Speaking with Edge-Online, Microsoft’s Aaron Greenberg says that the worst days of the Xbox 360 “Red Ring of Death” fiasco are now behind them – or so they hope.
For all that Microsoft succeeded with the Xbox 360 – successfully challenging established and entrenched competitors, truly bringing online gaming to the living room, among others – the console’s legacy will be forever tarnished by the “Red Ring of Death”: The three red lights that warn gamers of a critical hardware failure.
To its credit, the company announced a fiscally painful plan to try and save face, promising an extended warranty to any Xbox 360s that suffered from the dreaded three lights. Even after allotting approximately $1.1 billion USD, reports and anecdotes abounded about supposedly “fixed” refurbished 360s that worked fine for a while – before RRODing again.
However, Greenberg is confident that the Redmond-based computer giant has isolated the problem, and that the new “Jasper” hardware should be much less prone to failure. Any 360 units that are returned to the company with RROD problems will have their hardware upgraded to the latest model, says Greenberg:
“…What we do in general, the way that it works, is that they 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.”
While it’s nice to see some optimism about the situation, I can only hope that Greenberg is telling the truth – if my 360 happens to croak on me while I’m hankering for some Street Fighter IV? There will be hell to pay, oh yes.
