Xbox 360 Game News, Reviews, and Columns - XboxFocus

Stop Moaning About the RROD

by Steve Wysowski August 8th 2008 3:22 AM CDT16 Comments

Last month, my 360 decided that I wasn't worthy enough to be playing video games on it anymore (yeah, it went all Charizard on my ass).

While those three glaring red rings initially made my head shrivel into my neck socket, I soon came to my senses. Microsoft has slowly been improving with their "oh-shit-our-bad" repair service. When my first 360 blew up, it took about two weeks to get a new one, and when the following system crashed, it took about a week and half to return. So, when I put to use something called "erithamatik", I predicted my fourth 360 would arrive in about a week.

And what do you know? After sending my 360 in on a Monday, I got it back the following Tuesday: only seven frickin' business days. Not too shabby, aye? Not only did I get my 360 back in record time, but Microsoft has finally figured out that any random cardboard box can hold a broken 360! That meant there was no extra time waiting for them to ship me a specialized "360-only" box. Life felt good, and a big change of pace occurred: I was finally starting to appreciate Microsoft's customer service.

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Look, I am no Microsoft apologetic: the only words that should describe Vista are "epic phail", Halo 3 underwhelmed, and I still maintain that Microsoft Points are fucking useless. Still, when you properly look at all the crticism Microsoft has been receiving because of the RROD, I think you can see it's finally time to move past it. Despite how big of a grave Microsoft initially dug themselves into, they have handled the situation extraordinarily well. Imagine if you opened up a lemonade stand and 1/3 of your glasses were poisoned. Would you pay the mortician to properly embalm the dead bodies' combusted corpses (I failed to mention it was the Cloverfield spider-crab poison)? If you look at their track record, it would seem Microsoft would.

A lot of people jump to the belief that Microsoft has been unremorsefully mistreating their customers. To those who think that, answer me this: how is paying for your 360's shipping, quickly either fixing the problem or replacing your unit, and then shipping the system back (still free) all on a rushed order mistreating customers? If anything, that's damned good customer support.

If I remember correctly, when my PS2 bit the dust, I didn't have a three-year, no fee warranty to take care of it. No, I was fucked. I had to reach to the farthest corners of my wallet to dig up enough change to purchase another system. What Microsoft is doing to make up for their hardware failures is remarkable, and I, a happy 360 owner, am more than satisfied with their service. Look, there is no doubt Microsoft fucked up. It was a royal fuck-up. A fuck-up so royal that Queen Elizabeth should be down on her knees, opening up its belt-buckle. But for what it is, Microsoft has handled the situation well; much better than I would have guessed if you told me a few years ago that they got into this position.

Many refuse to buy a 360 due these reliability issues, and while I, too, believe you should never buy something that will eventually break, if the repairs are free then you'd be an idiot not to take advantage of them. Apart from one or two weeks of game-time, what are you actually losing when your 360 goes? The answer is nothing: I have never paid a cent to repair my 360, and I plan to keep it that way. Plus the loss of possible gameplay isn't as drastic as some would have you believe. I have had a 360 in some form since launch day, meaning I’ve had one in my possession for total of 33 months. If you subtract the total repair time from my three meltdowns, then I have been without a 360 for one month. I lived. I'm sure you can survive too.

Now, of course it's easy to point out that the problem should have never even existed in the first place. While yes, that is true, remember something: Microsoft always was and always will be a software company at its heart. Maybe not a good software company (*Vista joke goes here*) but a software company none the less. To expect them to construct a flawless piece of advanced hardware is asking a bit much; and I knew going into the 360's launch that there had to be some technical flaws behind its sexy exterior.

Microsoft could have simply comprised an excuse like that, and move on with the current three-year warranty deal. Instead though, they have been working on fixing the problem at hand, which is apparently due to the triple-cored GPU overheating. Newer models are showcasing lower failure rates, and soon with the launch of the new Falcon CPUs, high failure rates will be a thing of the past.

Of course there are some rare cases in which people have gone through six, seven, or eight consoles. That's painful, but I think you should be more concerned with the evil hex that has been placed on yourself and trying to avoid casinos; or you should start coming to the realization that the oven isn't the best place to mount your 360. "Play and Bake" wasn't one of its slogans.


The whole "Microsoft hates us!" shtick is really a moot point to me. Microsoft doesn't hate us; to them we're giant walking money buckets with a giant dollar sign on the outside, and anything that has a dollar sign on it is beloved by them. Microsoft wants to keep their money buckets smiling, in hopes that happy money buckets will attract other money buckets to join the fray (this is called capitalism). Do I wish a corporate company like Microsoft would look at me as a human being more so than an anthropomorphic tool? Of course I do; but I also wish rivers ran with melted chocolate and that Jessica Alba wasn't popping out a fetus soon. Still, as long as I'm willing to pay the price for an Xbox 360, they do care about me to some extent. Enough, that is, to keep me happy.

And I am a happy Xbox 360 owner. I have a countless catalogue of quality games, a disgustingly large amount of hours played (quite possibly the biggest turn-off in the history of turn-offs), and enough Xbox LIVE friends to keep me social for years. To be honest; my 360 is worth its annual one week vacation to the Plutonian Shore. With the upcoming hardware upgrade, the 360 failure rate will hopefully go the way of the dodo and all the moaning will come to a complete end. But until that point, let's cool off on the RROD; it's not a big of a deal as everyone makes it out to be.

Now if Alan Wake never gets released, we're going to need an army of Waaahmbulances.