Wed 25 Jul
2007
RED RING OF DEATH
I’m a little fussed right now. I booted up my X360 today and instead of it booting up, I encountered my most dreaded fear. The X360s left, lower left, and lower right LED’s surrounding the power light were all blinking red. I gasped, and instantly felt the biggest “oh fuck” I have felt in some time.
It’s the red ring of death man, I’ve had it happen to me three times already.
-Ash, my cousin
This is the most dreaded failure known to happen to the X360. The failure that is destined to hit virtually one in every three units sold, the failure that was the reason that Microsoft increased the warranty on the X360 to three years, and the failure that was the reason Microsoft put aside $1.05 - $1.15 billion in order to fix said units.
It’s no secret that I love my X360 and everything I can do with it. Everything from voice chat, online game play, games in full HD, stream video and music from any computer … it’s simply awesome. And now, with this failure, I’m actually starting to feel the loss of its use.
Later in the evening I got to thinking, shouldn’t I be more pissed at this? I mean, wouldn’t I be pissed if one in every three apples I bought were rotten? Wouldn’t consumers be pissed if there were a significant defect affecting one in every three cars sold by a manufacturer?
Granted I’ve not lost my life, but something about this is not sitting right, like the fact that this defect wasn’t addressed until after the release of the unit. I mean seriously, one in every three? Not addressed? What and why would Microsoft still release the unit?
Acceptable losses? Maybe Microsoft knew all along about the heating issues of the chip set, but pushed the units out anyway. After all it would take some time for the the problem to become “noticeable” among consumers and by then they would have accumulated a very strong market share, despite the failure issue. Just speculating.
To Microsoft’s credit, they have put aside money and have openly admitted they goofed. Why else would they issue a global extension on the warranty of xbox 360 units to three years?
Might be better to get the 65nm version. Instead of going through the pain of red ring of death again
I’d seriously consider that. Why would anyone go through the trouble of having to keep sending his or her unit in every time the chip overheats? My cousin has sent his unit in three times already.
Microsoft appears to have addressed this issue and will begin to ship new X360 units later this year. These units will have a new 65nm chip, codenamed Falcon that manages heat dissipation better. But even after they start shipping those units you would have to wait a while until stores clear out their old stock, just to make sure you have a unit with the 65nm chip.
Personally, even though I’ll definitely get one, I think Microsoft owes it to the people who have a unit with the older chip set to at least trade it in for a unit with the new chip set. Perhaps not a full swap, but at least offer the new unit at a substantially discounted price.
But for now, I’ll just send my X360 in to get it fixed and pray it doesn’t happen again.
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