Bewitched, Bothered, Bewildered

When I got my XBox 360 I knew all about the infamous red rings of death, the fatal flaw eating at the edges of the consoles success. Put down to a motherboard fault which Microsoft has seemingly had no end of problems repairing, an XBox after a year and a half/two years will suddenly get all lit up with red lights on it’s infamous power circle and that will be it. The end of your console. Personally I wasn’t too worried, I bought mine just as the Elite came about, the version which claimed to have repaired this problem once and for all and led to all other models of 360 having the same fix. This combined with Microsoft having extended their warranty to three years, their record for getting the consoles shipped to and fro for free repairs (no doubt a PR necessity to appease customers) and the fact that I doubted I would be playing it in any way as hardcore as some gamers do meant I really wasn’t too concerned.

Nevertheless, I was midway through a Call of Duty fight today when my screen froze. Restarting the device confirmed the obvious…three red rings.

My 360 which has quickly become my favourite console and alternative to my PC for gaming has finally come to it’s end. Thankfully I had it registered with Microsoft’s dedicated XBox site and logging in showed my console as ‘Under Warranty’ and a nice button marked ‘Request Repair’. I’m hoping this will go smoothly, I hear it’s simply a case of receiving a shipping paid box in the post, placing your console inside and sending it back, hopefully receiving a ‘refurbished’ model instead.

I hope it’s this easy.