Will the Xbox 360 survive past Christmas?

By Davey Winder
Monday, 06 October 2008 19:08

Entertainment

The red rings of death issue simply refuses to go away for Microsoft, and no matter how much it reduces the cost and extends the warranty one simple question remains: will the Xbox 360 ever be fit for purpose?

I guess that the headline should have read 'Will my Xbox 360 survive past Christmas?' given that I intend to use my own experience of Xbox 360 ownership to highlight that, no matter how hard Microsoft tries to convince the public differently, it just cannot seem to fix the hardware problems users of the Xbox 360 face.

Are you sitting comfortably? Great, then I will begin. My story starts almost exactly a year ago in October 2007, with a badgered father giving in to the requests of his son to buy an Xbox 360.

After doing some research, the newly released Xbox 360 Elite seemed to be the perfect choice as it was meant to have fixed the dreaded red rings of death problem. It was also black, and I like black gadgets when it comes to audio-visual stuff.

So it was that the considerable investment in the Xbox 360 took hold. There was the inevitable Halo 3, followed by Guitar Heroes in various flavours, some karaoke affairs, and ultimately a Rock Band. Along the way I fell into a serious GTA IV habit, I confess.

All was well in the Winder household. Even 'the wife' who never plays console games found herself absorbed in some CSI forensics fantasy or other. There can be no doubting that when it comes to game play, the Xbox 360 has it all.

Unfortunately, game play stumbles a tad when you have no console to play upon. And with just a couple of weeks of the original warranty left, the almost inevitable happened: three red rings of death.

Xbox support is called, collection of the dead device arranged and eventually the console is shipped off to Microsoft in Frankfurt, Germany for repair. In fact, having talked to a few people who had experienced the red rings problem, I was expecting a replacement with some other refurbished 360 Elite.

I wasn't expecting what I got, a couple of weeks later, when my original Xbox 360 was returned.

Just how badly had Microsoft screwed up, and what did their spokesman have to say about it when I revealed my journalist credentials and asked for an explanation? More on page 2...

CONTINUES