Even though they formally acknowledged it with billion dollar warranty extensions, Microsoft never completely revealed what the cause of the Xbox 360's RROD hardware problems were. The reason for this, as EETimes speculates, is because MS's 360 graphics chip design team is to blame for creating a faulty chip design that was prone to overheating. This "in house" chip development is sort of a rarity, seeing that companies usually leave the design of specialized chips to an outside application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) vendor who has more experience in designing specialized chips. But that would have costed MS tens of millions of dollars, so they decided to leave it to their own, less experienced design team. A decision that could have led to the billion dollar RROD fiasco and a giant blow to the Xbox 360's overall image. If this speculation is true, we hope MS learned their lesson. Albeit the hard way.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
6-11-2008 @ 10:04AM
HE4VENSENT said...
i LOL'd at that picture..
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6-11-2008 @ 10:08AM
Premo said...
As long as my new 360 doesn't asplode, i'll try to forget this ever happened.
MS is lucky to have me as a customer. I don't think others would be so forgiving.
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6-11-2008 @ 11:12AM
mattclarkie said...
I am the same. They made a hell-of-a-mess. But when it works everything is so great you forget about the problems.
Just today I was playing some PGR4 on my Elite I purchased to replace an RRoD, and the game froze loading a race and I had to turn it off and try again. But playing was so fun that I forgot about the problem.
6-11-2008 @ 10:20AM
STD Spanky said...
I wouldn't have been so forgiving if there wheren't so many awesome 360 exclusive games.
M$ has screwed me over countless times since I got my 360 - not responding to complaints, not cancelling direct debits etc...
oh...and of course the RRoD :p
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6-11-2008 @ 10:21AM
shawn said...
i got one of the newer 360s so i hope i dont see those lights or microsoft is gonna get there ass handed to them
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6-11-2008 @ 11:56AM
Lianne said...
I hate to tell you, but you will probably still get it. I have a newer 360 with HDMI and the new heat sinks, and I got it on May 29th. I called May 30th and somehow they screwed up and didn't send me a box. We'll see if I ever get a new 360, let alone a proper one with HDMI...
6-11-2008 @ 3:16PM
anthonyjh said...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRiyxWBb_6M
6-11-2008 @ 10:22AM
Tony said...
How many reasons have we heard for what causes this now? 12?
I do like how they titled their article as if it's outright fact, when nothing in the article can be claimed as such just yet. As people mention in the comments there, there wasn't technically a "recall"... but more importantly, we've all been under the impression that ATI made the GPU. The article doesn't reference that once.
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6-11-2008 @ 10:46AM
Neuromancer said...
Yeah seriously, "mammoth global recall"???!!!
There was no recall yet they say it in the title and all throughout. Someone needs to go back to Journalism 101, the class where they teach you to check your facts.
6-11-2008 @ 1:11PM
JerkfacedFed said...
yea this is definitely wrong because microsoft did NOT develop the graphics chip, ATI (which is now AMD) did.
however, microsoft owns the intellectual property on the chip so they can license anything that will use its architecture, and they can provide perfect backwards compatibility with their next iteration of xbox since they own the inner workings of the graphics sub-system.
6-11-2008 @ 4:54PM
Sean said...
Spot on. ATi designed the chip. It was essentially a concept for the unified architecture used in all current PC GPU's. However, ATi are actually quite poor in this field compared to nVidia, running older manufacturing processes and generally having hotter chips.
*pats his trusty 8800GT*
6-11-2008 @ 10:25PM
Phour ZwanZig said...
Exactly what I was thinking when I got to that point..
Since when did MS design/build the GPX chip.. They turned to ATI.. Nintendo had them last go and MS had Nvidia.. I was a lil against the change to ATI, so I remember it clearly..
6-11-2008 @ 10:28AM
mcr said...
This is one of the most visible examples of Microsoft's general climate of corporate arrogance - it's mystifying that it continues because they have a track record that's pockmarked with many similar examples of failure that can be directly attributed to their baseless arrogance.
I find it amazing that the 360 came together to be such a good product despite these handicaps. Just imagine how much more successful it could have been if a few key decisions were made differently.
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6-11-2008 @ 10:31AM
Tony said...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_360#Hardware --
According to this the GPU is a 500 MHz API Xenos.
So who in the world comprises this internal Microsoft GPU team?
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6-11-2008 @ 10:32AM
Tony said...
ATI Xenos, I mean. Not API
6-11-2008 @ 10:35AM
DjDATZ said...
If this is true...Then MS screwed themselves over...it's never smart to cheap out on the design process...it'll only hurt you in the long run. If they spent those tens of millions of $ on a proper chip design, then they wouldn't have to allocate a billion to their mistake. Stupid idiots. lol
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6-11-2008 @ 10:41AM
protostar said...
Either way you slice it, this comes to down MS trying to be cheap. Whether it was the GPU specifically or not. What concerns me the most is, even after the billion dollar warranty expansion, they still haven't figured out how to actually FIX these broken Xboxs. I had mine repaired last month and got it back and it was still broken... It is completely unacceptable I was without my Xbox for 3 weeks, and the morons didn't even bother to pop in a game and see if it works.
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6-11-2008 @ 10:51AM
Tony said...
Well, I think we all know this is a freaking mess and MS should really just redesign this thing entirely... I wish they'd just properly address it already. At this stage anyone can write up an article with a "reason", post it and it will gain traction. I think that's what's getting so tiresome.
I'm on my third one now. I'm not happy about it. But certainly there are faults with this article and many of the previous ones. I wish MS would explain the problem and be done with it. Then we can all know once and for all why these things are pieces of shit lol.
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6-11-2008 @ 11:06AM
NEB said...
I thought ATI designed the graphics chip for the 360.
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6-11-2008 @ 11:32AM
Trogdor said...
I call BS. This is just some industry goon trying to look smart. I remember clearly when the Xbox 360 was announced they said that ATI was designing the GPU. So unless MS lied about that, this article is bunk.
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