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In the back of my mind, I kind of knew it was coming for awhile now. Almost everyone I know has gotten those awful red rings at least once, and I worked at GameStop long enough to know the frequency at which Xbox 360s, even brand new models, would suddenly brick without warning. I took some comfort in the fact that my 360 was not a launch model, and was new in the summer of 2007. I also had my own little security blanket in the form of a GameStop warranty, which would allow me to exchange my 360 for another in store at any point within a year of purchase, no questions asked.

That warranty ran out six days ago. Last night I was stricken with the Red Rings of Death.

First, a little background: I bought a “used” 360 in July of 2007, when I was still working at GameStop. I had been planning to get one anyway, so when someone traded in a brand spanking new 360 (we used to say trade-ins like that were in “stolen condition”), I pounced on it. Why get a used one and not a new one, you might ask? Because a) I’m very stingy, and b) when it came to consoles, employees only get discounts on used models, not new ones. So I picked up the new used system, a hard drive, a play and charge kit, and a one-year warranty for well under the price of a new Xbox 360, and I’ve been playing it happily ever since.

On Sunday, I was playing Civilization Revolution and the game froze. It only happened once, I restarted the system and everything was fine after that, but it still gave me a split second of panic. That happens anytime the 360 did anything out of the ordinary—I would think, Is this it? Is this how it ends? Are the red rings coming now? But, like I said, everything appeared fine for the rest of the day on Sunday. At the time, it crossed my mind that it was now August, meaning that technically, my warranty was no longer valid. I was no longer covered by that security blanket, which put me more on edge regarding the 360.



Last night, I was happily working on my garden in Viva Pinata when the game froze, out of nowhere, for no apparent reason. Oh crap, I thought, freezing twice in three days? This is not good. I restarted the system, loaded up the game again, and it froze on the menu screen. Three times. At this point, I was ready to panic, not sure if it was the system or the game. I took out Viva Pinata and put in Civ, and the system froze on the dashboard. Now I knew it was coming. It was only a few more minutes before those red rings started flashing and I said good-bye to my 360.

Usually, this is the part where the red ringed victim tells his or her woes of having to wait several weeks for Microsoft to fix the system, or worse yet, having to pay for a new system entirely. Luckily for me (and my wallet), this was not the case. Though my warranty was expired, the people at my local GameStop were very understanding about the situation and let me swap it out anyway. Instead of another used model, I paid the difference to get a new Arcade unit—which, unlike my old Xbox, has a built-in HDMI port. I’m also covered by Microsoft’s warranty now, which is more of a hassle but better than nothing. All in all, the experience was not nearly as bad as it could have been, but like I said, I was lucky (and smart enough to keep all of my receipts).

Well, now I’ve personally been through the agonizing and unavoidable 360 hardware failure, and I’ve lived to tell about it. Of course, it could have been much worse, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t traumatic. I’m not letting my guard down yet, but I hope I get a good amount of play time out of my new 360 before I have any issues with it. Anyone else struck with the dreaded RRoD recently? If so, share your stories and we can memorialize our dead Xbox systems together.

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