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How many consoles have you owned that had hardware failure?

Sosokrates

Report me if I continue to console war
Bill Murray GIF by Groundhog Day


And my PS2 disc drive was temperamental but it got fixed to somewhat working order.
 
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Rockondevil

Gold Member
Had a 360 RROD as I'm sure everyone did.
I had never really considered my NES/SNES as faulty until you brought it up now.
 

CuNi

Member
Only one 360.
RMAd one Xbox one because the fan was makijg a weird noise out of the box but it was more a "this doesn't sound right" situation than anything really faulty.

So depending on how u see it one or two consoles out of the 6 I owned. The others are OG Xbox, PS4, 360 slim and a GameCube.
 
I have owned literally dozens of different consoles over the year. Back in my day (old man voice) you could kick the nes/snes down the stairs and elbow them from the top rope and still work. Make a list of consoles that have failed on you that were not your fault. I admit when I was much younger I broke many controllers chucking them as walls, even some cd games, but never personally broke a console. Here is my list and share your own!

Nes: They all were faulty to a point. Back in those days everybody blew on game cartridges to get them to work. It worked after sometimes trying close to a dozen times. Yes nes games you often times would have to try numerous times to get them to work. The thought at the time was that blowing on the cartridge removed dust and allowed a game to work after enough tries. The real reason I learned decades later is the NES was built kinda faulty. From inserting and removing nes cartridges, pins on the cartridge would bend over time. SO blowing actually did nothing, just reinserting the game sometimes would make the right contact with the nes. They later made a new revision that was a top loader that solved this issue.

Sega Saturn: The disk drive just stopped working. I don't know why but I bought it used and I owned it for 2 years so maybe just worn out.

Sega Dreamcast: I had a 1 that the drive stopped working and had another where the laser would not read the disk.

Original Xbox: I had 2 of them that had the infamous "thompson drive" These drives would fail and would not open and would not spin.

Playstation 3: I paid $599 dollars for this unit. It was backwards compatible 60gb one. I picked up God of War 2 on the ps2 and it came with Metal Gear Solid 4. I didn't play it all that much because at the time I mostly played on my xbox 360. Played through a couple of AAA ps2 and ps3 games and then just used it sparingly for 2 years. Turned it on one day to play some God Of War 3 and the infamous yellow light kicked on. It was done!

Xbox 360: The poorest designed console ever. The original xbox 360's did not even come with HDMI, and after formatting you were left with 13gb of space. Those can be forgiven but the real issues was The RROD and E-74 erorrs. I went throught 5 xbox 360's in about a 7 year time span. I don't abuse my consoles and my other ones had no issues. I had like 4 different models of the xbox 360 and they finally got it right with the xbox 360 slim. Too bad because I had maybe my best time gaming during the xbox 360 era.
0 consoles and 0 PCs have failed me. I have put way more hours into my PCs as well.
 

Rickyiez

Member
1 , only the Xbox 360 . It was sent out to die

I had PS1 slim , PS2 phat , PS3 Slim , PS4 base , PS4 Pro and all of them were flawless .
 
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Nydius

Member
Launch PS1, the CD-ROM drive motor died after 2 years. Easy fix though.

No further issues until the Xbox 360. I had three of them RROD. Launch Pro, the replacement Arcade I bought waiting for the Pro to be fixed, and then the replacement Pro they fixed and sent back.

The last failure I had was my launch PS4, which died in early 2019 and I just didn't care to spend the time or money finding out why. It just wouldn't boot.
 

Kagey K

Banned
I had 2 psx that stopped reading games even with the upside down trick

1 OG Xbox who's laser fried and 1 360 that got the RROD.

Not too shabby for my lifetime I suppose.

My son has already had a Wii U where the screen add on wouldn't charge and a Switch where the card reader stopped working.
 
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THE DUCK

voted poster of the decade by bots
Holy crap I swear some of you are cursed.
Or have no surge protectors? Or eat on top of your consoles?
 
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tommib

Member
Never. I don’t keep them, though. But I’ve had a lot of hardware and never saw anything dying:

Master System
Gameboy
Game Gear
GameCube
Nintendo DS
PS2
PS3 Slim
PS4/PRO
PSP
VITA
Switch/Lite/OLED

I remember an old Pentium Celeron that stopped working and had its motherboard replaced. And that’s it really.
 
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TheSHEEEP

Gold Member
1x PS2
1x PS4
1x original Xbox
1x SNES (I know, right?! I'm the only one I know whose SNES broke, and I'm not talking about old age by now, but it was around 96)

Or have no surge protectors? Or eat on top of your consoles?
Nah. That wouldn't be hardware failure, anyway, but just damaging them yourself.
Consoles are just not as "invincible" as people tend to believe.

In the same time I'm gaming on PC (20+ years), 2 PCs broke (well, single parts within, but whatever) - and that's on WAY more intensive usage as I'm mostly a PC gamer.
Oh, and I do eat close to my PC!
In the end, consoles (at least since the PS1/Xbox era) are just PCs with custom hardware and custom OSs...
None of em are super prone to breaking, but none are unplagued by manufacturing faults, either.
 
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Sw0pDiller

Member
None tbh but i had three x360 consoles witch i sold within a year of buying it, so they did not had the time to break on me.
 

Paasei

Member
My PS3 slim died on me. Don’t remember how or why, though. Did get a new one luckily.

Oh and, it didn’t really die, but the battery of my PSP doesn’t fit anymore. It’s grown in size and feels squishy. Gotta somehow find a new one.
 
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Grechy34

Member
I have owned literally dozens of different consoles over the year. Back in my day (old man voice) you could kick the nes/snes down the stairs and elbow them from the top rope and still work. Make a list of consoles that have failed on you that were not your fault. I admit when I was much younger I broke many controllers chucking them as walls, even some cd games, but never personally broke a console. Here is my list and share your own!

Nes: They all were faulty to a point. Back in those days everybody blew on game cartridges to get them to work. It worked after sometimes trying close to a dozen times. Yes nes games you often times would have to try numerous times to get them to work. The thought at the time was that blowing on the cartridge removed dust and allowed a game to work after enough tries. The real reason I learned decades later is the NES was built kinda faulty. From inserting and removing nes cartridges, pins on the cartridge would bend over time. SO blowing actually did nothing, just reinserting the game sometimes would make the right contact with the nes. They later made a new revision that was a top loader that solved this issue.

Sega Saturn: The disk drive just stopped working. I don't know why but I bought it used and I owned it for 2 years so maybe just worn out.

Sega Dreamcast: I had a 1 that the drive stopped working and had another where the laser would not read the disk.

Original Xbox: I had 2 of them that had the infamous "thompson drive" These drives would fail and would not open and would not spin.

Playstation 3: I paid $599 dollars for this unit. It was backwards compatible 60gb one. I picked up God of War 2 on the ps2 and it came with Metal Gear Solid 4. I didn't play it all that much because at the time I mostly played on my xbox 360. Played through a couple of AAA ps2 and ps3 games and then just used it sparingly for 2 years. Turned it on one day to play some God Of War 3 and the infamous yellow light kicked on. It was done!

Xbox 360: The poorest designed console ever. The original xbox 360's did not even come with HDMI, and after formatting you were left with 13gb of space. Those can be forgiven but the real issues was The RROD and E-74 erorrs. I went throught 5 xbox 360's in about a 7 year time span. I don't abuse my consoles and my other ones had no issues. I had like 4 different models of the xbox 360 and they finally got it right with the xbox 360 slim. Too bad because I had maybe my best time gaming during the xbox 360 era.

The best thing about all these older disc based consoles are the ODE's which are available now restoring life to them.

I've done it to my PS1/PS2/Dreamcast Xbox and Wii and it's the best thing I've ever done.
 
I've bought Nintendo consoles since the N64 and had no failures up to the current Switch OLED model (I sold my original Switch to my nephew).

I've bought Xbox consoles since the first one; that failed after two weeks, the Xbox 360 I had through two iterations and went through 7 in total (one I bought from Game was dead on arrival) so that platform easily had the biggest failure rate. The good news is that Microsoft learnt their lesson as my launch Xbox One and Xbox One X worked perfectly as has the Xbox Series X so far.

I've bought PlayStation consoles since the first one, which I admittedly got second-hand after trading in a Sega Saturn which I realised was getting increasingly fewer games. That proved to be perfect timing as the PS1 took over big time. This console developed a fault where it would not load games unless I turned it upside down! I did eventually buy a new replacement then a PS2, which worked perfectly. The launch PS3 lasted me about 18-24 months then died so I had to buy another, which annoyingly was the redesigned unit with less features annoyingly but at least lost that horrid glossy finish! My PS4 and PS4 Pro both lasted the duration and my PS5 is still working OK.

I also owned a Sega Saturn until I swapped it for a PS1 as stated above then later a Dreamcast, which was awesome until it developed a laser fault though I was able to repair and later gave it to my nieces.

Hardware failures inevitably happen but I think the days of badly designed consoles like the Xbox 360, which surely must be the worst designed major console ever released to date, are gone and that they are now manufactured to a much higher standard.
 
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Majormaxxx

Member
PS3 - started to shut down with 3 beeps. Haven't found a technician who can fix it yet. Bummer since it had my GT6 save and I had almost completed it.

360 - the disc drive started getting stuck. Easy fix by replacing the rubber band.

Forgot 2 more

Ps2 slim - stopped reading ps1 discs. So I had the laser replaced. So now it doesn't read anything :) Need to fix it again.

NGC - started having disc reading problems.
 
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DenchDeckard

Moderated wildly
I've been actually really lucky with my consoles...touch wood.

I managed to dodge faulty 360s because I traded them in for a newer model before they broke, as I worked at a games retailer at the time. But I must have had like 5 to 6 360s in its lifetime as I owned a lot of special editions. Resi 5, modern warfare 2, gears of war, halo 4 redesign clear 360 for example.

I've had one faulty console I believe and that was my death Stranding ps4 pro had a dodgy APU but Sony was awesome and swapped it out in like a little over a week turnaround.

My son has had an xbox one X that the drive stopped working which was swapped out super quick too.
 
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Kamina

Golden Boy
Two 360s (RRoD; one i owned and one from my brother)
One PS3 (disc drive stopped reading)
 
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Duchess

Member
Both my PS2 and PS3 died, and I got them refurbished by Sony.

My PS1 and PS4 never had a problem. Fingers crossed my PS5 remains good.
 
I have owned literally dozens of different consoles over the year. Back in my day (old man voice) you could kick the nes/snes down the stairs and elbow them from the top rope and still work. Make a list of consoles that have failed on you that were not your fault. I admit when I was much younger I broke many controllers chucking them as walls, even some cd games, but never personally broke a console. Here is my list and share your own!

Nes: They all were faulty to a point. Back in those days everybody blew on game cartridges to get them to work. It worked after sometimes trying close to a dozen times. Yes nes games you often times would have to try numerous times to get them to work. The thought at the time was that blowing on the cartridge removed dust and allowed a game to work after enough tries. The real reason I learned decades later is the NES was built kinda faulty. From inserting and removing nes cartridges, pins on the cartridge would bend over time. SO blowing actually did nothing, just reinserting the game sometimes would make the right contact with the nes. They later made a new revision that was a top loader that solved this issue.

Sega Saturn: The disk drive just stopped working. I don't know why but I bought it used and I owned it for 2 years so maybe just worn out.

Sega Dreamcast: I had a 1 that the drive stopped working and had another where the laser would not read the disk.

Original Xbox: I had 2 of them that had the infamous "thompson drive" These drives would fail and would not open and would not spin.

Playstation 3: I paid $599 dollars for this unit. It was backwards compatible 60gb one. I picked up God of War 2 on the ps2 and it came with Metal Gear Solid 4. I didn't play it all that much because at the time I mostly played on my xbox 360. Played through a couple of AAA ps2 and ps3 games and then just used it sparingly for 2 years. Turned it on one day to play some God Of War 3 and the infamous yellow light kicked on. It was done!

Xbox 360: The poorest designed console ever. The original xbox 360's did not even come with HDMI, and after formatting you were left with 13gb of space. Those can be forgiven but the real issues was The RROD and E-74 erorrs. I went throught 5 xbox 360's in about a 7 year time span. I don't abuse my consoles and my other ones had no issues. I had like 4 different models of the xbox 360 and they finally got it right with the xbox 360 slim. Too bad because I had maybe my best time gaming during the xbox 360 era.
None of my Playstations stopped working yet.
Which means my 24 years old Playstation is still working today.
So are my PS2, 3 and 4.

Sadly my family got rid of our C64 and Atari back in the day, so I can't tell if those would have stopped working by now.
 

DavidGzz

Member
PS1 and Xbox 360 were terrible. PS1. Myself and most of my friends had to turn it upside down and put it at an angle to get the thing to read games. Red ring of death for Xbox 360. I guess the original NES with having to blow into the cartridge sucked but is kind of funny now.
 

MayauMiao

Member
My PS3 went YLOD. I'm considering trying the capacitor replacement to see if it can fix it.
Wii not sure if it works as I kept it in the box for a while. I may try to set it up again and mod it to run roms.
PS4 still works but then again barely touch it nowadays.
 

DelireMan7

Member
The consoles I own (or owned) :
  • Atari 2600 (I don't have it anymore)
  • Sega Megadrive (I don't have it anymore)
  • Gameboy (I don't have it anymore)
  • PS2
  • PS3
  • DS
  • 3DS
  • PS4
  • Switch
  • PSP
  • N64
  • Gamecube
  • PS5
Out of this list only the PS3 had a major issue (hard drive issue, 2 years ago actually) after many years of service. I could have probably try another hard drive but I just bought another PS3 for cheap.

Minor issues :
  • 1 Shoulder button on one of my PS2 controller is not working
  • 3DS very rarely switch off alone.
  • One controller port of the Gamecube is not working.
 
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GametimeUK

Member
PS1 reading discs. Would take ages for games to load.

Launch PS2 reading discs just after the first year.

PS3 YLOD.
PS3 Slim reading discs after about 9 years.

Launch Nintendo Switch wouldn't power on after about 1 year.

Multiple Xbox 360's YLOD.

Xbox One wouldn't power on after about 5 years.

I've never had a dedicated handheld fail me. Gameboy, Gameboy Colour, GBA, DS, DS Lite, PSP, 3DS, Vita are all fine.
 

Slayer-33

Liverpool-2
I think I had an issue with my DC at some point, can't recall, got rid of my OG 360 because I played through Oblivion (main reason I got it while I waited for more games that I wanted to come out, and while I waited for MS to clean up the mess that had been happening to the OG 360's) that was the plan and then to buy a 360 back again, ended up picking up a 360 Slim, which I then sold to a co-worker, felt that thing woulda lasted as long as any other system with superb build quality, same for the Gamecube that I briefly owned.

Did have a feeling that my OG 360 was going to croak after some time given the massive heat generation lol. Thing felt like it was concocting an inferno inside it when you played TES:Oblivion lol...

Red = Sold/Got rid of it at some point.
Yellow = Possibly had an issue, I can't recall.
Green = Still own it

I've owned the following (In the order of when I picked them up, specially on or near their launch years):
  • SNES
  • PS1
  • Dreamcast (Think I might have had to replace the GD-Rom reader at some point I believe, it was a day one Dreamcast from the US launch, happened years after)
  • PS2
  • PS2 Slim (Still own it and still works I bet)
  • GC
  • Xbox
  • Xbox 360
  • Xbox Slim
  • Xbox One X
  • Xbox Series X (Main console now, obviously)
 
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DinoD

Member
Only one, out of 8 consoles ( 6 gen) I owned. Phat PS3. YLOD-ed in its 4th year, after my cousin spent the whole night playing FIFA. I resurrected it briefly by taking it apart and overflowed the RSX with the heat gun. I got XBOX360 3 years in its life cycle so never had any RROD on it.
 

Andrenicks

Neo Member
In my life i had, and 99% is still functioning,

Intellivision
Sega Mega Drive
Game Boy
Game Boy Color
Game Boy Advance
Psp ( i have 2 still running Monter Hunter like first day)
Ps1
Ps2 ( 1 fat and 2 slim )
Ps3 Slim
Ps4 Slim
Xbox
Gamecube
Snes
X360

I've never had a single problem with all of my consoles, the only one was the X360, i change 3 of them and after the 3rd I promised myself that I would never again have anything made by microsoft in my house.
I have yet to finish Ninja Gaiden 2 on X360, i loved that game.
 
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SaucyJack

Member
I had two Xbox 360s and one OG Xbox die on me.

Still have a functioning PS1, 2, 3 and 4, SNES, Wii and Saturn at home.
 

kubricks

Member
PS1and PS2 - One failed unit each, unable to read disc.

PSP - Fail to read UMD, then get turned into the greatest emulator.

NDS - L button went bust, the hinge also cracked.

Most of the controller broke at some point if that counts.

Honorable mention... the OG oled Vita never had any problem, the screen and all the buttons works just fine after what must have been thousand of play hours!
 

jufonuk

not tag worthy
Wonder how many Nintendo consoles in this thread ?

Betting it will be in the lowest end.

I’m guessing a shit ton of 360’s
Jimmy Fallon Reaction GIF by The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon
 
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winjer

Gold Member
The only console I had, that had hardware failure was the Xbox 360. Twice.
Once with the RROD and the second with the E74 error. Both times, it was still under warranty and MS took care of all the process.
But their solution was to increase the fan speed and the console became vey noisy. I sold it after a couple of years and got me a PS3.
 
Literally the only console i had that had hardware failure was an OG 360 that eventually red ringed. But it was right before the S model came out 🤷🏻
 
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