RROD

I would like to add my voice to those decrying Microsoft’s horrible Xbox 360 build quality. My third one just croaked last night. Here’s a quick history: I got my first box just a few week after launch, middle of December 2005. I proudly took it home (they were very hard to obtain at launch) and played it for several hours. The next morning I turned it on and I was immediately greeted by the red ring of death (RROD). I had had the system less than 24 hours.

Microsoft turned my repair around in about 1.5 weeks at no cost to me, which was reasonable. This second Xbox lasted just over a year and RROD’ed in December 2006. Not wanting to wait to play new games from Christmas, I sent the Xbox in for repair and simultaneously picked up a new box from Microcenter. This time I paid an additional $35 for a 1 year store warranty (this is before Microsoft announced their $1B writedown and 3 year warranty for “certain” hardware issues. When the repaired box came I pawned it, roughly covering the cost of my Microcenter box.

Late December 2007 just out of the Microcenter warranty (see a pattern here?), after playing any game for a while, the sound would cut out for several seconds at random. This wreaked havoc on musical games such as Rock Band and Guitar Hero III, and didn’t help while trying to beat the finale of Assassin’s Creed. Also at random, the reading head of the disc drive would actually touch the disc and generate a disc read error. I would open the drive to find ring-shaped scratches on the underside of the disc. Mind you this was not from anyone jumping around, causing the 360 to bounce in my entertainment center. Our townhome is built on a slab and the Xbox is on the first floor, so there is zero external vibration or movement. Fortunately for me the scratches were usually light enough where I could buff them out, but these were all signs of an impending implosion.

Fast forward 3.5 months to last night. I had just played a 3-song set of GH3 co-op with another gamer over Xbox Live. I popped in my Halo 3 LE bonus disc to load extra gamerpics and themes. At the menu screen, wherever there would normally be the color green, the TV displayed yellow, corrupting and distorting the picture. My heart didn’t sink this time as it had with the previous two failures. By this point I’d developed a callous, realistic view; the Xbox was over 1 year old and I was playing with borrowed time. I circumspectly powered off the console and turned it on again. No video, but the startup sound chimed through my Athena speakers. I ran through standard procedure – remove all extraneous cables and all storage devices, rinse and repeat. My Samsung blurted back, “This signal cannot be displayed.” No RROD though. With a little trepidation I marched upstairs, console in-hand, to try my sputtering box on our second TV. Our Mitsubishi yielded no picture in either HD or SD modes. My computer monitor showed nothing through my Xbox VGA cable either (or the component/composite cable for good measure).

So here I am with a 3rd failed Xbox 360 in as many years. We’ll see whether Microsoft covers this or tries to impose their $125 repair bill for crummy, bug-riddled hardware.