• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Xbox Finally Admits to What Caused the Xbox 360 Red Ring of Death

Topher

Gold Member
My friend told me to tell your friend that it is Melanie Iglesias and that Google image search is the gift that keeps on giving, which is especially appreciated this time of year.

Indeed...

tumblr_lt8fwcWT8p1qis6nmo1_400.gif
GzYWP8.gif
 

Novacain

Member
What a dumb article and headline - we've known for over a decade what caused RRoD and did not need MS for any clarification.

So many vulture articles trying to get a click out of the "documentary" marketing piece MS put out to sell their brand - as though the RRoD was some sort of legendary mystery that Microsoft rectified and solved as a shining example of celebrating consumer friendly practices from a corporate giant.

They REALLY want people to drink the Kool-Aid and think of the RRoD as a triumph rather than the engineering disaster that it was.
 

MadViking

Member
The Elites could still RROD (mine did). It wasn't fixed until the first slim model:

There were several revisions.
Zephyr had bigger heat sink, but it didn't help much.
Falcon fixed it somewhat, but could still fail.
Finally Jasper fixed it almost completely.

Depends which model you had in the Elite.


PS3 and Wii released in the Holiday season of 2006, one full year after the Xbox 360 launched. I'm sure that extra year allowed Sony and Nintendo to learn from the Xbox 360 problems and work around them.
PS3 also had YLOD. Maybe not as common as RROD, but there were lots of failed consoles as well.
 

DragoonKain

Neighbours from Hell
I remember when I got my first RROD. I was naive even though word was out even back then that everyone’s gonna get it at some point, it’s a design flaw, it’s inevitable. But I was one of the lucky ones at that point, I got my 360 at launch and never had a problem. I was playing GTA 4 and the screen every once in a while would turn green and crash. Then it went away. Then I played Ninja Gaiden 3(or maybe it was 2?) and the game kept freezing and checkerboard patterns came on my screen. Then eventually it wouldn’t turn on and I kept getting the RROD.

I sent it back for repair and got back a 360 with black stains on it and a chipped disc tray on the front. That new 360 broke within a year. Stopped reading games completely. So I eventually said fuck it and just bought a brand new one.
 

IntentionalPun

Ask me about my wife's perfect butthole
I owned 2 launch 360s, both used quite often, never RROD'd. Had a launch Elite too, never RROD'd. At launch I also found a buddy a 360 and sold it to him (w/ receipt so he could return it).. also never RROD'd.. that guy played 24/7.

You might think I'm just incredibly lucky, but it's more that God is watching out for me, as I am superior to you all, and he always rewards my greatness.
 
Last edited:

Fredrik

Member
-Got a good buddy I've known for a couple years
-We're pretty good friends, hang out at each other's apartments a couple times a week, he got me a job at his work, I helped him with school, everything is great
-Fast forward to Christmas 2005
-He gets an Xbox 360, we're all young and poor so it's amazing, he's the only one with the console, hype level at max
-We're hanging out with a couple other friends, he literally just hooked it up and booted CoD2
-This is so awesome, playing though the campaign passing the controller around for about an hour
-I'm currently playing, buddy walks out room to get a drink, I pause the game and start looking through the pause menu options, just curious
-I think I was looking at audio settings when IT happens
-RRoD and somehow the game disc also got a deep ring scratched into it
-I literally never touched anything but the controller the whole time
-Buddy comes back in the room
-I get blamed for it somehow
-Puts a huge strain on our friendship
-Drift apart ...


Hope you're doing alright Marshall wherever you are. Fuck you Microsoft
That’s just awful 😞

I has nothing bad like that happen but when I got my first refurbished console they hadn’t planned that people might want to tie the licenses to the new console, everything worked when I was online but I lost access to everything when I was offline. And I had 50+ XBLA games and had to list every single game one by one from memory through phone support so they could manually transfer back my licenses. Took awhile.
 

Yoboman

Member
It would have destroyed the brand if it was Xbox or Xbox One that had RROS. The best thing you can say is it was lucky to happen to Xbox 360 when they were nailing so many other things that on the whole they still had popularity
 

Arioco

Member
For the Wii ok maybe but PS1/2/3 had disc player issues at a RROD level and I never heard so much shitstorms about those. Back in the PS1/2 days I worked in game shops and we had daily people bringing back PS1/2 because the disc player wasn't working anymore.


I don't think it's even close. I have a launch PS1, PS2 and PS3 and all of them work fine even today.

If you watch the new documentary about XBOX on the XBOX YouTube channel you'll see Microsoft themselves admit that 360 failure rate was nearly 100%, they had literally several million units waiting to be repaired. Mine died (launch unit too), I got it repaired but later on I'll exchanged it for the new model (the slim) with 250 GB, wifi and HDMI, and that's the one I own today.
 

SenkiDala

Member
I don't think it's even close. I have a launch PS1, PS2 and PS3 and all of them work fine even today.

If you watch the new documentary about XBOX on the XBOX YouTube channel you'll see Microsoft themselves admit that 360 failure rate was nearly 100%, they had literally several million units waiting to be repaired. Mine died (launch unit too), I got it repaired but later on I'll exchanged it for the new model (the slim) with 250 GB, wifi and HDMI, and that's the one I own today.
I personally agree with you and still own my working PS1 and day one PS2 which works fine, but I was trying to be more objective. I know that the 360 "incident" is unprecedented at this level but still other systems are known to have issues.
 

nush

Gold Member
i still remember when Fallout 3 killed my Xbox... bought the refresh one for christmas

That was a thing, people always blamed the game they were playing at the time as the reason the 360 RROD'd. My first RROD was while playing fucking Bejeweled.
 

Arioco

Member
I personally agree with you and still own my working PS1 and day one PS2 which works fine, but I was trying to be more objective. I know that the 360 "incident" is unprecedented at this level but still other systems are known to have issues.


Yes, back in the day people used to talk a lot about some yellow light on PS5 which was kind of similar to the RRoD, but I don't think it was nearly as common. My PS3 still works fine but it's a launch European model, so it might be affected by this issue.

But the RRoD was absolutely crazy. I was watching all those Microsoft executives talking about the issue in the documentary and even after so many years you can tell they feel devastated when remembering those days. I can imagine the pressure of having several million consoles piled up one on top of the other waiting to get repaired and not even knowing what's causing the issue to begin with. They even have to make the toughest decision: stop manufacturing the console while they try to find out what was going on.

I'm glad they finally worked it out in the end and I think MS made the right call: repair every last console, no questions asked, even if the warranty had run out. Mine in fact died after two years when I had no legal right to claim anything anymore and yet MS told me to send it to them and send it back to me with a couple of months of XBOX live for free. They screwed it up big time but at least they did the impossible to amend the mistake. Thanks to that behavior I continued to buy their products and today I own almost 150 games for 360. Overall it's still one of the best consoles I've ever had, and I've had a lot of them. xD
 
Huh…all of these stories, and my MGS 4 PS3 Phat YLODed before my 360 RRODed. And it took Sony a lawsuit and over a month of time to fix, whereas Microsoft was five business days (sent on Monday, repaired on Wednesday, received Friday).

It’s funny how as much as people want to slag on Microsoft for the RROD, they copped to it and fixed the consoles. Sony outright claimed people were lying about the YLOD until they were forced to face facts.

The Wii, OTOH, was bulletproof, mainly because it was two GameCubes duct taped together. And the only thing that fails on those GameCubes are the lasers.
 

M16

Member
The issue was caused by MS' design. They had a design that would not take into account warping when heating and expected the solder to withstand it. The issue was warping on the motherboard hence why an x-clamp fix existed too.
for the last time, had nothing to do with the motherboard warping. you want to hammer the narrative that it was a microsoft design flaw. it wasnt.
if you want to fault them on something, it would be the lack of testing(which they fully admit),because ultimately if they adequately tested, they could have fixed the solder blend.

the engineers explain it in the documentary.

xbox360 engineering group: a breakthrough came when we understood the connections that were being broken were not located on the motherboard but they're actually located inside the components.



xbox.png




I didn’t know that. Where did you find that out? Interesting tidbit.
from the documentary. see above
 
Last edited:

MoreJRPG

Suffers from extreme PDS
I got RROD and had my console replaced for free. Much better than being locked out of online play for a month and having my credit card info stolen like the PS3 debacle. The poster is funny, happy to see it riles the usual suspects up.
 
Last edited:

Three

Member
for the last time, had nothing to do with the motherboard warping. you want to hammer the narrative that it was a microsoft design flaw. it wasnt.
Because it was. You're the one who wants to hammer home a narrative that it somehow wasn't when it's thier damn machine, to the point where you try and shift blame to IBM, damn IBM.
IBM didn't even make the GPU on the 360 for Christ's sake.

They had a design with insufficient cooling. Cyclic heating caused the interposer and motherboard to warp on on/off cycles. The stresses are from that. The video is an oversimplification. In reality it would bow in and out on each cycle.
 

M16

Member
Because it was. You're the one who wants to hammer home a narrative that it somehow wasn't when it's thier damn machine, to the point where you try and shift blame to IBM, damn IBM.
IBM didn't even make the GPU on the 360 for Christ's sake.

They had a design with insufficient cooling. Cyclic heating caused the interposer and motherboard to warp on on/off cycles. The stresses are from that. The video is an oversimplification. In reality it would bow in and out on each cycle.
youre gonna pretend you didnt read the quote above i posted about the xbox engineer specifically stating it wasnt the connection to the motherboard being broken. keep digging that hole.

a breakthrough came when we understood the connections that were being broken were not located on the motherboard but they're actually located inside the components.
 

Eevee86

Member
My launch day console RRODed within two days of bringing it home and then 7 more times throughout the gen. Good thing they tanked the cost of repairs or Xbox probably would have been dead that gen.
 

Three

Member
youre gonna pretend you didnt read the quote above i posted about the xbox engineer specifically stating it wasnt the connection to the motherboard being broken. keep digging that hole.
Keep ignoring the fact that IBM had nothing to do with 360s poor design.

The component being on an interposer doesn't mean anything. Who are you trying to blame now? ATI? You do know that the xbox 360 had a separate GPU and CPU right? and that it was the Xenos chip that ended up with broken connections.
 

DaGwaphics

Member
for the last time, had nothing to do with the motherboard warping. you want to hammer the narrative that it was a microsoft design flaw. it wasnt.
if you want to fault them on something, it would be the lack of testing(which they fully admit),because ultimately if they adequately tested, they could have fixed the solder blend.

the engineers explain it in the documentary.





xbox.png





from the documentary. see above

That's true, they did point those specific details out. I had just assumed it was separation from the MB itself.
 

MikeM

Member
The better console that generation unfortunately had the worst defect. I remember sending mine in for repairs at least 5 times. Frustrating but glad they extended the warranty and eventually owned up to it.
 

Grechy34

Member
This again? People need to spend their time on more worthwhile things…

Sexy Hot Girl GIF

God that's wonderful.

I have 2 now hacked 360's. My OG RROD and I remember when it did I was pretty gutted. Ended up getting it repaired and selling it.

My 360 slim disc drive can be really slow to load certain games for some reason but it is hacked and I play everything off the HDD so it doesn't matter. the E which is I believe is really underrated in how good it looks to be honest (also hacked) is going well.

For anyone that hasn't modded their 360 - do it, it's damn good.
 
Last edited:

M16

Member
Keep ignoring the fact that IBM had nothing to do with 360s poor design.

The component being on an interposer doesn't mean anything. Who are you trying to blame now? ATI? You do know that the xbox 360 had a separate GPU and CPU right? and that it was the Xenos chip that ended up with broken connections.
the engineers who built the thing are wrong, and this guy is right because he installed an xclamp kit :messenger_grinning_sweat:
 

Grechy34

Member
What a dumb article and headline - we've known for over a decade what caused RRoD and did not need MS for any clarification.

So many vulture articles trying to get a click out of the "documentary" marketing piece MS put out to sell their brand - as though the RRoD was some sort of legendary mystery that Microsoft rectified and solved as a shining example of celebrating consumer friendly practices from a corporate giant.

They REALLY want people to drink the Kool-Aid and think of the RRoD as a triumph rather than the engineering disaster that it was.

They handled it a lot better then most companies. They did sustain a huge loss (although for Microsoft still a drop in the ocean)
 

Three

Member
the engineers who built the thing are wrong, and this guy is right because he installed an xclamp kit :messenger_grinning_sweat:
I didn't say the engineer is wrong. Not once. I'm saying it makes no difference if it's a component with a BGA on an interposer or a BGA directly on the motherboard. This doesn't in anyway shift blame to IBM of all people. It's MS's design, MS's inadequate cooling and not even an IBM chip that the connections fail on.

Where the design fails is the thermal fatigue. An xclamp fix helps because it lowers the amount the whole chip can warp and it pushes the interposer/motherboard and chip together. The balls on the BGA don't just have individual stresses. They are different with the outer ones being under higher stress as it bows under load.
 
Last edited:
“As stressful as the problem was for most fans, the issue might have even been even more stressful for Xbox.”

Oh sure. We should have thought about that poor company that continued to sell and make money on knowingly defective equipment. Sooooo funny.
My conspiracy theory is that they knew the design was flawed but shipped it anyway- Boeing 737 style.
 

Novacain

Member
They handled it a lot better then most companies. They did sustain a huge loss (although for Microsoft still a drop in the ocean)
Given that the cause was an unprecedented engineering fuck up, we don't know what any other modern company would have done, because they haven't blown it quite this badly.
 

nush

Gold Member
My conspiracy theory is that they knew the design was flawed but shipped it anyway- Boeing 737 style.

Almost, they knew the yield was not good and shipped anyway. I've been in that situation where sales/marketing force you to ship because they have so many retail orders already and they will fuck the dev team up the ass HARD if you mess with their commission and the companies share price.
 

M16

Member
I didn't say the engineer is wrong. Not once. I'm saying it makes no difference if it's a component with a BGA on an interposer or a BGA directly on the motherboard. This doesn't in anyway shift blame to IBM of all people. It's MS's design, MS's inadequate cooling and not even an IBM chip that the connections fail on.

Where the design fails is the thermal fatigue. An xclamp fix helps because it lowers the amount the whole chip can warp and it pushes the interposer/motherboard and chip together. The balls on the BGA don't just have individual stresses. They are different with the outer ones being under higher stress as it bows under load.
your quote earlier

"The issue was warping on the motherboard hence why an x-clamp fix existed too."

now its not the motherboard warping, but the chip

"An xclamp fix helps because it lowers the amount the whole chip can warp"

whats your next revised theory? "the solder blend was crap, and i agreed with the engineer from the beginning"
 
Almost, they knew the yield was not good and shipped anyway. I've been in that situation where sales/marketing force you to ship because they have so many retail orders already and they will fuck the dev team up the ass HARD if you mess with their commission and the companies share price.
I wonder if it actually cost them money in the long run. The xbox360 was released before the PS3 which was a huge win for them that generation.


Anyway I'm not angry. Nobody died and Microsoft handled it pretty well after they were forced to acknowledge the problem. They sent Fedex to pick up my broken console and even gave me 2 free games.
 

nush

Gold Member
I wonder if it actually cost them money in the long run. The xbox360 was released before the PS3 which was a huge win for them that generation.


Anyway I'm not angry. Nobody died and Microsoft handled it pretty well after they were forced to acknowledge the problem. They sent Fedex to pick up my broken console and even gave me 2 free games.

It didn't kill the brand. XB1 probably cost them more money without the hardware failures.
 

K' Dash

Member
Imagine all the people that bought the console internationally... Like me.

I didn't get warranty, I didn't get to send it to be repaired. I lost my money.

After that I bought a PS3 and hated everything about it, but at least it worked. Later that gen I bought the 360 elite and that lasted me until PS4 launch.
 

Three

Member
your quote earlier

"The issue was warping on the motherboard hence why an x-clamp fix existed too."

now its not the motherboard warping, but the chip

"An xclamp fix helps because it lowers the amount the whole chip can warp"

whats your next revised theory? "the solder blend was crap, and i agreed with the engineer from the beginning"
Sure I thought it was a BGA directly on the motherboard and not on an interposer.

Your dumb theory though was that it was IBMs fault when they had absolutely nothing to do with it. XENOS isn't even their component.

I said it was MS design flaw and you came in with bullshit and now you're splitting hairs.
 
Last edited:
I never owned a 360 but I didn't realize that people are this salty over RRoD, some to this day. It's been almost 15 years now lmao.
 

Max_Po

Banned
I had 4 or 5 RRODs.

First one was on Dec 22 2005 while playing PGR3....... imagine by luck... sold out and nothing for holidays.
 

Fredrik

Member
your quote earlier

"The issue was warping on the motherboard hence why an x-clamp fix existed too."

now its not the motherboard warping, but the chip

"An xclamp fix helps because it lowers the amount the whole chip can warp"

whats your next revised theory? "the solder blend was crap, and i agreed with the engineer from the beginning"

Lead-free BGA soldering is used every day on millions of products, what was Microsoft’s problem with the soldering?
 
Top Bottom