That's right, after a particularly good run I've had another Xbox 360 die on me. This time a debug unit.

While the instances of Xbox 360 red rings have certainly dropped, I do still hear stories about the console's DVD player giving up the ghost. That's what happened to me in July last year when my last 360 died and that seems to be the case this time around. I was playing the end of LEGO Batman The Videogame when the game paused and a "dirty disc" error popped up on the screen. A few more runs at playing the game allowed me to get a few minutes in before the console crapped out on me again.

Just last month my brother had his Xbox 360's DVD drive die on him as well. He recently went out and purchased a replacement Xbox 360 Arcade.

For those keeping track I've now had a total of ten Xbox 360s die on me since the launch of the console. (That's counting debug units and retail consoles). Of those eight died with a Red Ring error and two died with perpetual dirty disc errors.

How, exactly, did Microsoft wind up shipping a notoriously defective Xbox 360, resulting in thousands upon thousands of gamers burning through temporarily working consoles and over a billion dollars in warranty expenses? That's largely answered in Venture Beat's massive feature on the birthing pains of the console, one designed under the gun and hastily revised with a software "ship and patch" philosophy.

Venture Beat's Dean Takahashi talks to numerous on- and off-the-record sources close to the manufacturing of the Xbox 360, providing insight into how ill-conceived certain aspects of the first-to-launch console were. For example, VB writes that in August of 2005, just prior to launch, some 68% of consoles coming off the assembly line just didn't work.

It's a fascinating read, from the console's early engineering gaffes and compromises, to Microsoft's reluctant admission of defective hardware. Some of it may be familiar territory, but it's a comprehensive look at the console's history, if nothing else.

Xbox 360 defects: an inside history of Microsoft's video game console woes [Venture Beat]

Microsoft has ranged from mum to cagey on the exact source of the hardware issue that has red ringed thousands upon thousands of Xbox 360s, with Robbie Bach chalking it up to a "a Microsoft design issue". While the President of the company's Entertainment & Devices Division would prefer to leave it at that, a report from the EETimes lays blame on the console's graphics chip, one made on the cheap.

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Jake Metcalf over at 8Bit Joystick.com has recently posted an interview with an "individual who has worked on the Xbox 360 project for many years", who goes into explicit detail about the extremely high failure rate of Xbox 360 consoles since the console's launch in 2005. While normally we take such anonymous interviews with a grain of salt, you may remember Metcalf as the man who broke the story on Bungie leaving Microsoft a week before any official word was released. His source details everything from the various reasons for failure, and how much Microsoft knew about the system's instability before the product was shipped. If there's truth behind this, it's downright disturbing.

The manufacturing test equipment had major gaps in test coverage and wasn't reliable or repeatable. Manufacturing processes at all levels of suppliers were immature and not in control. Initial end to end yields were in the mid 30%. Low yields always indicate serious design and manufacturing defects. Management chose to continue to ship anyways, and keep the lines running while trying to solve problems and bring the yields up. Whenever something failed and there was a question about whether the test result was false, they would remove that test, retest and ship, or see if the unit would boot a game and run briefly and then ship. 360 is too complex of a machine to get away with that.

Metcalf's source also cites the lack of a sufficiently staffed and skilled engineering team causing problems that could have been easily avoided had proper funding been given to the project.

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There are whispers this is a NEW RROD, the result of what happens when a Falcon chip goes bad. Maybe! Looks too pretty to be an error display, though. We'd like to think it's just the 360's way of spreading a little Christmas cheer.
[via Gizmodo AU]

This, yes this, is what we've been waiting for: The Red Ring of Death jack-o'-lantern. According to reader Zhao:

Every gamer's worst nightmare... the centre fell out and had to be taped *cries due to lack of skill*

It's like the mouth of Hell.