SquareTrade only reported a 16.4% failure rate, 60% of which was attributed to RRoD and 40% are other failures, which include overheating and consumer related damage including the use of cooling pads (ironic). This means Microsoft's failure rate for 360s on a hardware standpoint is ~10%, which is slightly above industry standards but certainly isn't deserving of the class actions. Personally I'm wondering what Microsoft has been holding back, the class actions happened way too fast after these "studies" came out meaning MS never got to make an announcement on their own findings. I have a feeling they have a silver bullet in case the class actions ever get to court or they would have already attempted to court sympathy with the public.

I'm wondering if Microsoft will have a leg to stand on arguing that consumer demand for environmentally friendly products negates their claim for defective electronics as high-density electronics are hard to solder efficiently using non-lead based solders. If they can get a judge to side with them that the consumer demand for 'green' products means a higher defect rate could get the entire class action kicked out, but then the 360 wasn't exactly advertised as environmentally friendly (like MacBooks are) so if this would fool a judge or not is a wonder.

The current 'jasper' model 360's have a RRoD rate of less than 4% which is actually significantly better than the industry standard of 5-8% for hardware failures in the first year.