Xbox 360's Red Ring of Death visits Weekly Geek Show

You hope that nobody gets it, it's curable, but anecdotal evidence continues to pile-up and show the Xbox 360's Red Ring of Death seems to be far more prevalent than gamers would hope. Like any disease, coming out and discussing it is what gets people talking about the problem and acknowledging that there may be a greater issue here. At a minimum, it would be nice to finally get some answers.

Now, the issue isn't that random consumers continue to experience the Red Ring of Death repeatedly, but wouldn't you know it, for an item that supposedly has a 3 percent failure rate, it certainly has a lot of that happening in the gaming media. The latest victim is Michael "Caspian" Wiegand over at Weekly Geek Show. He's gone over his year warranty, refuses to pay the $139 and he's using extortion as his method for receiving a new system. Wiegand writes, "[Microsoft] send me, your dejected disciple, a new 360 and a free gold subscription for a year and I'll retract this article and replace it with a flattering one."

Wiegand is in the right frame of mind, it's not like Microsoft hasn't shut up complaining customers with new systems before. Although it's getting harder and harder to dismiss the problems when more high-profile Xbox 360 failures continue to occur, especially when systems are being sent back for repairs a second time. Joystiq's saga of a broken Xbox 360 wasn't even an isolated incident on our own staff. At this point it'd be nice if Microsoft further extended their warranty or finally released the actual failure rates for the system. We hope the new black Xbox is built better. Chris Furniss, from the Weekly Geek Show, speaks for many Xbox 360 owners when he says, "I fully expect my Xbox to give me the ring of death sometime within the next year ... It really is a great machine. It just has a horrible failure rate."