Ironically, the hypothesis emerged just after Moore's prolonging the 360's warranty policy

Jul 9, 2007 09:48 GMT  ·  By

This has got to be the last thing anyone had in mind for the Xbox 360's "red ring of death." Surge protectors (left, click to enlarge)?! It's like something out of a comedy series. Anyway, the ironical thing is that this hypothesis of surge protectors being the cause of 360s crashing has been rolled out just a day or two after Peter Moore's announcement of prolonging the 360's warranty to three years. Can you even begin to imagine how much Microsoft is losing with this red ring of death issue?

First things first. Here's Peter Moore's statement concerning the expansion of the 360's warranty, posted on Xbox.com: "You've spoken, and we've heard you. Good service and a good customer experience are areas of the business that we care deeply about. And frankly, we've not been doing a good enough job.

As of today, all Xbox 360 consoles are covered by an enhanced warranty program to address specifically the general hardware failures indicated by the three flashing red lights on the console. This applies to new and previously-sold consoles."

Now, as I learned today from well known gaming site, Destructoid.com, the company has started informing its disappointed Xbox 360 users that surge protectors may indeed be the problem for the worldwide spread ring of death epidemic. Such a hypothesis is actually worse for the company than it would have been with a problem inside the machine. They can control the 360, but they can't control the 90% surge protector-using gamers spread across the globe.

Yes, according to GP's report, 90%, "as many as 90% of all slaughtered consoles have been plugged into one" the same gaming site reports. So that's that I guess. There's one good thing coming out of this whole deal... I guess: people at least know that they could save/prolong their system's life just by not using a surge protector.

By the way, did you know Sony has confirmed that much waited price cut for the PS3? Not that I'm passing any hints or anything.