Speculations are running high as to the real failure rate of the Xbox 360, and Capcom's Dead Rising has been dragged along into the riptide.  Apparently, at least as far as his own studio is concerned, Game Daily Biz has been tipped off by an EA employee yesterday that the actual failure rate of the Xbox 360 is much higher than the 3-5% statistics which Microsoft has released. The employee suggested that among the 300 consoles they received, in reality, the failure rate was as high as 30-50%, and being dragged right by the tail of this unpretty observation is Dead Rising, as it appears to be making the problem worse, with many of the consoles getting much hotter than usual when the said game is running.

The tipper has also complained about Microsoft's customer service, saying that owning and maintaining an Xbox 360 costs around 2 to 3 times more the price of Sony's PS3 once you factor in repair fees beyond the three-month warranty. In response to this, Microsoft has released a statement, claiming that "The length of warranty and repair charge for unwarrantied consoles is consistent with electronic industry standards. Microsoft prides itself on excellent customer service, and we encourage anyone with a concern about the functionality of their Xbox 360 to contact us at 1 800 4MY-XBOX."

And what of the role of Dead Rising in all this? The guess is that the game can use all three processor cores of the console simultaneously, thereby making the system run hotter than when playing other titles. What makes it worse is that this speculation seems to be supported by actual Xbox 360-Dead Rising horror stories circulating in the internet. Sites like Ars Technica and other gaming forums have posts regarding the same issue from their members. 

In one such post, a user has noted that "Dead Rising is making zombies of 360 systems. This game killed my system last night; thankfully, I have a one-year product replacement plan so I already have a replacement, and apparently the demo did the same thing to another member of our forums. This could simply be coincidence, but as always make sure your 360 is well ventilated and nothing is blocking the vents. This game seems to put the hardware through its paces."

Dead Rising developer, Capcom however, has assured that there is no problem with the game, and that it is not the cause of the console's overheating. "The game works under the specs of the 360 system and was approved by Microsoft. For anyone having issues with hardware, we have referred them to contact Microsoft for hardware support,"  a spokesperson said. Thinking about it, it really is possible, after all, that there really are Xbox 360 titles that use multiple or all three cores of the consoles. In fact, Gotham Racing 3 and Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter have also received similar complaints. So, the hypothesis is that certain Xbox 360 games really just make the system run hotter, without necessarily putting blame on the game title, or on the console itself.

A Microsoft representative though, has shrugged off the claims of the EA-employee-turned-tipper as being just an individual opinion, and that they have no reasons to believe that the claims made were based on any factual data. EA, on the other hand, has not yet broken its silence on this matter as of press time.