people who payed to fix the 3 red light issue on your 360.

[alabamaslammer]

microsoft uped the warranty to 3 years.

if you payed to get your 360 fixed for the red ring of death .you will get reimbursed.

check out kotaku.com or majornelson.com for the info

thanks

alabama

[FastRobPlus]

[moycon]

Nice.

It sounds like this only covers the 3-rings issue but still, a definate plus for folks wary of the 3-ring failure rate.

 

http://kotaku.com/gaming/how-microsoft-alm...ghts-275378.php

[ninjarabbit]

I read this new program is going to cost Microsoft a billion dollars.

 

Obviously Microsoft was in a rush to beat the PS3 to the market, to stop the bleeding from the original X Box, and to get out for Christmas 2005 since it's seems obvious now that the 360 could have used some time in development to work out it's problems.

[moycon]

I read this new program is going to cost Microsoft a billion dollars.

 

Obviously Microsoft was in a rush to beat the PS3 to the market, to stop the bleeding from the original X Box, and to get out for Christmas 2005 since it's seems obvious now that the 360 could have used some time in development to work out it's problems.

 

Now it seem obvious to you? LOL It was more like 2 weeks after it was released for the rest of us. Welcome to the club.

[Gregory DG]

Here's another story on it.

 

Glad to see MS finally own up to the problem. This could win them quite a bit of good will.

 

Here's an interview with Moore by TAT contributor Mark Androvich.

Edited July 6, 2007 by Gregory DG

[Shannon]

After months of denial microsoft finally faced the facts.

[swlovinist]

Glad to see that they finally fessed up to the 360's hardware failures. Too bad it will cost them 1 billion dollars. This just goes to show you how green they still are when it comes to making video game hardware.

[liveinabin]

Good that they've extended the warranty, but I'd much rather they solved the unreliability issues. Since almost every 360 owner I know has had a bricked box, I can't bring myself to buy one, though there are games on that system I SO want to play.

[Prodos8]

My system is a little over a year old now. Haven't had the red ring of death yet. But recently, on occasion, I get the message "to play this disk put it into an Xbox 360 console" in like ten different languages. The disk is in the 360 so I'm not sure what's going on??? The message is supposed to show if you stick the game in a DVD player or a non-360 console. Rebooting a few times has cleared it up, so far anyway.

 

Glad MS extended the warranty though.

[bones]

Good move for MS, at least long term. So if I buy a used but clean, untampered with 360 at the flea market with the 3 rings of death issue, would Microsoft fix it for free? Wondering how far this good will extends

[Red 5]

So if I bought the extended warranty from MS, do I get a refund?

[Lord Helmet]

So if I bought the extended warranty from MS, do I get a refund?

 

I would imagine that if the warranty covers more than the red ring of death, then no, you won't get a refund. I suppose I could be wrong though

[moycon]

So if I bought the extended warranty from MS, do I get a refund?

 

Your warranty will cover everything, for instance, I've sent a 360 back because it would freeze up playing PDZ and I've sent a 360 back for a blown ethernet NIC. In both cases it cost me zero $ to fix (except the $30 a year for the warranty) and I had my 360 back promptly....Neither one of those issues is related to the red ring. It worth it to keep your extended warranty in light of this news.

Edited July 6, 2007 by moycon

[+remowilliams]

I'm glad to see MS took this step.

 

On a larger view, its unbelievably shameful what we as consumers have been forced to accept as 'standard practice' for warranties these days for so many products. Especially with high tech/high price items. 30, 90 days ?

[Chickybaby]

If it helps anyone here is the article from today's news headers.

 

Xbox 360 repairs will cost Microsoft $1B By JESSICA MINTZ, AP Business Writer

Fri Jul 6, 10:26 AM ET

SEATTLE - In another setback for Microsoft Corp.'s unprofitable entertainment and devices division, the company says it is planning to spend at least $1 billion to repair serious problems with its Xbox 360 video game console.

 

Microsoft declined to detail the problems that have caused an onslaught of "general hardware failures" in recent months but said Thursday it will extend the warranty on the consoles to three years.

 

The glitches, and the bad publicity, could weigh the company down as it claws for market share in the highly competitive console market. In May, the Xbox 360 ranked No. 2 in unit sales behind Nintendo's Wii, but still beat out Sony's Playstation 3, according to data from NPD Group.

 

"We don't think we've been getting the job done," said Robbie Bach, president of Microsoft's entertainment and devices division, which also makes the Zune digital music player, a distant competitor to Apple Inc.'s powerhouse iPod. "In the past few months, we have been having to make Xbox 360 console repairs at a rate too high for our liking."

 

Bach said the company made some manufacturing and production changes that he expects will reduce Xbox 360 hardware lockups, but he declined to identify the problems or say which others might remain. Microsoft said it will record a charge of up to $1.15 billion for its fourth fiscal quarter, which ended June 30, to cover the additional costs associated with the warranty extension.

 

The news comes just days before the video game industry descends on Santa Monica, Calif., for its annual E3 conference, and it could overshadow Microsoft's plans to build buzz for holiday season video game releases and "Halo 3," a much-anticipated shoot-'em-up for the Xbox 360 set to launch in September.

 

The software maker also said Thursday that sales of the game console fell short of expectations for the fiscal year that just ended.

 

Matt Rosoff, an analyst at the independent research group Directions on Microsoft, estimates that Microsoft's entertainment and devices division has lost more than $6 billion since 2002.

 

Microsoft has written down larger amounts in the past — more than $10 billion in the late 1990s related to investments in telecommunications companies, and more than $5 billion related to antitrust issues — but a $1 billion write-down for one division in one quarter is significant.

 

"It suggests the problem is pretty widespread," Rosoff said.

 

Microsoft will pay for shipping and repairs for three years, worldwide, for consoles that experience hardware failure, which is usually indicated by three flashing red lights on the front of the console, something gamers sometimes refer to as "the red ring of death."

 

This isn't the first time Microsoft has made changes to the Xbox 360 repair plan. Last December, the company extended the warranty from 90 days to one year for U.S. customers. In Europe, the warranty previously expired after two years.

 

Microsoft also will reimburse the "small number" of Xbox 360 owners who have paid for shipping and repairs on out-of-warranty consoles, Bach said.

 

In June, bloggers speculated that the Xbox 360 return problem was getting so severe that the company was running out of "coffins," or special return-shipping boxes Microsoft provides to gamers with dead consoles. "We'll make sure we have plenty of boxes to go back and forth," Bach said in an interview.

 

Chris Liddell, Microsoft's chief financial officer, said in a conference call that the company sold 11.6 million Xbox 360 consoles since the product's November 2005 launch, missing a target for 12 million units by the end of the fiscal year.

 

Xbox 360 prices range from $299 to $479, depending on their configuration.

 

Microsoft's entertainment and devices division reported an operating loss of $315 million on $929 million in sales for the three-month period that ended in March. Microsoft has said it expects the division to post a profit in fiscal 2008.

 

Microsoft announced the warranty extension after markets closed Thursday. Microsoft shares fell 11 cents to $29.88 in extended trading after falling 3 cents to $29.99 in the regular session.

[Bruce Tomlin]

Obviously Microsoft was in a rush to beat the PS3 to the market, to stop the bleeding from the original X Box, and to get out for Christmas 2005 since it's seems obvious now that the 360 could have used some time in development to work out it's problems.

Yep, stop the old bleeding from the Xbox-1 and start the new bleeding from the 360 hardware problems!

 

Maybe Microsoft should have waited to release because of hardware reliability, but Sony should have waited another year because of parts costs.

 

Microsoft got the one-year jump on the PS3 that the PS2 had on the first Xbox. I think that's going to be half of what makes them win out in the end. The other half is poor PS3 sales.

 

I think that if Sony had waited an extra year until Xmas 2007, with the PS2 still kicking ass like it is, and released at a reasonable price like $400 (with cheaper laser diodes, and the PS2 emulator given a full year of development, so no need for that chipset), they would be in a much better position by this time next year than they are right now. Especially if Microsoft hadn't owned up to the reliability problems like they just did. Developers (especially the Japanese ones) wouldn't have six months of lackluster sales of an overpriced console to make them want to jump ship. And there would be more HD televisions for people to care about HD gaming.

 

They only relesaed when they did to push Blu-Ray hard, because they just had to have their own HD video format. (Obviously Sony was in a rush to beat HD-DVD to the market!)