Dead by Design

It was a Saturday morning in late spring. Laughter could be heard through a nearby window. That laughter would soon vanish as the inevitable was set happen. It’s just a shame it happened during The Office.

Despite constant assurance that the mortality rate of the Xbox 360 was within the norm of consumer electronics, I witnessed the death of a mere infant. Eight pounds, five months of age. With dreams of adventure, high scores, head-shots, and excessive prices for lackluster content, my Xbox 360 died on June 2nd, 2007. We were enjoying season two of The Office on DVD when suddenly it stopped. Everything stopped.

I pressed the center ring, assuming it was merely a hiccup. It twitched, and began flashing red. The stories stories I had read were true. A healthy system with a birth defect had joined the thousands of it’s brothers and sisters in a fate predetermined for them. An early death.

The call was made, and a coffin was shipped…So I was told. A week had passed with no news from McAllen or Redmond. I called again and was given a tracking number for a major international carrier. In a process that I was originally told would take three to five days, my coffin had taken six before it even shipped out.

Ten days A.D. I received the coffin. An unmarked container with no signs of it’s purpose. The carrier knew all the well what it’s purpose was, he had seen many before. After the unplugging andde-disking ceremony I prepared my ‘360 for it’s voyage back to the motherland…well the annex responsible for cleaning up messes of the motherland. Thursday June 14th I shipped it off. It was received four days later.

Three days shy of a month after death, I received a replacement. Not my old fixed unit, but rather someone’s system that who knows what they did to. In fact it’s born on date is older than mine was.

There is obviously an issue with production and replacement. On top of that all refurbished units are only granted a 90 day warranty as apposed to the one year that comes with new consoles. With stories of gamers on their 10th or 12th console, I can only wonder how Microsoft expects people to come back in the next generation. With current money invested, people will stay with what’s familiar, but five years from now I highly doubt any success after consistent failure from the production team. Without some major effort to make amends, I’m sure a migration of gamers will occur upon the end of our current generation.

Since the writing of this article, Microsoft has since changed their warranty policy for consoles suffering from the 3 red rings. It now covers 3 years as apposed to the previous 1 year, and is retroactive. While this is a step in the right direction, the problem still lies in quality assurance as many owners continue to suffer from broken “fixed” consoles. We shall see how this issue progresses.