Though the Xbox 360 had debuted the previous November, buying a new one in January 2006 wasn’t easy. For the first few months after the console’s launch, Microsoft had trouble building enough units, which led to missed revenue goals and, even worse, angry consumers. And many of those customers were about to get even more ticked off. 

You see, fortunately for Microsoft, the company took on a third manufacturing partner to increase production, and thankfully, 360s were widely available by mid-year. And yet there was a malfunctioning problem in 360s spreading like contagion. Ladies and gents, enter the dreaded “red ring of death,” the hardware failure error that nailed shut the coffin on a seemingly endless stream of Xbox systems.

While complaints about the system's failure began popping up after the launch of the 360, 2006 is when it became a bonafide phenomenon. If you were one of the unlucky ones who had the problem, you had to call up Xbox customer service, wait for an empty box in the mail, then ship your 360 back to a repair center and wait for a replacement. New businesses even began sprouting up, offering to fix your dead 360, along with a flood of DIY-type repair ideas that sometimes involved wrapping your console in thick towels. The RROD failure rate was so high, that one Massachusetts gamer even reported having received four malfunctioning 360s. Paranoia set in for owners, with speculation on the cause of the problem ranging from overheating to even the types of games you were playing.

_{[Illustration by Nate Van Dyke]}

In September 2006, Microsoft admitted the quality of the 360s produced the previous year wasn't up to par, and that it'd extend the warranty for all systems made during 2005. It wasn’t until mid-2007 that Microsoft formallly acknowledged the problem, offering gamers with dead 360s the option to mail in their makeshift doorstops for free "under-warranty” repairs on top of a warranty extension. The good-will gesture arrived just in time for most — not soon enough for some — and reportedly ended up costing the first-party giant in the lower billions of dollars to fix.

Quietly, Microsoft had been producing new chipsets to help sidestep the problems in newer-manufactured 360s — but what could’ve prematurely ended the system’s public lifespan with much egg on the face ended up winning Microsoft converts. System redesigns, most notably the 360 Slim in 2010, also worked to help eradicate the RROD, but its legacy of frustration lives on, if in nothing else then meme form. 

Here, three editors recount what it was like being in the eye of Red Ring of Death hurricane while working at Official Xbox Magazine, and how they covered the story. 

Francesca Reyes, editor-in-chief:
"Tough one. We got a lot of emails from people asking us what was being done about it, asking what was going on if they were experiencing it without prior knowledge that it was happening to anyone else, and we did do a story on it at some point (October 2007) -- but working on print (which was our only outlet at the time, really) was tough in order to time coverage correctly so it wasn't outdated or already addressed before our story even went on newsstands. 

"And up until Microsoft officially addressed the issue with the offer for warranty extensions and free repairs, it was difficult to get any real word or comment out of them — so putting a story together with any real feedback from them was tough. It was a confusing time — and it was compounded by the fact that no one on staff had suffered through RROD themselves at the time. Sure, we had lots of 360 "demo kits" (the systems we use to play pre-release builds) go belly up on us since launch — but our retail units were still going strong. Well, at least for awhile before they started petering out eventually too. But that was well after the mass repair offer. 

"But the entire experience was disheartening up until Microsoft's admission of the problem. So many folks were left out in the cold during one of the best years of Xbox gaming (2007) because they were stuck waiting for their systems to be repaired or shelling out more cash out of love/desperation/whatever to get back on the gaming train. It was a huge deal and it changed the way you thought of your system. There was always this fear that something could go horribly wrong; I talked to plenty of people (both friends and strangers) who simply opted to play the majority of their games on their PlayStation 3 instead. It could've very well been a tipping point, not to mention that serious kick in the pants to customer loyalty and good will. 

"I do give MS big props though for finally helping out their customers though I wish they would've provided more transparency to their user base. They ended up taking a big loss for it, but it was a brave, expensive step towards rebuilding goodwill with gamers. Did it happen too late? I don't think so, but it's a debacle that I don't think anyone will forget. And a hard, great lesson for all future hardware iterations of Xbox, honestly. I think what I took from the whole situation is something kind of surprising: that your console is just a conduit for the gaming experiences you have on it. Without that killer line up of games that was hitting the 360 at the time, it might never have recovered from the black eye it got over the RROD stuff."  

Ryan McCaffrey, senior editor:
"It’s funny – I remember not thinking much of it at first as the letters started coming in from our readers. 'Oh, this is just a vocal minority,' I told myself. Or: 'These people are making a mountain out of a molehill.' But then the letters kept piling up, and our own office Xbox 360s started lighting up red too. Before you knew it, we did a feature on it (which, surprisingly, didn’t result in any angry phone calls from Microsoft), and it became a big, embarrassing, puss-filled zit on Microsoft’s nose. It took years to Clearasil that mofo into oblivion. Only since the Slim consoles launched a year and a half ago do I feel like the scar has healed."

Corey Cohen, executive editor:
"As Fran and Ryan touched on, our first reaction to hearing about Red Ring was trying to figure out its scope. Was it happening to a few people? A lot of people?

"I remember when we realized it was a big enough phenomenon that we needed to cover it in a major way, we were pretty determined — not just to be fair in our reporting, but also to do the story justice. We were bummed, too, though — pointing out such a horrendous flaw in our favorite console was like acknowledging our own mortality somehow. That feeling grew even stronger, of course, in the months after our feature hit, as one by one, the staff's personal 360s began to break down, until eventually it happened to us all.

"Years later, when I got my Slim, it was a huge sense of relief to finally feel like I could leave my 360 on for a while without worrying about it Red Ringing. I know that sometimes you have to make mistakes before you can succeed, and I'm glad Microsoft finally released the Slim; I just wish that somehow, that could've been their original 360 design."

XBOX AT 10 ARCHIVE:

2001 - The Xbox's Launch Lineup
2002 - OXM vs "The Duke" controller
2003 - A look back at XSN Sports
2004 - Xbox 360 predicition postmortem
2005 - Xbox 360's Launch Wins and Losses
2006 - OXM Reflects on the Red Ring of Death
2007 - A Look Back on the 10's of '07
2008 - The First Summer of Arcade's Hotness
2009 - Why We Miss 1 vs. 100
2010 - The Highs and Lows of Kinect