Earlier this year, our Xbox 360 finally red-ringed. It's something millions of 360 owners have seen. We tried a handful of homegrown remedies, but nothing resuscitated the system we had poured thousands of hours into. It served us well, but was officially dead. But we were one of the lucky ones. According to the back of the system, ours was manufactured in 2008, and only just finally died. We've heard stories of people having three or four 360s red-ring on them. How the hell did ours last so long? We had to investigate. The Xbox 360 "Red Ring of Death" is probably the most well-known hardware malfunction in the history of video games, second only to the original NES's blinking red light of death. If you didn't know, around the power switch of the Xbox 360 are four LED lights. Green lights are good, one to four indicates how many controllers are synced to the machine, but red lights signify a malfunction. One red light for hardware failure, two red lights for overheating, three red lights for general hardware failure, and four red lights for an AV cable error. Yes, the "red ring of death" is actually only three red lights. A true red ring probably just means your AV cables fell out. What caused the red ring of death, and why did it affect so many systems? How were we so lucky, and how did it not completely destroy the Xbox brand? Welcome to Past Mortem, where we break down and explore the stories of video games. And this story is a glimpse into the cutthroat, competitive world of the console hardware business, and the importance of customer goodwill and brand strength. This is the story of the Xbox 360 Red Ring of Death. Our story begins in the spring of 2000. Seeing Sony's just-released PlayStation 2 as the latest threat to their lucrative PC gaming market, Microsoft announced on March 10th at the Game Developers Conference they were officially entering the console market with the Xbox. However, difficulties with development and worldwide distribution concerns delayed the Xbox until holiday 2001, putting it almost two years behind the PlayStation 2. Despite in many ways having the beefier system, when the dust settled the PlayStation 2 outsold the Xbox five to one, costing the tech giant somewhere between five to seven billion in the four years it was on the market. It was a crushing defeat for the company. The Xbox's unprofitability wasn't the issue. The system had managed to outsell the Nintendo GameCube, so it wasn't a total flop, but they had failed to make more than a dent in the PlayStation 2's domination in the living room. According to Microsoft's entertainment and devices president Robbie Bach, people loved Halo and Xbox Live, but no one loved the console. As a brand, Xbox still had a ways to go. Xbox had a common enemy with the other person at the center of this story, Peter Moore. In August of 1999, Moore became the Sega of America president just before the successful North American launch of Sega's final console system, the Dreamcast. The success of the Dreamcast was short-lived for numerous reasons, not the least of which was the monstrously successful PlayStation 2. - "It hurt my Dreamcast." - "That's... yes,"
- "It was personal." - "Yes, that, that, uh, definitely..."
- "It was personal." After leaving Sega in 2003, he was hired as corporate vice-president of interactive entertainment midway through the Xbox's lifespan. Just in time to tattoo the final release date of Halo 2 on his arm. He would pull a similar stunt with Grand Theft Auto IV. - "I saved the big guns... for the big guns." Working under Robbie Bach, Peter Moore would lead the Xbox brand in the early years of the 360, unfortunately making him the public face of the Red Ring of Death, but that's getting ahead of ourselves. At any rate, by 2003, the team at Xbox was reformed and galvanized under one goal: Develop a new system that would bury Sony. According to Robbie Bach, the Xbox was a rehearsal or training ground for their next step. So with lessons learned, Microsoft started the development of the follow-up system in early 2003, with Greg Gibson and J Allard as lead engineers. According to his book "Xbox Revisited," on April 2nd, 2003, Bach officially pitched the follow-up to the Xbox, then known as the Xenon, to Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer. To stay competitive, Bach insisted that the machine be sold at a profit, as opposed to leaning on software and peripherals making money. The Xbox was a significant failure in the then highly-coveted Japanese market, and a successor needed to be much smaller and more stylish to appeal to the east. The Xbox's original giant controller, nicknamed "the Duke," was an industry laughingstock. It would need to be drastically redesigned. They would go a step further, and be the first to make a console's standard controller wireless. The system would need to be capable of high-definition graphics to take advantage of the flat screen television boom just around the bend. It would need space for a hard drive, capable of backwards compatibility to at least play Halo 1 and 2. After early demos of Epic's Gears of War and its impressive Unreal Engine 3, the team made the contentious decision to double memory from an initial 256 megs to 512 megs. Ever wonder why the 360's giant power supply was external? The 360 was so packed with hardware, there wasn't room in the unit. After striking a deal with Electronic Arts to bring their sports games to the 360, Xbox shuttered their in-house XSN Sports line in order to better utilize in-house game development talent. But the team realized that the system would need to be more than a great gaming machine to win this. Fortunately, one of the few great successes of the original Xbox was Xbox Live, which would be greatly redesigned and expanded, along with a user interface, with things like gamer cards, achievements, and the marketplace. It would have the infrastructure for music, TV, and movie streaming, a relatively radical idea for the time. After code names like "Trinity," "Xenon," "NextBox," and "Xbox 2," it would be given the name Xbox 360, and the slogan "Jump In," representing the user transporting to the center of an all-encompassing media hub. As the sixth generation of consoles wound down, Xbox set their sights on a holiday 2005 launch, a date picked only because they thought that was when Sony would release the PlayStation 3. Development was not easy. Worse yet, the stakes were high. Sony began preliminary development of the PS3 as early as 2001, but launching behind Sony was not an option, so Microsoft cut corners everywhere they could to keep costs down and get the 360 onto shelves as soon as possible. To help speed up the process, third-party companies were hired to make chips and hardware. Microsoft saw this as a quicker and cheaper advantage over Sony, who largely handled manufacturing themselves. It did have its benefits. For example, Sony's early production actually wound up helping Microsoft. They were able to get IBM to sell them the specs for the PlayStation 3 core processor, which they then used in the 360. However, this would also prove to be a dangerous bet. A defect in any part, from any manufacturer, could result in a faulty system, and addressing these issues through third parties would be timely. All told, the launch Xbox 360 unit was made with 1700 different parts from 200 different manufacturers, all fitted into a case considerably smaller than their previous system. What could go wrong? May 2005: Microsoft unveiled the Xbox 360 on a cringy star-studded MTV fever dream. Days later, they held a lengthy presentation at E3, and announced the system would be shipping holiday 2005. It was a proud moment for the team. However, the real bombshell came from Sony. And no, we don't mean the infamous boomerang controller. PlayStation 3 announced a launch window of spring 2006, not holiday 2005. Suddenly, the Xbox 360 would be the first seventh-generation console to market. For the Xbox team, the holidays were theirs to lose. A chance for revenge for the Dreamcast and the original Xbox was becoming a very real possibility. The Xbox 360 was riding the hype of E3, but like most system launches, things were far from running smooth. Near the end of development, Microsoft pulled key engineers like J Allard from the Xbox team to work on the Zune, their ill-fated iPod competitor. That's right, you can partially blame the Zune for your faulty Xbox 360. Microsoft also allegedly did not do their due diligence in creating debug and testing machines. Machines testing systems coming off assembly lines weren't fully optimized to debug units thoroughly enough. On top of that, Microsoft opted to save a reported two million dollars on a twenty five million dollar deal by forgoing consulting and ordering only one third of the machines needed to properly evaluate the inventory of units. The Xbox 360 was full of new and advanced tech. Contracted manufacturers struggled to meet Microsoft's quality and inventory demands, and were falling behind schedule. As the months went on, Microsoft engineers began voicing concern about a myriad of issues: Overheating graphics chips, incorrectly installed and cracking heat sinks, warping motherboards, underperforming memory chips, and faulty disk drives. You might have noticed a trend there: Heat. The Xbox 360 had a slim, stylish look, but all that tech was crammed very close together, generating a lot of heat. And with very little ventilation to speak of, it was severely impacting functionality. According to VentureBeat, engineers claimed that by as late as August, Xbox 360 yield rates were 68%, suggesting that essentially two-thirds of all units coming off the line were deemed unshippable to stores. Which is to say nothing about the units that were deemed fit for store shelves. Some engineers pleaded with their superiors to shut down production, and give them time to track down the root of the malfunctioning issues, but top brass, including senior engineers, kept their eye on the prize. Robbie Bach and Peter Moore ultimately made the call. "We were confident the product was ready." But they knew they were cutting it close. Regardless of hype that had been steadily growing for months, Microsoft did not publicly announce the November 22nd release date until just two months before on September 15th. By as late as October 7th, they still had not announced shipment numbers, and less than a month out, reports were coming out that Microsoft would not be able to meet holiday demand. Reports claiming that stores were only receiving one third of their orders from Microsoft seemed to confirm the extremely poor manufacturing yield rates. On November 22nd, 2005, despite starting development behind the PlayStation 3, and with a team of just over 200, evidently a small team for such a task, the Xbox 360 was finished and released ahead of the PlayStation 3. It was the hot holiday item. - "...an Xbox 360, which is THE hot toy." 1.5 million systems were shipped worldwide by the end of the year, putting it ahead of the original Xbox's launch, but shortages left people frustrated. Empty-handed consumers would have to settle for exorbitant eBay prices. Conspiracies about artificial shortages began running, and they weren't completely wrong. Microsoft DID have a stockpile of 360s in their factories, but the truth is these were the faulty units. Due to incredibly poor yield rates, Microsoft simply couldn't meet the holiday demand. Now this type of thing would normally bankrupt most companies, but Microsoft had the deep, deep pockets to take the hit. Victory was bittersweet. Despite having the holidays' hot new video game item and getting out ahead of the PS3, they still could not beat the PS2, which outsold the 360 and moved its 100 millionth unit. And despite all the corner-cutting, analysis suggested that Microsoft was not selling launch 360s at a profit. In 2005, Microsoft rushed the 360 to be the first next-gen console on the market. They saw an opening, and they took it. And there were complaints about faulty units, some failing right out of the box, but Microsoft said at the time that these were within the expected range. And it was easy to take them at their word then; it's hard to think of any recent major electronics product that didn't have a rough launch. Typically, tech companies refine the manufacturing after launch, and this is what Microsoft planned to do. But this would prove to be a more difficult thing to achieve for the Xbox 360. However, the supporting character to this story is Sony, and the spectacular botched launch of the PlayStation 3, and next we'll see that maybe Xbox was so focused on burying the competition, they didn't focus enough on their own base of operations. It's New Years' 2006. Let's take a moment to look at Sony. Sony was coming off back-to-back mega hits with the PlayStation and PlayStation 2, but they were about to be hit hard with the third console curse. Like the Saturn and N64 before it, and of course the Xbox One, but that's a different story, they were about to find out that that third major console is a tough one. After basically recycling their E3 presentation at the January 2006 Consumer Electronics Show, rumors began swirling that the PlayStation 3 was not going to meet its spring release date. Worse still, word was that it was going to be extremely expensive. The system's Blu-ray drive was reported to be the cause, and this was confirmed on March 15th, when Sony officially delayed the PlayStation 3 until November 2006, citing ongoing issues with the Blu-ray drive. Meanwhile, Microsoft had since more than doubled its shipment of Xbox 360s. Analysts predicted that Microsoft would be lowering the price soon, but after the PlayStation 3's official unveiling that summer at E3, there was no need. In what is now considered one of the all-time worst E3 presentations, Sony announced the PlayStation 3 would cost $600. "...the 60 gigabyte PlayStation 3 for 599 US dollars, 659 dollars Canadian." Yeah, just listen to that uproarious applause in the crowd. When Peter Moore and his team heard the news, they were elated. He knew that that price point was a huge mistake for Sony. He even publicly joked that consumers could buy a 360 and a Wii for the price of one PS3. That's right, they were so cocky they gave Nintendo a bump. Moore then set a goal for his team: first to ten million wins. But while Moore was taking digs at Sony and claiming they were getting their yields where they want them to be, bricked units were starting to pile up. Despite shipping over three million 360s in just under six months, again according to VentureBeat, inside sources claim that Microsoft's inventory of faulty and returned units had grown to half a million. There was good news in a newly inked partnership with Toronto-based manufacturer Celestica, but this only fixed the issue of empty shelves. Perhaps the manufacturing pipeline was now running smoothly, but they were still shipping the rushed, faulty launch units prone to malfunctioning. And accounts of malfunctions were beginning to surface. In a heated January 2006 interview with EGM, Dan Hsu asked Peter Moore about defective 360s, which Moore deflected as isolated incidents, though he did indirectly acknowledge heating issues when asked about the system's loud fan. By spring, the story of one Chris Szarek began making the rounds. In the six months since launch, he claimed to have no fewer than three 360s die on him, displaying what he called the "three red lights of death." On May 1st, Mercury News ran his story where Szarek stated that he is just one of many having issues with their 360s, but many instead focused on the fact that Microsoft had sent him free replacement systems, labelling him a crybaby. The article itself speculated that Szarek was just unlucky. Microsoft toed the line that these console failures were within normal rates. Hindsight is 20/20, but despite Moore's best public boasting, Microsoft's problem was not just all about fulfilling overwhelming demand for their system. But in all fairness, it hadn't quite blossomed into a full-blown epidemic just yet. Coming off the 2006 E3, Xbox stayed on the attack. Both the PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Wii were launching in November. Looking towards the future, Microsoft prepared a $199 HD DVD add-on to launch alongside and directly compete with the PlayStation 3's built-in Blu-ray player. It's worth mentioning that this was when the format war between Blu-ray and HD DVD pretty much officially kicked off. This of course did not turn out so well for Microsoft, but they really had no other choice. To compete with the higher-priced PS3 and lower-priced Wii, Microsoft began working on two new models of the 360. The Xbox 360 Elite, codenamed "Zephyr," would have a massive 120GB hard drive and HDMI capability, retailing for $479.99. The Xbox 360 Arcade, codenamed "Falcon," would have a redesigned and cheaper motherboard with smaller GPU chips, retailing for a cool $279.99. Xbox was proving to be an industry force to be reckoned with, but internally, Microsoft engineers were frustrated to always be working on future projects instead of focusing on the poor manufacturing yields. Peter Moore and top brass stayed on the warpath, pushing Gears of War, one of the year's most anticipated games, and getting to that coveted ten million. However, by the fall of 2006, the cracks were starting to show. The Xbox 360 had been on the market for almost a year, but the stream of faulty units and returns hadn't slowed down in any significant way. Though plenty of YouTube videos of red-ringed systems still exist from this time, Bach recalled that it was by August 2006 that they realized they had a problem on their hands. And it wasn't an easy problem to solve, as the Red Ring of Death only indicated a "general hardware failure." Internally, they struggled to find a pattern, any kind of trend in the malfunctions in order to narrow down a cause. And while they frantically crunched the data, failure rates were becoming a problem that Microsoft could no longer publicly sweep under the rug. On September 22nd, ten months after launch if you're keeping track, Microsoft essentially said in a statement to GameSpot the initial manufacturing run of consoles were being returned for repair at a rate higher than they were satisfied with. They promised to cover or reimburse the cost of repairing any faulty 360s manufactured in 2005. Not bad, but this only covered around 1.5 million of the 5.9 million systems in the wild. Plus, there's an impressive amount of nuanced publicity spin in their statement, like in how they essentially claimed it was just an isolated group of units being returned for a variety of reasons. On the heels of its first birthday, Xbox was still not really publicly admitting to the problems with the 360 they privately were fully aware of. It was a bad story for Xbox, but there was plenty of good news to keep the public distracted. A steady stream of hit games kept consumers happy, and hype for an impressive holiday lineup ensured the 360 would again be a hot holiday item. Hype for Gears of War in particular have been growing steadily since E3, only to reach a fever pitch with the release of the "Mad World" trailer in October. It is often regarded as one of the greatest video game trailers ever made, and helped Gears of War sell over three million copies in ten weeks. It would become the fastest selling video game of 2006, and be remembered as a landmark moment for the seventh generation of consoles. The Xbox 360 would sell 1.1 million systems in December alone. However, Nintendo's Wii and Sony's PlayStation 3 officially entered the market in holiday '06. The Nintendo Wii in particular was an enormous success that no one saw coming, selling twice as many consoles in its first few months than the 360 did, though Nintendo would have its own struggle with shortages out of the gate, too. However, the PS3 stumbled hard on its dismount, selling less than half a million consoles. Again, irony of ironies, the 360 buried the PS3, but there was still no stopping the PS2. It alone sold 1.4 million in December 2006. This brings us to New Year 2007. Let's pause for a moment and reflect on where the Xbox brand is. In just under 14 months they were able to take the "Halo machine" and turn it into a serious contender against two industry titans: Sony and Nintendo. In hindsight, it's easy to forget the perilous position Xbox was in. Nintendo have been doing this since the 80s, Sony, the 90s. The original Xbox only launched in 2001. Xbox was just entering its sixth year. 360 was doing great, they were finally at the cool kids' table. But they were still the new kid, and everything they had fought for and achieved was on the cusp of being completely undone by three little lights. 2007 would become the year of reckoning for the Xbox 360 and the red ring of death. In January, Microsoft announced an addendum to their repair imbursement program. They would now extend the system's original 90-day warranty to a full year after purchase. This announcement came conveniently just after the holidays, two days into the new year, but the holidays were successful for Xbox, so in January they halted production of 360s. Our research suggests this halt could have been for many reasons. One: They had produced twelve million 360s and sold through only nine million, so they had an inventory cushion. Two: To prep both the Elite's April release and the replacement of the launch core unit with the redesigned Arcade unit in November. Or three: to finally give engineers the time and resources to figure out what entrepreneurial people on the internet already knew: These things were seriously busted. Behind the scenes, they worked furiously to find the source of the malfunction, but there was no easy fix. The problem was at the root of the very design of the system. All that tech in such a small space? There was no fix. And this is why such a cottage industry sprung up around the red ring of death. Any number of homemade solutions could have fixed your system because your system could have had any number of problems. The truth is, Xbox had put design first, and it was only after they had created its stylish hourglass look did they then work to cram all its advanced tech inside. And ironically, it was to broaden its appeal in places like Japan, where Xbox had again failed to gain ground. Still, engineers implemented changes that would extend the lifespan of future units, like better heat sinks, epoxy on microprocessors and graphics cards, and a pipe to better direct airflow from the fan. On the outside the systems looked the same, but on the inside, they had been drastically redesigned, with less parts, smaller parts, and more room for airflow. Moving forward, failure rates would dramatically improve, but there's still the problem of the nine million in the wild, and the three million more en route to store shelves. It was no longer an issue of if they'll fail, but when. Millions of ticking time bombs on store shelves and in living rooms around the world. No brand can handle that. In May 2007, top brass on the Xbox team convened in Robbie Bach's basement. After what Bach described as a long and difficult conversation, they came to the conclusion: Microsoft would need to extend the 360's warranty by three years, and promise to repair or replace every unit, even pay for the shipping. "It was the biggest decision I made in my 22 years at Microsoft, no question." Bach later said. Moore recounted going to Steve Ballmer, the CEO of Microsoft, and explaining the seriousness of the situation. - "If we don't do this, this brand is dead." "This is a Tylenol moment." Moore was referring to the 1982 Chicago Tylenol murders, where a still unknown person or persons had slipped cyanide into Tylenol bottles. In the span of just two days, seven people died. Immediately, Johnson & Johnson halted production of Tylenol and recalled 31 million bottles nationwide. It was a severe blow to their market share, but the move is widely credited with saving the Tylenol brand, and is a public relations legend. It's why you have safety seals on medicine bottles now, by the way. Ballmer understood Moore's plea.
"How much will it cost?" he asked. - "...and I always remember taking a deep breath, looking at Robbie, and going, "'We think it's 1.15 billion dollars, Steve.'" "He said 'Do it.'" "There was no, there was no hesitation." Moore would later credit the decision for single-handedly saving the Xbox. On July 5th 2007, Microsoft formally announced it was extending the warranty on any red-ringed Xbox 360 to 3 years after the date of purchase. They also promised to reimburse any money already spent on repairs. It was Microsoft's most public admission to the Xbox 360's high failure rate. The press statement featured a quote from Robbie Bach, but Peter Moore was charged with heading the PR warpath, doing numerous interviews. He would later describe the whole ordeal as "sickening," feeling that he had let Xbox fans down. The press release included the 1.15 billion dollar cost of the extension. it is considered one of the most expensive fixes in consumer electronics history. But quite frankly, this was all pretty conveniently timed. Xbox had just launched the Elite in April, would cut console prices one month after the warranty extension in August, launch Halo 3 in September, and release the newly designed Arcade model for $279, and discontinue the Core in October. By the end of the fiscal year, Xbox would see profitability for the first time in the history of the brand, though there's reason to suspect some convenient number-shuffling. The Xbox 360 would go on to become the sixth best-selling console of all time, widely recognized as one of the greatest and most influential systems ever made. And it's almost unbelievable that it was able to get to such heights, given how devastating the red ring of death was. There are a few reasons why the red ring of death didn't destroy the Xbox brand. One: Microsoft could take the hit. In fact, the money Xbox makes or costs Microsoft is drops in the bucket compared the likes of, say, Microsoft Office, so it was never in serious financial trouble. On the other hand, the brand, the optics of Xbox, was only able to survive because the PlayStation 3's early years were so rough. The Wii blew them both out of the water, but it's widely believed it appealed to a much different audience. For the "core gaming audience," 360 was the obvious choice over the PS3, especially in the early years. And that permeated pop culture. - "...our responsibility to help them learn." "That means putting away the Xbox!" Yeah, not "video games," "the Xbox." No better proof that you are at the top when your product becomes the catch-all for the industry. Another thing to remember is that this console generation ran much longer than usual. The 360's replacement, the Xbox One, didn't come out until 2013, six years after the 2007 warranty extension. Xbox had plenty of time to move past the red ring of death. Like we said at the beginning of this video, our 360 was manufactured in 2008, but only just this year finally died. But that's just our story. Microsoft did put their ambitions ahead of their customers by launching a faulty, unfinished product, but by most accounts, Microsoft did do right by its customers for the remainder of the 360's lifespan. But ours still eventually red-ringed like all the others. The physical solution to the red ring of death turned out to be a total redesign of the Xbox 360. And the S and E models introduced years later had their respective E 74 and E 36 error screens, but their failure rates would never come close to the core models. It's fair to say that in time, all original Xbox 360 models will eventually die, and it remains to be seen if these newer models will still be working a decade from now. Perhaps this is one motivating factor behind prioritizing the Xbox One's backwards compatibility, but that's just speculation on our part. And though Sony did one a hell of a job turning the PS3 around, and while the 360 never quite had the global reach Microsoft had hoped for, North America was firmly Xbox territory. Throughout this video, we've basically left out the Wii, and that's because, to a certain extent, so did Microsoft. They came hard after Sony, and by the end, the North American territory... was theirs to lose. For Grace Kramer and Derek Alexander, this is Past Mortem, signing off. Thanks so much for watching! Stop Skeletons From Fighting is a Patreon-supported show, and is made possible by every one of these people here. If you want to support the show and receive behind-the-scenes bonuses and chat on the private discord, head on over and pledge what you can! Also, t-shirts are available at fangamer.com. If you want more video game documentaries, check out our two-parter on Mighty No. 9. Also, you can check out what the YouTube Google algorithm has decided for you with the mystery video over here. What's it gonna be? And hey, if you're new to the channel, and you got this far, hit my face and subscribe, yeah. Uh, thanks again for watching, and we'll see you again real soon!
This brings back so many memories. There was a work around where you overheated the Xbox to get it to work so my roommates and I would turn it on and put it in a sack and then a plastic bag until it got really hot (about 20 minutes). Take it out and voila, it worked!
had a friend thay worked at a call center for xbox live when this happened. theu had thousands of calls in the que and the wait time to get your call answered was over 2 days at one point. it was a disaster
I remember back in college we did that thing where you take the case off and wrap it in a towel. Sounds stupid, but it worked.
Oh geez...I'm still using my Xbox 360 that was sent back to replace my red ring. I'm a walking frigging smithsonian gamer.
Got the overheat rings (2 rings I think) and my brother and I would put the Xbox in front of the AC. At the time we thought we would have to pay to fix it. So, we played like that for a while until the RRoD finally appeared.
Months later I got a fix it kit from eBay, modded the Xbox while I was at it, eventually was banned from Xbox live. Fast forward to today and I am a proud owner of a PS4.
My disc tray broke in my 360 so every time my friends and I wanted to play a different game I'd take my whole Xbox apart open the disc reader swap games and then put it all back together my friends were impressed after a while I did it pretty quickly lol
Omg I got a 360 when it came out, within a week got the red ring of death, sent it in and got a fresh one and not 2 weeks later got another RR of D. Said screw this shit and bought a PS3. I only use Sony for gaming after that experience
To this day, I find it almost miraculous that the console managed to be such an enormous success, despite the almost constant hardware failures. I had a friend who went through four of them in as many years. I didn’t know anyone who didn’t experience the RROD at least once.
I had a 360. Sent it in 3-4 times in a year due to RRoDs. Each time it took weeks to get back. They even sent me a new one as a replacement which eventually started RRoDing. Been a PlayStation guy since.