A Tale of 11 Broken Xbox 360s

I’ve been quite lucky to avoid the dreaded red ring of death on my launch Xbox 360, but it seems that many people are not so lucky, especially Justin Lowe. He’s currently on his twelfth Xbox since he purchased his first a month after the launch. Three have been red rings of death, two had disc read errors, two were DOA, others had audio and video problems and one exploded.

I personally am having a hard time believing most of this. There is audio in the article that verifies that he had many Xbox 360s repaired, but the chances of running into this many issues by chance seems unlikely. Lottery chances. Regardless of what I think, it’s an interesting read, even if it is hard to believe.

As Justin garnered more experience with 360 repairs, he discovered something. The consoles consumers sent back by Microsoft are often refurbished, rather than brand-new. Justin found out that, with enough problems and by specifically making the request, Microsoft would send out brand-new consoles as replacements. Midway through his ordeal, he began doing this, but quickly found the downside: new consoles can take even longer to send out, with up to two weeks spent waiting for Microsoft approval.

Source: 1UP