It was last Tuesday when it first happened.

Here I was, minding my own business, dishing out death and destruction to those who richly deserved it… when all of a sudden my speakers emitted a short one second glitch of a sound, and my game froze. I was playing GTA IV online, and I was in the middle of getting into a stolen car to make my getaway, and nothing was moving.

“What the hell…?” I wondered aloud, as I got up off my couch, not 10 minutes after planting my butt upon it for some gaming that should have been hours long. I walked over, turned the Xbox 360 off, turned it back on, checked the disc, all looked well, and so I loaded up GTA IV again, sat down on the couch, and started to join a game online again. My character appeared in the game world next to some unsuspecting sap, and so I dropped him. As I started to run away from the scene of the crime, the game froze once more, but this time with a weird transparent-blue checkerboard overlay.

This continued a few more times before I gave up for the night thinking that my Xbox 360 was possessed, and would try it again the next night. Sure enough, the same thing happened whenever I tried to play any game for more than a few minutes. This went on until last Friday when the Xbox 360 didn’t even boot up to the interface anymore… and then I saw it… something I’d heard about on the internet that plagued Xbox 360s around the planet… finally, mine had succumbed to the same unfortunate fate…

…flashing upon the front of the console was… the red… ring… of DEATH.

Seeing as how I bought my Xbox 360 off a friend, I wondered how I would go about trying to get this fixed. I didn’t have the receipt for the original purchase, and even if I did, it was well outside of the one year warranty most pieces of technology have these days. Looking on the back of the console, it was manufactured on November 26th, 2006. Almost two years. Damn. Gentlemen, please remove your hats.

BUT! All was not lost!

Apparently, this is a VERY common thing to occur to Xbox 360s, and while that may initially seem to be a bad thing, it turns out it was a very GOOD thing that my console started to display the red ring of death. Microsoft has been hit by so many complaints about this issue that a year and a half ago they increased the standard one year warranty for the Xbox 360 to three years, specifically for this error, and will repair the console at no charge! I’m not lying! It’s true!

Microsoft Expands Xbox 360 Warranty Coverage

REDMOND, Wash. — July 5, 2007 — Microsoft Corp. today announced that it will expand its global Xbox 360™ warranty coverage. Any Xbox 360 customer who experiences a general hardware failure indicated by three flashing red lights will now be covered by a three year warranty from date of purchase.  All other existing Xbox 360 warranty policies remain in place.

- source -

Not too shabby at all! One of my co-workers had the same thing happen to him in the last few weeks, and he shipped it back and got a new Xbox 360 (not just refurbished, but NEW) shipped back to him, all on Microsoft’s dime. I must say, while I’m somewhat irritated that there is this problem with the Xbox 360s to begin with, I’m quite impressed that Microsoft will replace the console with a new one and pay for the shipping. Sure, from a customer relations standpoint they should be doing something like this to quell a potential nightmare, but rarely do you see a company this large do the right thing and go that extra mile for the customer.

Still, I have yet to receive my requested shipping box so I can start the process… so we’ll see how that goes!