By now we have all heard of (or experienced) the infamous Xbox 360
Red Ring of Death, and we also pretty much know what causes it. Heck, we've even seen ways to avoid it by spending more money on
fixes instead of going through Microsoft's replace / refurbish / replace process. In what he calls his final chapter on an extensive bit of investigative journalism,
Dean Takahashi uncovers the early quality control-absent rush to market that resulted in a massive number of Xbox 360s being sent to market despite known design flaws. Dean goes on to propose that all this has kept Microsoft from winning this round of the console wars, as costs to keep the consoles working crippled Microsoft from aggressive marketing measures such as
price cuts. In the end, he concludes (via an anonymous quote) that Microsoft treated the Xbox 360's launch like a software company would, as if some future patch would cover up the inherent problems with the console's design.
posted September 8th 2008 10:26AM
Microsoft has been pulling the same stunt since the beginning of time. They thought they could patch the problem like the way windows is patched so many times you can't even tell from the original. Except in the case of xbox360, you just can't patch a damn hardware problem. The hardware problems exist until today. If you think of patches as plastic surgery. MS/windows is the equivalent of Micheal Jackson. You can't recognize it.
MS is just plain irresponsible, they don't care about the gamers. Once you are stuck with xbox games of course you are going to continue to buy the games and consoles when it breaks, you have too much invested in it already. It woudln't be a problem if the 360 didn't break, but it does and people are suffering for it and when the 3 year warrantry runs out, it will still be breaking, and we'll see what happens.
You must hate your son in law huh? I mean this what bugs the crap out of me...You would think that the elite, and whatever is out now is fixed, but it is not. So people will continue to have problems way over the 3 year warranty. I though about a 360 with being on sale and all....but I will never buy it. I'm happy with my ps3.
I've never had the RROD on my original 360 that was bought Feb. 06. But the problem I had was that my 360 was actually damaging the disc itself. I would hear a little grinding noise but I thought it was normal. Then when I bought a brand new GOW and after a couple hours of playing it I took the disc out and it was a pretty deep scratch on it that was causing an unreadable error. I took my 360 to E.B. Games and they replaced the system but not the game. But I've had my current system for over a year and not a problem yet.
No wonder Microsoft could ship refurbished consoles so fast. They had millions of them lying around that were dead from the factory. To get enough consoles for launch they needed to make 10 million units just to get 2 million working ones.
No other company could have weathered the manufacturing loss. Only having to pay $7-10 to build the console is probably one reason why they could.
The XBOX 360 was a piece of garbage from its initial design all the way to the store shelf. The integration of the chips was terrible, Microsoft cut costs everywhere it could, putting a $.50 heat sink in place instead of one that may have cost $2 but would have prevented perhaps upwards of 30% of the failures. The better heatsink would have cost Microsoft perhaps $15 million before the first hardware revision but that is a lot better than the $300,000 million those failures ended up costing the company.
While the chips were designed by IBM and ATI, Microsoft used outside chip manufacturuers who never produced a chip that complicated before, just to save a few bucks. This was the brilliant thought of a true idiot, Moore, who thinks of stock instead of production.
Even if you love the 360 you have to look at it as a total failure of a product that has succeeded only because of the hype given to it by hardcore gamers. While the new version of the console have been corrected, or at least mostly corrected, it does not make up for the fact that Microsoft sold a defective product to almost 20 million people. If it were another company they would be history, but somehow Microsoft can get away with it. People just turn an blind eye and say, it's OK you extended the warranty so I'm fine with it, I love your games so I will put up with anything as long as I can have Halo.
My brothers 360 got the red ring of death. I told him I could fix it but two days later he bought a new one.. I went to the city and got some supplies needed for the x-clamp fix and got his old one to work. Now he uses he´s old 360 and the new one is in a box under his bed. I asked him if I could have the new one since he wasent using it and I earned it for fixing his 360.
He said no :(
Tell you're brother he's a selfish idiot.
Selfish for not giving or sharing you his other 360.
Idiot for buying another 360 instead of just fixing the old OR just buy a PS3 instead.
Heh. Your brother sucks.