You’ve all heard the term “red ring of death”. It’s now more common than the “blue screen of death” among the masses. But is this really a problem caused an overheating issue like we are lead to believe, or is it something more sinister?

When the Xbox 360 first came out, did anyone have this problem? Perhaps a few, but at first, this was not as common as it has been in the past 6 months or so. And recently Microsoft officially announced there was a problem, causing the “Red Rings of Death”. I am not 100% sure but I think this was the first time that Microsoft wanted the general public to know and care about this problem. They tried to use this as a selling point that their machines would be covered for 3 years.

But what I am trying to get at is that it wasn’t until recently where Microsoft wanted people to know about the Red Rings of Death. Why would they at first say it is not a problem, then this summer admit there is a problem causing the Red Rings of Death? The answer is simple, the first $ 1.15 billion dollar advertisement in the history of video games. This built in advertisement which doubles as a hardware problem was envisioned for none other than Halo 3.

Wait what? What I am suggesting here is that Microsoft purposely designed the Xbox 360 to have 4 lights that light up. Throughout the years I’ve seen 2 lights light up red many times. And in recent months, many people have been getting 3 lights to light up, and a lot. As we are moving closer and closer to the Halo 3 release, the rings, or “halo” if you will, built into your Xbox 360 is coming closer to completion.

Is it really that hard to believe? Look at the Halo 3 logo:

That looks a lot like the 3 red rings to me!

What about individually? Take this picture, part of a broken Halo.

Does that not look similar to one of the lights on the 360?

What about all 4 rings, does it look similar to something we have seen before?

This is one of the biggest marketing campaigns every. They built an advertisement into a gaming system’s hardware.