Microsoft has decided to accept responsibility for the rash of quality problems with the initial production run of the Xbox 360 and has admitted that there is a clear pattern of system failure with units manufactured before January 1st, 2006. Free repairs and refunds will be given.
"As part of our standard and ongoing process of analyzing repair data, we recently noticed a higher than usual number of units coming in for repair," Microsoft told IGN in a prepared statement today. "Upon further investigation, it was further discovered that the bulk of the units were isolated to a group that was part of the initial manufacturing run of the console. Returns for repair are coming in for a variety reasons and it's a higher rate than we are satisfied with."
"We've made the decision to comp repairs for consoles manufactured before January 1, and provide refunds to the small group of customers who have already paid for repairs," Microsoft said.
The article did not state if refunds would automatically be issued to those who had sent their units in for post-warranty repair or if you will have to request for a refund directly. I would suggest that you call customer service at 1-800-4MY-XBOX to find out if you qualify for a refund.
This is a good move by Microsoft, but it is something they should have done sooner. As one of the caretakers of this site, I noticed that members of the site who bought their system within the first few months of launch were highly more likely to experience a system failure on their 360 than those who waited until 2006. The amount of failures that we experienced on this site was more than enough to warrant a recall if you extracted our failure proportion to the rest of the general public. Now that they have isolated the failure to those made at launch, consumers will have more confidence that they will not have any troubles with 360's bought now.
