Alas, I’ve been twice cursed by game console malfunctions. The first hit last month when my PlayStation 3 suffered the Yellow Light of Death. The second befell me just last week. My Xbox 360 decided to “Red Ring” on me. Xbox owners, how many of you has this happened to?
It’s a tragic tale, but at least the good folks at Microsoft are nice enough to repair my system for free. The Red Ring of Death – a symptom of the most common Xbox 360 failures – is under warranty for three years, instead of the single year warranty given to other Xbox 360 issues. It’s a good thing, too.
While it’s absolutely devastating to lose my preferred system, it looks like I’ll only be without it for a week or two. Microsoft is sending a box and a prepaid label for me to ship the console to them. There’s something just plain wonderful about that kind of customer support.
My main focus at the moment has been ‘StarCraft II,’ so it’s as good a time as any to lose the console. The biggest downside, in all honesty, is that I currently have nothing in the apartment that will play Netflix movies on my television. The PS3 is still broken, the 360 is down, and there’s nothing else that will let me stream movies on the big screen.
It’s more than a little annoying. This is the second time I’ve had to send back an Xbox 360 for RROD issues. I’ve got a bad feeling that it’s not going to be the last, either. One of my friends has sent three back now, and I’ve heard of people on their tenth Xbox 360.
So how about you? Have you had to deal with the dreaded red rings? Are you one of those that still has a launch system, or are you on your third (or more) Xbox already?
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William Henley
I had one about a year ago. I was a little worried as I bought it at Gamestop used. When I punched up the serial number, I saw that it had been out of warrenty for over a year. However, when they found out I had a red ring of death, they said no problem, they will fix it anyways.
I am on my third PS3. The first one I had a week. I put YellowDog Linux on it. Problem is, there was an issue with the installation. You could only boot back to the PS3 once Linux was installed – there was an option to shutdown and reboot to PS3. Problem is, I couldn’t get that far. Lucky extended warrenty covered that.
Second one came as a result of a firmware update from Sony that bricked my PS3. Sony would not claim credit, even though thousands of people were claiming on online forums that the update had bricked their system (it seems that update did some funky stuff to fan control, causing 1st gen PS3s to overheat). Had an extended warrenty on that, so I am not on a second-gen Fat PS3. I hope this one doesn’t brick on me, I don’t want to lose PS1 and PS2 compatability.
Dick Ward
We’re attempting surgery on my PS3 later on this week. I’m hopeful for it, especially since I just can’t justify buying another one for the limited amount of time that I spend playing it.
William Henley
I think a good rule of thumb on the PS3 is simply not to update the firmware until its been out at least a couple of weeks, and then only update if you need a new feature or into the Playstation Store. Last time I upgraded was a couple of months ago to check out some of the e3 stuff. Before that, it was probably January since I had updated. As such, I have not had any issues in quite a while.
If only Sony would take responsibility for their firmware updates bricking systems. That’s all I ask. If your firmware bricks my system, fix it. They forced me to update to access their store. If you are going to force people to update a system before they go to spend money on your products online, and that update keeps them from using said product at all, it sounds like good business to fix the issue.
Eric Hulen
I also was a recipient of the Yellow light of death on my PS3. I followed the instructions that someone posted on Youtube and after a hour and a half of work I have a fully functional PS3.
Chaz Dumbaugh
I’m on my 5th Xbox 360, 2 had red rings and 2 had Disc read errors on wouldnt read anything, never had to pay a penny as I’ve always kept an extended warranty on them, 5th one was a new console with a new power brick and its been working fine for over a year now, but I went through 4 in the first year and a half of owning a 360…..great system for games but probably one of the worst built that I can remember
My PS3 has been like a rock, no issues ever with it and I’ve had it for 3 years now
Jane Morgan
We got our 360 in 2006, with Oblivion. It red ringed, fall 2008. No problems since. Our PS3 Slim has never given us any problems. We never bothered to buy a Wii.
Josh Zyber
I don’t have an Xbox 360 at all. Are some configurations of it (Arcade, Elite, Premium, etc.) more reliable than others? I thought I had read somewhere that Microsoft made hardware modifications to some models that were supposed to reduce Red Ring problems. Not the case? Wishful thinking?
Dick Ward
That’s correct. I believe all the Xbox 360’s with HDMI ports use the new chipset and cooling. I could be wrong, but I know the changeover was made right around that time.
The brand new slims shouldn’t have the problem either since they run nice and cool, comparatively.
Lahrs
I am on my fourth 360 now, two were under warranty when they RRoD, and the other two died a mysterious death. I would stop buying new machines if I didn’t have a large library of games. I also had one PS3 die on me a few months out of warranty, so I traded it in for some store credit to a local game store who fixes broken machines and gives them away to people in need during Christmas, (which is beyond awesome). The one that died was the 60GB machine with the backwards PS2 compatibility, I was sorry to see it go, but I haven’t had any issues with my new PS3 (two years strong).
What bothers me the most isn’t that the machines died, it is the fact that I have a lot of older machines that still work, including an Atari 2600, NES, Master System and more. I think that speaks more about the current state of systems. Is it becomes the hardware is so much more complicated, are we asking too much of the system or has quality just tanked? I am not sure.
Dick Ward
I was thinking about that too. What’s going to happen if I get an RROD in 2015 or 2020?
Then again, the NES is legendarily finicky about playing cartridges and I had to manually repair my Dreamcast, not to mention all the SNES controllers I’ve had to take apart and fix.
I guess as long as the new Xbox is backwards compatible to 360 games and arcade titles, it won’t matter too much.
Dick Ward
Eight of you haven’t had a red ring? What’s your secret? 🙂
William Henley
Its less than 3 months old? :-p