Microsoft's (Red) Ring Around the Collar

It happened to me about six months ago. My Xbox 360, which I'd purchased at my local Walmart after waiting in "footware" on launch day for eight hours, finally croaked. It went not with a bang but an abrupt flicker, as in the screen snapping white before--zap--seeya later, old friend. On the front of the system, a pulsing band of scarlet glared at me as if to say "Don't make me angry...you wouldn't like me when I'm angry."

A few weeks later, I had a refurbished system in hand courtesy Microsoft tech support, and it's still working fine a half year later. It's troublesome, then, to still see message boards teeming with consumers having the same problem.

What exactly is that problem?

On the front of an Xbox 360 is a circular recessed power button. It looks like a dial, with a circle composed of lights that should only ever flash green. If they flash red, watch out. Technically speaking, each quarter circle in the "ring" indicates a different issue, so I'll focus on the most onerous: all of the lights flashing red save for the first section, indicating a general hardware failure. That's what happened to mine.

GamePro just published a piece addressing Microsoft's refusal to comment on recent news that it was adding heatsinks to repaired Xbox 360 units, something which -- if true -- would indicate Microsoft feels part of the issue may be (a) thermal/design related, (b) user environment related, or (c) some combination of both.

In the article, Eugene Huang asked Microsoft's Todd Holmdahl direct questions about the heatsinks and either got a "no comment" or generalizations like "the vast majority of people love their experience." (You can almost hear the Star Wars guy chanting "stay on target, stay on target...") Would you accept that kind of sunshine from your kid? Your friend? Your co-worker? Anyone but a company like Microsoft?

To play devil's advocate, the public can certainly irritate its relationship with companies like Microsoft by exacerbating or misconstruing an issue. A headline either written or taken out of context can spark pandemonium and manufacture PR crises for companies out of nothing. And while companies are accountable to their consumers, independent bloggers are essentially accountable to no one save their readers, whose comments (negative or positive) still translate as page hits.

Regardless, Microsoft needs to engage this issue more transparently. The company almost certainly tabulates incoming support calls and catalogues each complaint using an elaborate ticket tracking system. Does MS tech support have a numerical sense of how many people are having "red ring" system failures? You betcha. Could they disclose those numbers? Absolutely. Does their reluctance to indicate the problem is big time? Hard to say. Microsoft plays its cards close, and certainly doesn't want to establish a precedent for consistent explanations...however much we deserve them.

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