nintendo Wii and PlayStation 3. According to the company's data, the Xbox 360 suffered a failure rate of 23.7%, while the PlayStation 3 (10%) and Wii (2.7%) come in well behind.



"When looking at over 500 units purchased in 2009, fewer than 1% of customers have reported a RROD error as of Aug 2009," the report states. "It is still too early to definitively assert that Jasper has given RROD a knockout punch, but such an argument may be pronounceable in the coming months."