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 2 of 2)
6-11-2008 @ 11:35AM
emirabal said...
Whatever, M$ payed dearly for their mistake, and I'm glad they came out of pocket
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6-11-2008 @ 11:36AM
Vcize said...
As a buddy of mine once called it...
Xbox 360: the greatest piece of shit ever made.
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6-11-2008 @ 11:51AM
elmersglue said...
i just recently got the rrod after having my xbox for 2 years now. I wasn't exactly surprised, but i was kinda pissed cuz i really want to keep playing NG2!! But, the replacement process is as pain free as i could've hoped for, and while i wait for the prepaid box to arrive, the xbox works every once in a while, its strange....
anyone else have their rrod'd xbox work every once in a while?
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6-11-2008 @ 11:58AM
Player1 said...
Yes, that's typical. It will start to show issues until it Red Rings, then it may start up again a few times after that but eventually it will just Red Ring every time. I'm on my fourth so I know the experience well.
6-11-2008 @ 12:25PM
elmersglue said...
have they been replacing your 360 with newer refurbished models or older ones? Just curious cuz i wanna know what to expect.
6-11-2008 @ 12:23PM
AxFactor said...
Ya know I've had my box for about a year and a half with no problems. I bought a 360 last year with my tax refund and 3 hours after taking it home it destroyed a disc, so I swaped it out and the 2nd one has been great.
*Will now go home tonight where Xbox will RRoD at a critical point in a game*
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6-11-2008 @ 12:28PM
elmersglue said...
Funny thing is, it never red rings in the middle of a game. It might freeze on you and then when you restart it, it rrod's. Or you everything might seem perfectly fine and you turn it off cuz you're done playing..then when you turn it back on it red rings (as was the case with me). From what I can tell, if you left your xbox on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, it'll never red ring lol.
6-11-2008 @ 12:33PM
Alex said...
Yeah im on my 4th which has just broken.
Problem is that it's not the rrod... my dvd drive has just packed in.
Which isn't covered under teh extended warrenty. (apparently).
What i'd like to know, is that from the date of my last replacement, does my warrenty start again? so if my last was repaired 9 months ago, do i still have 3 months of warrenty left?
ugh.
The support people say its going to be £60 to repair.
(i didnt ask them the above)
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6-11-2008 @ 12:45PM
elmersglue said...
why dont you just call back and tell them it rrod'd again. Then if they have your previous inquiry about the dvd drive on file, tell them it fixed itself and that wasnt an issue anymore. The issue is now RROD....they have to replace it!
6-11-2008 @ 1:09PM
Alex said...
but surely when i send it in, and they find its working (in terms of turning on) they'll send it back, and not replace the dvd drive.
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6-11-2008 @ 1:13PM
Ryan said...
I love how you people keep sending M$ your broken 360s only to have them send you back the same or different unit that is still broken. M$ does not fix these units..its only a temporary fix. haha I bought a service from ebay for $40 where the company replaced the faulty X clamps that bend when the 360 overheats. They also replaced the sh!tty heat sink paste with Arctic 5 paste which is much better. On top of that they replaced my fans with more powerful ones and cleaned my system so its spotless inside and out. I mailed my system out..2 days later they had it...they fixed it in 1 day and I had it back within 2 days after that. So in all I was without my 360 for less then 1 week! You people should seriously do the same. Had my console for a while now and not 1 hiccup since. Plus the console has a lifetime warranty from the company who fixed...if anything ever happens I send it back and they fix it free of charge!!!
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6-11-2008 @ 1:33PM
xboxrulez1985 said...
you all can just do what i did as a permanent fix....go buy a ps3. everything on xbox will probably end up on ps3 in the long run anyways. Honestly, i do kinda miss playing Halo tho!
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6-11-2008 @ 3:32PM
Rig said...
So what you mean is ps3rules then.
6-11-2008 @ 4:41PM
youngbuc said...
its funny...all of us are so loyal to xbox and microsoft and even then they can't release a 360 system that is free from this mess up
if they were to come out with a system that had no problems - 60% of this board would go out and buy it, just from sheer love of the games...i don't understand why MS doesn't see that
i'm still waiting for my xbox to come back from their repair site. i was getting far in gtaiv and miss playing!
- youngbuc18
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6-11-2008 @ 5:48PM
Arnon said...
This whole article should be thrown away. The Xenos GPU chip was designed by ATI, not Microsoft.
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6-11-2008 @ 7:02PM
bown said...
"would have costed"???
That's some great English there.
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6-11-2008 @ 9:03PM
Chase said...
Off with their heads!
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