I've spent plenty of time picking on Sony, so let's keep the spotlight on Microsoft for a bit. I wrote yesterday about allegations that up to one in three Xbox 360s are "failing," ostensibly due to "Red Ring of Death" or RROD, a state signaled by three of the power button's four rings turning solid red (and no activity from the box or video signal to your TV or LCD). That 33% number is anecdotal, of course, and certainly not confirmed by Microsoft, which has claimed in the past that the correct number is between 3 and 5% (which, also according to Microsoft, is "acceptable" for this type of product).
Daily Tech reports today that console service company Micromart is stating it will no longer repair Xbox 360s due to what it describes as "the dreaded 3 Red lights fault." Here's the disclaimer in full:
XBOX 360 - Micromart has now withdrawn from offering a Repair Service for the dreaded 3 Red Lights fault.
This problem is endemic on the XBox 360 console and the volume has made this repair non-viable.
Other repairs to the XBox 360 are still being supported.
GameIndustry.biz spoke with Jeff Croft of Micromart in late June. Croft had this to say about the the new policy:
We were seeing about 30 a week before we pulled the plug on the service. We saw it over a period of several months and it was just getting worse. It began towards the end of last year. Once the twelve month warranty finished then we started to see more and more machines being sent in to be looked at. The problem with three red lights was there fairly regularly, but over two or three months it became a real issue.
So what's really going on here? No one's 100% certain, though anecdotal evidence continues to suggest the issue's thermal. I did a little quick checking and noticed news site SPOnG also spoke with Micromart's Croft and managed to pull together the following speculative info (speculative on Micromart's part, but based on hands-on repair time with the console).
Micromart: The problem was mainly a motherboard issue, we believe, related to dry joints (solder on the motherboard) overheating. There could be any number of issues why this is happening, but essentially it is a problem with overheating.
SPOnG: Can it not just be re-soldered and fixed straightforwardly?
Micromart: No, we?re talking thousands of joints which need to be ?reflowed?? I?ve seen the anecdotal stuff online as to how gamers have been fixing the problem ? with heat guns, towels, hairdryers, shoving the thing in the windscreen of a car in the sunny day, even, quite worryingly wrapping it in tinfoil and sticking it in the oven or the microwave!! - the main point with all of these ?temporary fixes? being that the solder reflows and resets into a position that makes the 360 work, temporarily.
Hear what consumers are saying about the xbox 360, it is definitely NOT that they are in that group, "Most are having a wonderful experience" that the Microsoft Staff are so redily spitting out at first mention of hardware failure... http://www.xbox360defective.com recall recall recall xbox 360
Yup, I am on my 4th 360. Used to love the system but my launch day console broke. Then my second one broke. Then my 3rd one broke. Now I am thinking, "this is beginning to get absolutely ridiculous!" Got my 4th and it broke. Called MS customer support again and this time I am a month out of warranty! They won't replace it but will happily fix it for $150 and an additional $25 warranty extensive fee per year! Wow, sticking it to me for their mistake. Especially since the warranty is for a year and I had actually had a console to play for about 8-9 mos of that year minus the shipping time. I didn't know that a year warranty actually means waiting a quarter of that year for my console to get back to me! I spent money on a ton of Live points, on the Live service, AND own 24 360 titles, and MS treats me like this?! Screw you MS I am giong to go get a PS3.....PS: Have already sold my 360.
From the description of some of the symptoms, it sounds like this could be a tin whisker problem, unless someone has already determined that this is a thermal fatigue problem.
http://nepp.nasa.gov/whisker/
We can thank the EU for the RoHS directive which requires the elimination of lead from solder, which causes the tin whiskers problem.