Death to the red ring

The Xbox 360 has a lot going for it: A great selection of games, a fantastic online service, and the cheapest price of any current gen console. One thing that's always been holding it back, though, is the unfortunate hardware issue that plagues so many units. I'm talking, of course, about the Red Ring of Death. Those dreaded 3 red lights have flashed on so many people's systems, stopping play sessions and prompting calls to Microsoft.

Thankfully, MS acknowledged the problem, and extended the system's warranty to 3 years when dealing with this issue, which some said cost the company upwards of a billion dollars. While this was clearly the right thing to do, it was small consolation to the millions of fans who had to do without their favorite console for a couple of months while a bunch of great games were being released. Then people started reporting the issue in their replacement systems, an extreme example of which is the case of Justin Lowe, who went though 11 of the things in the first year and a half of launch.

It may finally be time to put this issue to bed, though. While talking to Edge Online, Microsoft's Aaron Greenberg discusses the problem and claims that "We've put the worst behind us on this". Of course, anyone who takes a minute to consider this statement should realize that this is an obvious thing to announce. After all, would we expect the company to say "The worst is yet to come"? I somehow don't think so.

Thankfully, MS are constantly improving the manufacturing process of their hardware, and their latest iteration, dubbed "Jasper", features a cooler-running graphics chip that may not suffer from the same degree of failure. Greenberg also claims that when a system breaks these days, "[Microsoft] will fix it with the latest [hardware] improvements that we've applied [to current Xbox 360s]. Obviously we're continuously improving the technology inside the box, not to get too technical. So they'll apply that when they make the increments to your system."

It will take a while before we see if this change gets rid of the RROD once and for all, but for those who are just thinking of buying an Xbox 360 for the first time, make sure you know how to spot the Jasper unit in stores. There's no guarantee that it wont break like everyone else's, but at least you stand a better chance than most. It's also worth mentioning that the new units have only been seen in the last couple of months; that's a month after the 3 year warranty ran out on launch systems. Very clever Microsoft, very clever.

Finally, let me take this opportunity to give you all an update on my own RROD experience. You may remember that my launch system occasionally suffered from this problem, which I discovered could be avoided by simply leaving it on. I left it on for months at a time, thinking that it would eventually burn out, at which point I could send it off. Well, it never did. In fact, now it seems to be working better than ever. I've started turning it off again, and I haven't seen the problem in ages. I still fear that one day it will break for real, but I'm happier keeping my semi-reliable console than sending it off and getting a replacement one that may crap out even sooner. Of course, my warranty period is now passed, so it's not like I have that option anymore, anyway. I guess I just have to keep turning it on with my fingers crossed.....