GameZine reports that Microsoft have extended their warranty to cover the E74 error as well as the Red Ring of Death. A growing number of complaints about the error have led to Microsoft addressing the issue, mentioning that the error is linked to the RRoD issue.

Microsoft are also refunding those who have already had to pay out: “Microsoft will refund to customers the amount paid for an out of warranty repair due to a general hardware failure associated with the e74 error message. Those customers should automatically receive the refund within 4-12 weeks, and no additional action by customers should be necessary.”

Oh, and here’s some press silliness:

“While the majority of Xbox 360 owners continue to have a great experience with their console, we are aware that a very small percentage of our customers have reported receiving an error that displays “E74″ on their screen.”

Yes, Microsoft. Now add that “small percentage” to the percentage that have had something go wrong, and you’ll have more than a minority.

In other “non BlizzCon related” news, Microsoft has filed a $2 million lawsuit against shipping company DHL over lost Xbox 360 units — 21,600 lost units to be exact. As the story goes, a DHL train carrying butt loads of Xbox 360 consoles derailed in Duke, Texas, causing “impact damage, wetting, pilfering and shortage.”

Microsoft says that DHL is refusing the pony up for damages despite their belief that the company “negligently breached” their duty. Attempts made to contact DHL have been unsuccessful thus far, though I am praying for some ungodly small fine print that reads something like this:

“DHL is not responsible for damages unless all 4 rings on the front of our train light up red upon impact.”

While I am pretty sure DHL and Microsoft are not finding this funny at all, I will glady take this opportunity to coin a new acronym — “Red Ring of Derailment” — RROD for short. You know what they say about karma right?

Sadly, if the train wreck had damaged …. oh I don’t know, 360,000 units, DHL might have been able to convince Microsoft to write it off as an advertising expense.

Source: GamePro

These stories are getting a bit stale, aren’t they?  Not stale enough, apparently, or maybe it’s just not important for Microsoft to fix their shit.  You see, my latest Xbox 360 is dead.  I purchased a new Arcade version in January after my then current 360 was assassinated.  I’ve been using it since then until it started freezing, at which time I moved it to the other television and used it solely for movie-watching.  Less than eight months later, it does nothing but blink red and laugh at me.

Seriously, Microsoft, what is your fucking problem?  Every few months I read about how all these improvements are being made and that 360’s are becoming more reliable.  Do you just make this stuff up?  Do they break more reliably or something?  My latest 360 demise came earlier than the other two, so if by more reliable you mean less reliable, then congrats — you’re definitely on the right track.

Everything that’s great about the 360 and all of this exclusive content you’re getting doesn’t mean a goddamn thing if I’m unable to enjoy any of it because my shit’s all busted.  The new Xbox Experience can go fuck itself unless my Avatar will sit inside my console all day performing maintenance to keep it running.

Don’t you realize that you are only hurting yourself?  Don’t you realize that the public opinion of the Xbox 360 is that it is an unreliable piece of garbage?  Don’t you realize that you are costing yourself more money by replacing 360’s over and over than you would if you just fixed the problem? What happened between the original Xbox, which I gamed on for 4 years with no problems whatsoever (and it still works to this day), and the 360, which I’ve owned 4 of so far in less than 3 years? And now it appears likely I will be getting a fifth one…

There are plenty of 360 fanboys out there that will claim “I’ve never had a problem”, and that may be true, but I don’t know a single person that has owned a 360 for more than a year that has not had to send it in for repair.  My guess is that the people that haven’t had any problems are most likely not using it multiple hours every day.  The failure rate is clearly 100% — it’s just a matter of when, not if.

My relationship with the 360 has become abusive.  I try to remember only the good times we had and pretend that the times he hit me are long gone.  The 360 keeps telling me that he’s changed, and I believe it because I love the 360.  Then, for no reason, the 360 gets mad and throws me down a flight of stairs, I call the police, and the 360 goes into rehab for 2 weeks.

Then he shows up at my door, gift-wrapped, and we go back to doing all of the fun things that made me love him in the first place.  Every time we get together, though, I’m always fearful that he will slip into his abusive ways.  Sometimes the 360 will freeze during a game, and I reset it hoping that I will see green lights and not red ones.  Sometimes I turn it on and see no lights for a few seconds, and I get scared.  I never know when the 360 is going to hurt me again.

For real, Microsoft, I am not very happy.  There are millions of 360 owners out there that you are also making not very happy.  That is not good.  You need to fix this problem NOW before one of us shoots you in the face.

Source: That blinking-red piece of shit in my living room.

After years of speculation and millions of little red rings, could the cause of the biggest and most widely known hardware problem this generation finally have been revealed? According to Bryan Lewis, research vice president and chief analyst at Gartner, it’s the 360’s graphics chip.

Up until September 2007, the graphics chip, or GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) inside the Xbox 360 was made using a design created in-house by Microsoft. Normally, companies pay large sums of money to have another company which specialises in ASIC (Application-Specific Integrated Circuit, a specialist chip) production to design it for them. Trying to save tens of millions of dollars, Microsoft decided to do it themselves.

One billion dollars later (the cost of repairing all those RRODs) they probably regret that decision. Due to oversights in the design, the chips get too hot and it’s this overheating which causes the dreaded little red lights and a bricked console.

Lewis said at the Design Automation Conference that it was Microsoft’s attempt to save money which cost them so dearly. When asked for the moral of the story, Lewis said:

Had Microsoft left the graphics processor design to an ASIC vendor in the first place, would they have been able to avoid this problem?
Probably. The ASIC vendor could have been able to design a graphics processor that dissipates much less power.

In September 2007, the GPU inside the 360 was replaced with one re-designed by GPU experts ATI and gained an extra heat dissipater to help cool it down.

Source: EE Time

Shortly after the launch of Super Smash Brothers Brawl for the Wii, reports began to surface that a small, yet noticeable number of people were getting disc-read errors and were unable to play one of the most anticipated titles of the year. Last month in Japan, Nintendo said that this was caused by a dirty lens inside the console, but could there be more to it?

Nintendo’s official statement claimed that because Brawl uses a double-layer disc, bits of dirt on the Wii’s lens prevent the disc from being read properly; on a single layer disc the dirt is in a small enough quantity not to cause trouble. Nintendo said that if you get this error, they will fix it for you free of charge and pay for you to ship it to them.

This all seemed rather plausible and everybody was happy. Until it was pointed out there are a few, rather large flaws in Nintendo’s statement. Firstly, why do you need to have your Wii sent of to Nintendo, just to have the lens cleaned? If it’s just a simple bit of dirt, wouldn’t a CD lens cleaner do just as good a job?

Secondly, won’t the discs just get dirty again? Simply cleaning it once isn’t going to stop the same thing from happening again. The only way to get a better result is to change something else inside the console. If this is the case, won’t it have to be done to all Wiis?

Finally, and this is the real blow, some people have reported getting this error with brand new Wii consoles and using brand new discs. If this is a dirt issue, is it really likely that a brand new Wii is dirty enough to not work correctly?

So, this leaves the question: could Nintendo be lying and actually trying to cover up some kind of hardware issue? Or is there genuinely an innocent reason for this slightly implausible excuse? Either way, at this moment in time all reports seem to indicate the issues are with a very small portion of consoles, so don’t let that distract you from your final smashes just yet.

Source: Destructoid

The mysterious Red Ring of Death has perplexed many Xbox 360 owners. What evil magic causes the system to overheat and crap out so often? Bunnie’s Blog has a very interesting theory about why the technology behind Microsoft’s console leads so often to failure.

The key seems to be in the solder joints, where a simple dye test can indicate faulty manufacturing. According to Bunnie’s Blog, it all starts with a RROD 360:

I actually sent it off to MEFAS to get digested for solder joint inspection on the GPU through a process called “dye and pry”. In this process, the motherboard is flooded with red ink, and then the GPU is mechanically pried off the board. The red ink flows into any of the tiny cracks in the solder balls, and at least in theory, when you pry the GPU off the cracked regions will shear first so you will be left with visible red spots at the points of failure.

Photos of this test show lots of partial cracking in the solder balls, but it doesn’t seem to show “catastrophic failure”, which would be indicated by “pools of red ink over a connection interface”. It’s hard to say if this is the true cause of RROD, but it’d be nice to see if Microsoft will have a response to this type of product testing.

Comparing the difficulty of getting complex systems to work just right, this blogger also brings to mind the imagery of space and air travel. These products are so complex that you just have to marvel that they manage to get nearly everything right. Good thing Microsoft’s not in charge of designing the space shuttle, right?

Via Bunnie Studios