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If you’re new or young, you’ve never experienced it Xbox Game aficionados, but long-time fans of Microsoft’s 25-year-old gaming brand, will surely remember the famous Red Ring of Death. Xbox 360 period in the mid-2000s.
This infamous hardware problem became ubiquitous shortly after the console’s launch in 2005, and is believed to be caused by overheating that broke the solder connecting the system’s motherboard to the GPU, causing it to eventually fail. When this happens, the Xbox 360’s green lighting will glow a horrible red and it will no longer be usable.
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Peter Moore’s video game stories: “Maybe the console wars were my fault” – YouTube
If you’re like me, you’re probably wondering what Moore meant by calling the sudden appearance of the Red Death Rings a “Tylenol moment.” Thankfully, he was quick to explain the exact meaning of that statement and how Microsoft is committed to making every gamer affected by the design flaw right.
“In terms of what happened at that time, if you remember … that tragic night in Chicago, some incredible person put cyanide in Tylenol on the drugstore shelf, and people who took Tylenol died that night,” Moore said. “The reason I call it the Tylenol moment is because Johnson & Johnson, the manufacturer of Tylenol, went out of business within two hours and said, ‘Take every piece of our product off the shelf and destroy it, and we’ll figure out what’s going on here.’
“I’ve always looked at it as a marketer as, ‘we’re not going to make excuses, we’re not going to be flattered, we’re going to really benefit the consumer right away.’ That’s why I called the Red Rings of Death the Tylenol moment,” he continued. “What we would have to do is overnight a box with a return label for each affected player, a custom-made box that you would put your Xbox 360 in … and we would fix it or send you a new one via FedEx.”
This is actually what Microsoft did when they were trying to fix the problem with the design of the Xbox 360 that caused the Red Ring of Death in the first place. The entire process cost the firm $1.15 billion, but Steve BallmerMicrosoft’s CEO at the time approved the initiative without a second thought to keep the Xbox brand in the good graces of consumers.
“Yeah, when we put it all together, it was $1.15 billion, and I had to go and look at (Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO) and say, ‘Look, if we don’t do this, this brand is going to die, and I think we have a huge opportunity to make this one of the big entertainment brands, and Microsoft really needs it.'” And he said, ‘What’s this going to cost?’ … I said it will be 1.15 billion dollars. He said do it.”
Needless to say, Microsoft made the right move; The Xbox 360 was a huge success for the company and its gaming brand, but if Microsoft hadn’t owned up and fixed things, the business would likely have gone under.
🗨️ Have you ever bought the Ring of Red Death?
The Red Ring of Death has become an infamous part of Xbox history, so much so that Microsoft even sold a poster referencing it a few years ago. If you own or have owned an Xbox 360, I’m curious to know: have you ever been affected by the Red Ring of Death yourself? If so, did Microsoft repair it for you without issue? Let me know in the comments and vote in the poll below.
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