Red Ring of Death

On June 20, 2007, something terrible happened. Upon switching on my trusty Xbox 360 for another try at blasting away thousands of giant killer ants in Earth Defence Force 2017 – a game that you all must try unless you fancy a beating from a Yorkshireman – the console simply refused to turn on. Strange, I pondered as I tapped the button once more, only to be blown away by what happened next. Yep, it was the good old Ring of Red.

Now my original plan was to overly criticise Microsoft and their sheer reluctance to admit to the blatant design flaw. This fault is purely due to the heat created in the console and the loosening of one particularly ill placed chip inside. It’s causing thousands of consoles to be shipped out for repair every single day all around the world. Though I’m sure Microsoft Japan is fine, what with only 7 consoles sold to date.

Midway through this column, however, Microsoft announced that not only are they extending the warranty time for this particular fault to 3 years but they will also refund the obscene cost of repair that some of us have been charged. Which, yes, is indeed good of them, but while they spend all this cash to keep us swapping machines every couple of months, why aren’t they redesigning the inside of the 360 console itself in order to prevent this particular fault? Rumours state that with the new ‘Falcon’ chip to be used in future Xbox 360 consoles, the Ring of Red may very well be no more. Though with news that some Xbox 360 Elite consoles are already succumbing to the same fate, things still don’t look particularly healthy for Microsoft.

Thinking about it, I know of a good half dozen of my offline chums that have had to send back a 360 at least once. Add to that the dozens of online pals that have spent time offline thanks to their 360 heading for repair, and all this must be costing Microsoft a hell of a lot of cash.

At time of writing this closing – midday 19th July 2007 – there’s still no sign of my repaired 360 or my refund of my original repair costs. With delays of up to 8 weeks warned for us Europeans, it seems that the problem is worse than ever. If Microsoft doesn’t do something very soon, consumer confidence will disappear almost completely.

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