The Xbox 360 is a fragile piece of hardware. Keep it running for long periods without proper ventilation, and it just might Red Ring of Death on you. Leave it running on a hot stove, and it will, well, it’ll melt. Hell, pretty much leaving anything on a hot stove will cause gooey meltdown. Here’s what apparently happened: Ty and his buddies were setting up for a Halo 3 LAN match and ran out of space to set up consoles. So, Ty and his buddies decided that, say, instead of putting it on the floor, they should put the Xbox 360 on the stove. And whoops, someone forgot to turn off the stove. You know, like people do. Look closely at the picture to see two things: 1). A third party cooling device 2). The handiwork of nitwits.
Don’t Leave 360 on the Stove [Engadget]
Are you one of the countless many who have suffered the indignity of those three red lights on your 360? Are you still waiting for your 360s triumphant return from the Microsoft repair center? Well, now you can wear your misery proudly on your chest with this Red Ring of Death T-shirt until your 360 comes marching home again, a little worse for the wear but hopefully functioning normally.
Red Ring of Death T-Shirt [Casually Hardcore]
See that? It says “Welcome to the world of Xbox 360″ and asks me to select my language. About thirty minutes ago, I plugged in my “fixed” Xbox 360. Back in August, my Japan launch 360 Red Ringed. Twenty-two days passed, and I received my “fixed” Xbox 360 via airmail. That was on September 11th. As I had to go to Tokyo yesterday, I took it out the box and put it under my TV. Today was the first time I could plug in the machine, and when I did, my new black wireless controller didn’t sync with the console. Neither did my old controller.
My Red-Ringed Xbox 360 Elite showed back up at my house when I was in Leipzig. The majestic black console was cloaked in bubble wrap, stuffed between two pads and placed in a box along with a letter of apology from Microsoft.
The letter apologised for the inconvenience of having to ship my console off to have it repaired and said they were going to give me a free month of Xbox Live Gold membership. Sure enough, there was a plastic card taped to the bag protecting the Elite good for one free month.
Of course I’d prefer that Microsoft get to the bottom of their RROD issues, but this certainly is a step in the right direction.
Just a reminder not to leave your Xbox 360 on all day in a plastic case. Not good for the machine! Rumours of better Elite performance aside, this must be the first conked Xbox 360 Elite I’ve seen. Bummer, because I quite like that sexy paint job. The platform’s good fun, too. Shame about the quality. Dead Elite [thesportsfix, Thanks Laird!]
Rumour has it that a spike in Xbox 360 returns, both valid and not so much, have lead to an increase in the return time for repaired Xbox 360s.
I’ve heard that the turnaround time for Xbox 360 repairs has skyrocketed to as long as six weeks and if you do the maths, that could mean that some loyal 360 fans may be console-less when the Halo 3 launches. Talk about bad juju.
It’s coming. Obviously. Later this year, Xbox 360s outfitted with 65-nm chips should be hitting store shelves according to The Xbox 360 Uncloaked author Dean Takahashi. Dubbed “Falcon,” these chips are smaller than the current 90-nm processors and should use less energy. And that *should* lead to fewer Red Rings of Death. Well, theoretically! We won’t know until these consoles are out in the wild, performing under real world conditions. However, Takahashi has confirmed that the chips are in the first batch of consoles currently being made, meaning that they could be there by fall. But Microsoft isn’t going to disclose to customers which consoles have what.
The exciting and inevitable conclusion to the my-Xbox-360-starting-freezing post! On Saturday night, after playing the BioShock demo to death, I decided to fire up some Gears of War. I played for ten minutes and then it moved on from this world, leaving Red Rings of Death as a memento. To recap: I got the “checkerboard effect,” and the next time I switched on a disc-based game, the box konked out. So Xbox Live Arcade games and free demos could be the answer to Microsoft’s hardware woes! Or something.
Sure Microsoft has been flooded with a slew of Xbox 360s returned after blinking the dreaded Red Ring of Death, but we hear that not all of them were due to overheating.
When the console seizes up and dies, three of the “circle of light’s” quadrants blink red, but when the video cable pops out four of the quadrants blink. Apparently, a large number of consoles returned to Microsoft with the dreaded Red Ring of Death were perfectly fine and just the victim of a bit of red ring hysteria.
There have been so many returns, in fact, that we’ve been told Microsoft plans on disabling the four ring error code on future builds of the console. No word on whether they will remove the three-ring coding as well.
Think we’re all of the opinion that the 360′s a little on the unreliable side. So there’s no debate about that. What there can be debate over, however, is whether the console’s poor reliability matters to existing 360 owners. A New York Times article from the weekend investigates just that, publishing quotes from a whole bunch of 360 fanboys and generally painting a picture that a lot of 360 owners aren’t fussed about below-average hardware, because they’re getting (or are looking forward to) stuff like Halo 3. But there is little doubt the faithful will be there in force, and thrilled about it, having forgiven Microsoft for the flaws in its console. “I’m on my third 360,” said Benjamin Lin, an 18-year-old Halo enthusiast from Seattle, “and it’s working great for me.”
Interesting angle to run with. After all,”forgive” is a very strong word, and one I don’t think many people would actually use in relation to the 360′s reliability. “Endure”, perhaps, or maybe even “tolerate”, but not forgive, and probably not “forget”, either. Xbox 360 Out of Order? For Loyalists, No Worries [NY Times]
