Sony claims amazingly low PS3 failure rates

If claims from Sony’s Chris Deering are accurate, PlayStation 3 failure rates are around .02 percent, well below the industry average of three to five percent. By comparison, Microsoft’s Xbox 360 has suffered various reliability problems including overheating and disc scratching, some reports suggest failure rates as high as one third of all consoles in existence.

Microsoft has typically remained tight-lipped on what they’re doing on the hardware front to address Xbox 360 failure rate issues. The company did announce plans to spend $1 billion extending the warranty of every Xbox 360 to 3 years, though. However, even if Microsoft manages to equip its console with cooler-running hardware, the Xbox 360 still faces an uphill battle to change the ongoing perception of being less reliable than Sony’s PlayStation 3.

Nintendo, on the other hand, has yet to reveal any failure rates for the Wii.