Come Thursday, I'll officially have enough money to buy an Xbox 360.
However, there's one thing that's keeping me from purchasing said system; The Ring of Death. From what I hear, the Ring of Death is caused by an internal hardware failure, which is generally the X-clamp inside the system warping due to heat and causing parts to disconnect from the mainboard.
Some people have had their systems dead out of the box, others had them for about a year and then break, or like my friend, whose had her system from launch, work fine and still going strong.
Now, eventually I'll want a 360, especially with Halo 3 and Resident Evil 5 coming out on it. My question is, has Microsoft planned/started to manufacture more reliable systems? I hear the failure rate (according to retailers) for the 360 is around 30%, which is a little disheartening. :/
Now, suppose I get the system, and it fails on me. I could send it back and all that, or I could attempt to mod it (using this tutorial) and possibly eliminate the problem.
For those too lazy to read all of this/summary:
- What are the chances that if I buy a 360, it'll fail?
- What is Microsoft doing to fix this problem?