Insiders give behind-the-scenes look at Xbox 360 woes

The lengthy report—an excerpt for an upcoming book about the notoriously buggy gaming console—is a fascinating chronicle of what went wrong, and why. It's a must-read for every gamer (more than a million and counting, apparently) who's sent their beloved Xbox 360 back for repair.

The six-page story comes from respected VentureBeat writer Dean Takahashi, and it paints a portrait of a software giant—that would be Microsoft—so determined to grab the console-gaming crown from Sony (and make a tidy profit in the bargain) that it rushed production, ignored early warning signs, compromised build quality for design, and pushed a faulty product to market without proper quality assurance controls.

For its part, Microsoft told Takahashi that his story "repeats old information and contains rumors and innuendo from anonymous sources, attempting to create a new sensational angle, and is highly irresponsible."

Well, that's partly true. Takahashi's report does indeed include plenty of blind quotes, and his overall thesis—that Microsoft has "too many balls in the air" as it tried to beat Sony to the next-gen punch—isn't earth-shattering news.

But Microsoft's statement isn't exactly a denial, either, and the story includes plenty of interesting—and telling—details, especially for those of us who've lived without our busted Xbox 360 consoles while waiting for repairs.

For example: According to Takahashi, Microsoft received more than 1.2 million returned consoles by early 2007—that's compared to 11.6 million consoles shipped in the same period, for a whopping 10.3 percent return rate.

Also, by August 2005—about three months before the initial launch of the Xbox 360—at least one engineer had "repeatedly" warned that production should be halted because of manufacturing problems, Takahashi reports. Among the pressing issues (according to an August 2005 memo): "overheating graphics chip, cracking heat sinks, cosmetic issues with the hard disk drive and the front of the box, under-performing graphics memory chips … a problem with the DVD drive, and other things."

Meanwhile, the Microsoft hardware team—which, as Takahashi wrote, saw through the successful launch of the original Xbox—was stretched too thin (blame the Zune, among other projects). Also, designers battled with engineers over the size and shape of the console (guess who won), and thanks to underdeveloped QA testing, Microsoft had a difficult time tracking down the root causes of console failures.

All in all, a fascinating read—and a sad one, given what a bulletproof 360 could have been. I still love my Xbox, but I hold my breath each time I fire it up, anticipating the worst.

So, who out there's still having Xbox 360 problems?

Related:
Xbox 360 defects: an inside history of Microsoft’s video game console woes [VentureBeat]