• PC World
• »Peripherals

Anecdotal evidence suggests the Xbox 360 failure rate may be as high as one of every three machines according to retailers.

"The real number [of Xbox 360 failure rates] is between 30 to 33 percent," said one former EB Games employee. An anonymous Best Buy employee said the failure rate for the console was "between a quarter to a third" of all units sold.

An EB Games current employee claimed a 1 in 4 failure rate when speaking to GamePro.

Many stores have revised warranty policies in addition to increasing the price of in-store warranties "solely due to the failure rate of the Xbox 360" says Daily Tech. In addition, the report states that EB Games nearly doubled the price of its one-year, over-the-counter warranty.

By comparison, one EB Games retailer said the single store failure rate of PS3s was less than one per cent and conceded that "in the hundreds of Wii units sold at that location thus far, zero have come back as defective."

Microsoft has said before that its Xbox 360 failure rate is "well within industry standards" of 3-5%, but decline to disclose the actual number even in light of recent media and consumer scrutiny.

Just last week one UK-based repair company refused to continue fixing faulty Xbox 360s due to the high number of machines coming in which rendered excessive losses for the company.

Microsoft representatives were not immediately available for comment when contacted by GamePro.