After numerous reports of non responsive whammy bars on the GH II X-plorer controller for the Xbox 360 emerged, RedOctane rushed to release a patch that would supposedly fix the problem. This happened just over the weekend with GH II gamers installing the patch right away to get the whammy bars moving. Then, all of the sudden, all hell broke loose with 360's freezing up or literally dying on their owners. Of course the Internet was flooded with reports of broken machines.

The developer stood still for a while and made no official announcements or promises to fix their broken machines. RedOctane told Eurogamer: "We're aware of the problem and we're looking into it." Look into it as much as you want, it's either new machines or their money back what owners want. But there's an even bigger BUT to the whole issue.

It's all very well known that Guitar Hero is a pretty popular game amongst PS2 owners and recently, Xbox 360 owners as well. Reports on freezing Xbox 360s due to installing the patch from RedOctane were numerous, no doubt, but not as numerous as GH II 360 owners out there. So, Joystiq asks the following question: "This occurrence is awfully similar to what transpires whenever a new Xbox 360 game is released -- is software causing a new problem, or is it letting you know that you had a rotten system to begin with."

And it's not exactly breaking news anymore to hear that someone's just bought their third bad Xbox 360 console. More than that, Microsoft's policy regarding warranty or broken machines is pretty hard on the customers, so whichever the answer is, angry 360 owners have two companies to blame now - Microsoft and RedOctane, and one of them really has to do something about this problem.