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Blogger's Note: I wrote this nearly five 1/2 months ago! I'm posting this old write-up here because I'm finding a new place to post my blogs. So I'll use one of the blogs I'm fondest of the most to pop my bloggery cherry here. It's not ment to be taken serious since it's so old, and even a short while after this was wrote, Microsoft became the "heroes" when they retroactiviated and extended warranties for all RRoD victims. I wrote this when I was fed up with all these stories that were keeping me from being a secure Xbox 360 owner (I'm still not, I don't even own any 7th gen system so I'm no "PlaySlave" or "WiiTard"!).

I also took this opportunity to apply some quick Photoshopping so the images resemble the bitmap font that Destructoid is famous for (always thought this site had a nice layout). Just seeing how it goes.
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The Window’s Operating System has its Blue Screen of Death (BSoD) mockery and the original Xbox was fortunate enough that it was not branded a matching charade. Though, sometimes inheritance skips a generation.



Now the Xbox 360 has dubbed its farce, the Red Rings of Death (RRoD). However useful in identifying a problem with your X360, it’s the prompter for a call to 1-800-4MYXBOX for a box to be mailed your way so you can send the X360 in for repairs. Due to the box's common occurrence in the gaming community, they’re referred as coffins and have been keeping many alluring owners at bay from warranting a secure purchase of an X360. The red lights appear when a "general hardware failure" has occured.

The Internet is well known for amplifying the vocal minority. Who’s actually known an uncle that even works for a game company, let alone lets their nephew play the next Game of the Year? For a while I believed that’s where the majority of the complaints came from. With a new thread showing up every other day with attributing members commenting with their own experiences, combined with a better understanding of how these incidents in the console occur, and a few media headlines that must’ve made Mr. Gates get an itch, it’s difficult to write them off as marginal errors.

The issue can be as widespread to as over 30%, way beyond the industry standard of a maximum of 5% before a recall proceeds, reported from over 100 email complaints (most of which occurred just outside of their one year warranty) sent-in to SmartHouse and with collaboration with an Aussie EB Games manager. Compare this with other competing systems and, "Out of the Nintendo Wii, the PS3 and the Xbox 360 the Microsoft product is the only one that we have had constant problems with.” Anonymous EB Games manager. It seems as though the problem could remain dormant in all X360’s due to a few design flaws within it, just waiting for the slightest reason or none at all to brick out on you. What will it take for the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to conduct their own hardware analysis?

In a three-part interview with Peter Moore, Mike Antonucci of Mercury News asks some of the reader’s questions. One reader who suffered from two X360 issues in seven months wanted a straight answer about the real failure numbers, well you can’t wonder how PR’s got their jobs when they give answers like this.
“I can’t comment on failure rates, because it’s just not something – it’s a moving target. What this consumer should worry about is the way that we’ve treated him. Y’know, things break, and if we’ve treated him well and fixed his problem, that’s something that we’re focused on right now. I’m not going to comment on individual failure rates because I’m shipping in 36 countries and it’s a complex business.” Peter Moore, Corporate Vice President, Interactive Entertainment Business, Entertainment and Devices Division

A Microsoft investor, that has struck out with three of his own X360’s, worries about the future growth of Microsoft’s products, “… it doesn't matter if the rate of Xbotch failure is as low as Microsoft reportedly contends, because the perceived rate of failure is what matters to consumers.” Seth Jayson, Microsoft’s Xbotch, The Motley Fool.

Officer Craig Ravitch of the New York Police Department continues anecdotal evidence when he placed an order for the coffin like he had 3 times before. Except the coffin didn’t arrive on Tuesday as planned and that’s where another call to the polite customer service, that thing Peter Moore wants the consumers to focus on and not the issue itself, leads to plain out embarrassment when he reported that the service department was running low on boxes to send out. "I hate to badmouth the 360, its one of my favorite systems, but this burns me."



Justin Lowe came up with audio proof from Microsoft’s customer service for all of his skeptics that he did go through eleven X360’s in a 1UP article, A Tale of 11 Broken Xbox 360s. I guess customer service does make a difference when we have a person on their twelfth X360 still rating Microsoft an 8/10 on their performance. Gee, it’s no wonder Microsoft hasn’t been compelled to confront the problem when their consumers give meager offense.

The results from a survey conducted by a UK magazine, inviting readers to respond with their X360 experiences.
Out of the 2181 survey submissions so far:
891 (40.85%) Say they have not had a console fail.
825 (37.83%) Say they've had one console fail.
465 (21.32%) Say they've had more than one console fail.
Suddenly the minority just became the majority and majority overrules.

RRoD's predominace has forced a UK-based repair specialist company, Micromart, to discontinue supporting X360's as they've been unable to send X360's out at a satisfactory rate due to the sudden influx of systems (suspeciously, when one year warranties have expired). "The work we had done to the console lead us to believe that basically it was a fault with the motherboard and not something that could be resolved easily. And it wasn't going to go away."

The issue has been so comical that it was the theme of two parody songs:
SarcasticGamer’s Ring of Fire (most known for his PS3 Song, How To Kill A Brand).
Angel Duarte’s Xbox 360 Song (mostly to combat SarcasticGamer’s PS3 Song where a lot of PS3 fanboys felt butt hurt listening to it).

From Joystiq’s sister site Xbox 360 Fanboy’s podcast: episode 22, “One thing Microsoft may or may not have to deal with at E3 is kind of fessing up to this failure rate problem they have.” Richard Mitchell, Xbox 360 Fanboy Editor. “Ughh… the thorn in their side, and our sides, is the Xbox 360’s failure rate.” Dustin Burg, Xbox 360 Fanboy Editor.

Even the fanboys rooting on Microsoft’s behalf should be putting pressure on Microsoft as what happens to all those songs about the RRoD? They become moot. What else will the rival fanboys have to slander the X360 with? The overrated expression of claiming Halo is overrated? Pshh… You’re also be including another X360 owner to use in your console war statistics. Chalk up one on the board.

Remember, when you’re buying that X360 to tack on an extra $60 - not for that triple AAA title to play once your X360’s hooked up, but for a year’s worth of hope to insure your X360 won’t make you pay an extra $90 of the $150 it costs to repair an X360 that’s outside of its warranty. How much more must parcel loaders see the coffin? Stop the traumatic events Moore. The “Out of sight, out of mind.” policy has got to go.