EB Games temporarily removes 360s from shelves

360 News | Stock replenished on Wednesday at the latest.

Kotaku reports that EB Games Australia has apparently removed all Premium Xbox 360s from shelves in their national retail outlets due to a manufacturing problem with the bundled hard drive. While not officially confirmed by EB Games, Kotaku quotes "sources within the company" as their information channel.

The problem apparently does not affect the Core model due to the lack of a hard drive and is unrelated to the "red ring of death" covered by the new Microsoft warranty. Sources within the company claim that managers were informed of the issue on June 29th and that store staff have since been manually testing each Premium Xbox 360 prior to sale. The problem apparently manifested as a machine that completely failed to boot on startup and appears localised to EB Games thus far.

New stock is apparently on order and should be distributed through EB Games' retail network by Wednesday. While not related to the red ring of death, if true, it is unfortunately symptomatic of the reliability problems consumers are increasingly perceiving as being associated with the Xbox 360.

UPDATE: PALGN called EB Games this morning with a representative from the Camberwell store telling us 1/3 of the Xbox 360's had problems. They currently don't know when the consoles will be in stock.

UPDATE 2: Shane from EB Games has spoken to PALGN and clarified that this was simply a bad batch of consoles and stock on the Eastern Seaboard should be arriving tomorrow, other states should have Xbox 360's in store on Wednesday.

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39 Comments

bluejay

4 years ago

store staff have since been manually testing each Premium Xbox 360 prior to sale

Oh, those poor people - how difficult it must be...

Jaws

4 years ago

If you do take one, by all means make sure it comes with some sort of extended warranty which covers swapping a defective unit for a new one at any location of the chain you buy it from. That way, if you get any problems then its off to swap it for a newy with crossed fingers.

TheAnswer

4 years ago

So now your "new" console from EB is actually second hand since its used before sale, so you won't get a sealed unit from them anymore. They should lower the price a little because of this fact

Crestfallen

4 years ago

TheAnswer wrote

So now your "new" console from EB is actually second hand since its used before sale, so you won't get a sealed unit from them anymore. They should lower the price a little because of this fact

Whould you rather buy a sealed brick, or a working and open unit for the same price?

I'm pretty sure a box of tiles is more useful than a broken console.

Infested Jibbs

4 years ago

I do wonder if the 360 'issue' is as prevalent as what people make it out to be, you know the way it goes, those happy are quiet and content, those upset let EVERYONE know about it.

In fact i think there was a study on this, for example if someone has a nice meal at a restaurant, the tell <3 people on avg, but if they had a poor time their, they tell upwards of 8+ people.

Anyways, whatever.Soon reports will surface of 360's slaying entire families in their sleep, but mine hasn't skipped a beat, and that's what counts.

Passa

4 years ago

Qbert wrote

You guys have been talking about how this will all be fixed when they get a 65 something or other chip correct? I don't know to much about it, but is that what the Elite's are getting (along with 120 gig)?

I just want a working console by Christmas...

This issue was relating to the HDDs so I doubt a 65nm CPU process would have made a difference. The elites don't have this CPU, BTW, and the Premium will get it too anyway when it does arrive, along with the Elite. That is, assuming the Elite is launched here.. ever.

Brendo

4 years ago

yeah i did the big w price match with eb. found it funny that the guy stressed that any problems were to go straight to microsoft not them, but they didn't mention that when i got my wii.

i can only pray mine stays healthy. though i have had xbox live probs (not being able to join friends games or have them join me - would this be xbox or NAT problems?)

robbb

4 years ago

the guy stressed that to you because eb arent doing an extended warranty on 360's anymore. they still do on other consoles thats why they didnt say that for your wii.

Brendo

4 years ago

no he offered me an extended warranty for around $80 for two years after the 12mth xbox warranty. thankfully i declined as the next day microsoft extended theirs.

B3NBO

4 years ago

Brendo wrote

NAT problems. You need to do port forwarding or set up a demilitarized zone. It only affects some games though.. mostly Ubi's Tom Clancy games.

Newbie

4 years ago

Jibbs wrote

Same with mine! had it since Aus launch and its been great. Only thing it has done is crash during Colin McRae Dirt and i think thats coz my disc has a slight scratch on it (my fault as I dropped it when i first opened it haha)

I wondered the same thing about how widespread it is, as you rarely hear from people that are happy - im in IT i know this hehe

I guess it must be a big issue however, for MS to extend the warrenty on the 3 red rings.

Oh well, cheers to my trusty 360!

Fly

4 years ago

Newbie wrote

Jibbs wrote

Errr, you guys do know that they actually can track stock levels between branches now, so with this newfandangled tech they actually can get approximate numbers of bricked consoles to total stock, so while I have little doubt the numbers are exaggerated, they shouldn't be too far off.

While I do agree that people are more likely to whine than praise, either way it's still an unacceptable number on a 'dodgy' console.

And unless they come plated in gold for the same price I won't be getting one either way, and yes who doesn't want a gold plated door stop!

bradc1988

4 years ago

Hmm I got mine from EB about a month ago...

But EB warranty ftw

I'm just wondering if it does break over the next two years *knock on wood* and I get it replaced, would I be able to further extend the warranty onto the replaced console (I'd pay of course).