Red Ring of Death - Once a Nightmare, Now an Xbox Legend
Microsoft has started selling posters with the so-called Red Ring of Death. It used to be a symbol of the biggest hardware failure in the history of the corporation, but today the company approaches it almost with sentiment.
- Microsoft is selling posters of the Red Ring of Death, the problem that nearly sunk the Xbox 360;
- The company also released a documentary that details the history of the phenomenon and its effects on the company.
Microsoft has often shown a lot of distance to itself in recent years. The latest example of this is the start of the sale of posters with the so-called Red Ring of Death, the biggest hardware fiasco in the history of the corporation. You can buy your own copy to hang on your wall for a bit under 30 euro from the official Xbox store.
The poster is one of a series of posters released to celebrate the documentary series titled Power On: The Story of Xbox. Its latest, fifth episode, premiered yesterday on the brand's official YouTube channel and is dedicated to the famous Red Ring of Death. We recommend watching this material, because it is really well made and does not omit any embarrassing facts for the company.
Recall that the Red Ring of Death was a problem that appeared on the first models of the Xbox 360 console, and it took its name from the three red lights that formed a circle of sorts around the main power button. Their appearance heralded serious trouble - if restarting didn't solve the issue, the hardware had to be returned for replacement.
According to estimates, the Red Ring of Death made life miserable for as much as every third owner of the first console units. The problem wasn't finally resolved until 2008, two years after the release of the Xbox 360. At the time, it wasn't officially revealed what was causing the malfunction. Gamers suspected that it may have been the result of poor design, which prevented power flow to all components, and an insufficient cooling system.
In the aforementioned documentary the matter has been thoroughly explained and it turns out that the problem was more complicated than it seemed. The failure was caused by damaged hardware connections, but not on the motherboard, but inside the components. The role of the cooling system was also different. Overheating of parts was not the reason behind the Red Ring of Death. Damage to the connections were caused by the console to constantly heating up and cooling down.
This problem was so common that it could have ended Microsoft's entire console adventure. So the decision was made that any defective units would be repaired for free, with no questions asked about how the failure occurred. On top of this, the warranty period was extended from one to three years. All in all, the process cost over $1.2 billion, but it saved the Xbox brand.
