It’s a time-honoured tradition that any Xbox “Red Ring of Death” hardware failures that occur within the two or three month space of a major game launch are blamed on that particular game. I mean, it’s so obvious. It must be some nefarious bit of code, and couldn’t possibly have anything to do with the increased console usage, or the unsubstantiated communist rumour fact that the RRoD is the result of rubbish cooling and heat-generated damage over time.
Anyway, now it’s Kinect’s turn to take the burden of responsibility – inevitably enough, I suppose.
According to a BBC report, a UK family’s old model Xbox bricked after they’d jacked in a Kinect. “We plugged [Kinect] in the day we got it but only played it a few times before we got the red lights,” says 10-year-old Adam Winnifrith to the BBC Radio 4’s You and Yours program. “The next day when we tried it again we still had the red rings of death and haven’t been able to use it since.”
The report also points to similar complaints on the official Xbox forums. “My non-problematic 2008 360 pro got RRoD after playing Kinect 2-3 times (with light use),” writes user maxv247.
What the report didn’t point to, however, is vapid comments such as this one: “Not sure if the latest update has anything to do with it. A lot have people connected to Xbox LIVE and updated that way. I used the update on kinect adventures disc. I am now worried about connecting to xbox live.”
If their journalistic sleuthing skills are consistent, it’s only a matter of time, I should imagine, until the BBC publishes a follow-up report claiming Xbox LIVE is (also) killing Xboxes.
The reality is, there’s no such thing as a “non-problematic” Xbox – or, at least, certainly not when you’re talking about the old model. When a console has a failure rate upwards of 35%, it’s problematic by definition.
I remember when my “non-problematic” Xbox decided to check out in the middle of my Fallout 3 campaign. I was just about to get this totally rad power armour too. Stupid Xbox 360.
Microsoft has denied that there’s any link to current RRoD failures and Kinect, saying in a statement to the BBC that Kinect is “designed to work with every Xbox 360 sold to date” and that “Any new instances of the three flashing red lights error are merely coincidental.”
Of course, they did say something like that last time too. Dun dun dun.
Discuss the latest wave of Xbox 360 Red Ring of Death on the MyGaming forum.
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