Editorial: The Red Ring of Inevitability?

One ring to rule them all...

On Monday, April 7, 2008 at 8:32 pm in downtown Washington, D.C., a certain Xbox 360 celebrated its 2-year anniversary in silent revelry. Over the course of the next 14 minutes while trying to load Call of Duty 2, it contracted typhoid fever, hepatitis, gonorrhea, and a bad case of the Monday’s which concluded in a soundless loss of life. Cause of death: general hardware failure (e.g. Red Ring of Death). Happy anniversary, my love.

On Tuesday morning, my friend (we’ll call him DB) wrote to me in GChat, “hahahahaha” and signed off. When he signed back on, I asked, “Why did you write ‘hahahahaha’ and then sign off?” to which he responded, “Because my freakin’ 360 died! Hahaha”. DB’s lack of disappointment, shock, or fear is not so shocking with the number of 360 general hardware failures rising every day. Microsoft, of course, will not release the specific figures on how many hardware failures they have repaired since the extension of their warranty but all someone has to do is log into a Halo 3 or CoD4 Live game and ask. In a game of 16, the typical response to my question is 12 out of 16; an overwhelming 75%. Note: To gain a more accurate understanding, I have included a poll on the right side of my blog; let’s see where we stand. So instead of logging onto Xbox.com to discover how to get his 360 replaced, DB’s first step was to find his receipt from 2 years ago. Ah yes, to return the console, you might say. Good move, good move. No, DB was more interested in how much time had elapsed between purchase and death. “2 years to the freakin’ hour,” he said, “It’s like it was planned or something”.

The scary truth underlying DB’s reaction is that 360 owners seem to have become complacent to the fact that their 360 has, can, and will die at any time. My own died 6 months ago after just 1 year of loyal companionship and a replacement system was sent just 3 weeks later. Despite having a brand new system post-Microsoft-revelation-that-we-built-an-impractically-designed-system, anytime my 360 hiccups, freezes, or otherwise lays a technical fart, I reboot my system expecting to see a beautiful red ring staring back at me. Shine on you crazy diamond, shine on. Part of me realizes that sending back my system would be a minor issue since Microsoft handled my last replacement beautifully, but another piece of me just knows there is a chance my system will run the way of the phoenix once again.

So could our complacency be a result of Microsoft living up to their warranty extension with flying colors or a simple, but frightening, truth that we have come to terms with the inevitability that our Xbox 360 will not escape the eventual, but peaceful, death? In the words of Michael Jackson, “It don’t matter if your black or white” or Halo 3 version, it looks like your 360 will suffer a common fate and die by the hands of the one ring that will rule them all.

One Ring to rule them all,

One Ring to find them,

One Ring to bring them all

and in the darkness bind them.

-J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring