For my Xbox-mourning friends...

[nockergeek]

Did your 360 throw up the Three Red Lights of Death? You're in luck - Microsoft is extending the warranty to 3 years in cases of TRLoD. According to their press release, they're taking a $1 billion loss to cover the cost of both current and past repairs - yep, retroactive reimbursement.

The first link even hints that some of the newer Xboxes may have the fixes in place that prevent the TRLoD issue in the first place. This is happy news for me, as it means that my future 360 purchase may be problem-free.

I have to say that I have a bit more respect for any company that addresses a major issue like this and offers to make it right (much like the SNK Card Battler issue). I just wish Microsoft had acknowledged the issue a bit earlier than they did.

Comments

[evildennis.livejournal.com]

Woot! I get my repair charge back!

I went ahead and listened to the interview and this makes sense. There are a lot of parts in the console, and they've only got one error code for all of them (the three flashing red lights). So they don't even know the problem with the console until it is shipped to them.

When they released this system it wasn't fully tested for a console lifecycle (but then again what business would want to do 1-3 years of lifecycle testing on a machine when the market is so fast paced). So right now is when most of the first generation of 360 consoles are past their prime so to speak, and thus they've been able to gather a lot of data from all the repairs they've been doing. And as he said in the interview with all the data they gathered they found some statistically significant problems. (aka they found some things break a lot and are now fixing them, just like a recall on an automobile.)

So I will say this is unexpected and really cool, and sets up Microsoft with a better reputation in the gaming world than it had in the past.