Microsoft Responds To Failure Reports – Extends 360 Warranty To 3 Years

by Chad Lakkis on July 5, 2007 at 5:32 pm

While most of the country was celebrating the 4th of July, one has to wonder if Microsoft’s legal department was burning the midnight oil, putting the final touches on new coverage warranty.

The past few days have seen much negative press for the company’s next gen gaming console and today Microsoft announced that they will be extending the Xbox 360’s warranty coverage from one year to three.

The new warranty will be, brace yourselves current owners … retroactive, meaning that the changes to the contract will cover existing owners of the system as well. Way to step up Microsoft!

“The majority of Xbox 360 owners are having a great experience with their console and have from day one. But, this problem has caused frustration for some of our customers and for that, we sincerely apologize,” said Robbie Bach, president of Microsoft’s Entertainment & Devices Division. “We value our community tremendously and look at this as an investment in our customer base. We look forward to great things to come.”

We put a call into Microsoft’s Seattle based PR department to find out if the retroactive coverage will reimburse customers who sent their systems in and incurred expenses for doing so after the original year warranty expired. We will update you as soon as we hear back, stay tuned.

Update: 7/5/07 – 7:45PM EST
Apparently we gave Microsoft the “atta-boy” a little too soon. If you sent a system in for repair due to the “red ring of death” then any expenses you paid will be reimbursed, but the retroactive warranty will only cover current owners whose system experienced the “red ring” issue, any other service done to the system after the one year period will not be reimbursed. Furthermore, the extended three year warranty will only kick in for users outside the initial one year period if their system experiences the “red ring” defect.

If you own a system that has yet to experience this symptom and you are over the one year coverage warranty period the only way to get Microsoft to grant you the new three year warranty is to pray that your 360 turns your late night gaming room into the console equivalent of a red light district.