I have no idea what MS' policy is on this, but they might be just testing out a random sample, and not every Xbone shipped.

wouldnt surprise me if they made an exception for this time around, if the failure rate of xbones is even half of what the 360's was thats a huge problem

There is no way they can do this. Every Batch yeah sure but not every Console. The amount of work money and especially time would be way too much. Also if they tested every console this alone would not have happen at all since this is the first thing they would do Put a disc in the drive.

Every new console experience this. It is new tech manufactured in a short amount of time. Of course defects will happen. The question is how much. 3-5% is totally normal for electronic devices If its under 5% there is should be no worry at all. But we will see the result in a month or two.

@darji: Good point :-p

@humanity : sorry brother, no such luck in Xbox avoiding the typical failure rates. There have been a number of tweets and postings hitting the Internet about faulty disc drives. The media is just now picking it up.

I don't think thats practical.

If you are testing EVERY xbox before it launches then you simply aren't making it right.

Daily Tech jumps in with reports of doom, including a comparison of Amazon complaint rates.

http://www.dailytech.com/Deathmatch+PS4s+See+Blue+Light+of+Death+Xbox+Ones+Chew+up+Discs/article33809.htm

And to those not familiar with how contract manufacturing (contracting to China companies) works, yes, EVERY unit made is tested before it is shipped. At least, that's what it says in the contract. Sometimes the manufacturing companies cheat on this. See, the contract manufacturer gets paid for each working unit they produce, so they have an incentive to call every unit they make a winner. So in the contact it says that the customer (the one hiring the contract manufacturer) will supply a set of tests that every unit must pass. Units that pass this test are considered good units and the contract manufacturer is paid for it. Bad units must be fixed before they are paid.

So the contract manufacturer has a reason to try to sneak broken units through the test, because then they get paid for them. So there is come cheating. But every unit is supposed to be tested and pass before it leaves the factory.

@flippyandnod: Well if that's true, according to that dailytech article they did a piss poor job.. I really hope this is all within the margins and it just look like a lot of issues on both sides because of the large number of units sold and the state of the internet today.

Well also you might want to note that its probably basic testing for power and OS turn on.
-The disc tray and such probably doesn't get tested.

It would take simply too much time(and money) to do this for every single console.

@sjwho2: What's the point in covering something that affects less than 1% of the population? It would be like having the major networks carry nothing but farmer centric tv programs all day long in the US. Besides, it's bad press affecting a tiny vocal minority who are all covered under warranty and will shut the hell up 1-2 weeks after calling tech support.

Absolutely the disc tray would be tested. You even see a picture of the test disc above.

Let me explain it again.

The contract manufacturer (CM) buys the parts and builds units. The customer (MS) purchases every one that is built properly from the CM and then puts that in the retail channel to sell it to a retailer. The difference between the contracted purchase price and the wholesale price is the gross profit for MS, regardless of how much it costs to make a unit. In essence, if there is a mismatch between the price to make a unit and the contracted purchase price, then the CM takes that profit/loss.

Now, look at it from the CM's side. Would you like to sell non-working units to MS? Sure you would. If you could ship empty enclosures and get paid $550 (or whatever) by MS for the, you would make a huge profit. But if you're MS, would you like to buy non-working units from the CM? No, you wouldn't, because you don't want to deliver non-working units to the retailers.

So the compromise is that there is a defined test which every unit must pass before it is declared to be a working unit. MS wants this test to be as comprehensive as possible because the customer doesn't want to buy units that don't actually work. The CM wants it to be less comprehensive because every unit that fails the test is one they cannot sell to MS. They have to either repair it (rework) or if it cannot be made to work, take out the valuable or easy-to-remove parts (CPU or any subassembly like the HDD, ODD, controller, power supply, etc.) and use those to make a new, working unit.

In addition, the CM would like to spend less money testing. But then again, there is a reason they build in China! Labor is still cheap (for now) and space isn't very expensive either. So if you have to take a unit and put it on a rack for an hour or two to run automated tests, then that can be done if necessary. And for something this complicated it's probably necessary. You can be sure each function of the unit is tested at least in a cursory manner. Every port is plugged into, every button pressed. The optical drive reads a disk, the harddrive reads and writes.

But there is yet another factor at work. Remember, the CM gets paid for each unit that passes those tests. What if bad units can be made to pass those tests even though they are bad units? The CM gets paid for them and is happy. So that's what happens. One of the way CMs apply their skills of cost-efficiency is by figuring out how to cheat the tests. This is especially true when MS is asking for a high production rate, as at launch.

So, as I said, each unit is supposed to be tested. Is it really tested? We can't be sure. And MS can't either. If MS knew the tests were being cheated they would change the tests so they cannot be cheated in that way.

Of course, it's also possible the units don't exhibit any problems during the tests and just show them later. We saw this with the RRoD. In that case, the act of shipping the units broke the solder joints and so they were bad upon receipt even though they passed the tests.

There's a lot of possibilities. But be sure that at least according to the contract between the CM (Foxconn, presumably) and MS, each unit is tested before ship.

I wonder how widespread the Xbone disc tray issue will actually be, as Microsoft have shown to be pretty inept with the design of the thing. Well, that's a bit harsh as the disc trays themselves are obviously just faulty.

but...just how do you make your console considerably bigger, require a separate big power brick, and run hotter than the competing console which is smaller yet runs cooler, is more powerful and has an internal power supply. (this isn't hyperbole, it's from an Extremetech article)

How?

Where else you gonna fit all that cloud?

@flippyandnod: I'm not doubting what you're saying, just curious... how do you know that?