Yeah the cooling on those was bad. The towel trick (I used a stick in the fan) would make it overheat even more, reflowing the solder joints and fixing it
The red ring was an extremely costly recall and repair for Microsoft ($1.1 billion) on a console they already sold at a loss to recoup with game sales. It also hurt the brand image, giving the competition a leg up.
In this case the design flaw was from them trying to skimp as much as possible on the cooling solution to reduce how much loss each console sale would bring.
Huh TIL. Strange that they didn’t fix the issue with the 360 slims, because they got pretty hot quick too. I guess maybe they didn’t realize how bad it was until later.
Apparently the S model was more resilient to the solder joints breaking, but still had a somewhat inadequate cooling solution. That article goes into more detail, which basically comes down to Microsoft tried to save money by doing all the design in-house, and ended up botching the whole thing, under testing it, and doing last minute changes (like the addition of a Hard Drive, which modified the airflow negatively, so they put some extra holes in it, but ultimately said “fuck it, ship it out”.
To add to another comment: they failed way too early for that. If you’re doing planned obsolescence, you must make sure it fails soon after the warranty period ends, not within weeks or months after the purchase.
Yeah the cooling on those was bad. The towel trick (I used a stick in the fan) would make it overheat even more, reflowing the solder joints and fixing it
It would not surprise me at all if that ‘flaw’ was by design to sell more units.
The red ring was an extremely costly recall and repair for Microsoft ($1.1 billion) on a console they already sold at a loss to recoup with game sales. It also hurt the brand image, giving the competition a leg up.
In this case the design flaw was from them trying to skimp as much as possible on the cooling solution to reduce how much loss each console sale would bring.
Huh TIL. Strange that they didn’t fix the issue with the 360 slims, because they got pretty hot quick too. I guess maybe they didn’t realize how bad it was until later.
Apparently the S model was more resilient to the solder joints breaking, but still had a somewhat inadequate cooling solution. That article goes into more detail, which basically comes down to Microsoft tried to save money by doing all the design in-house, and ended up botching the whole thing, under testing it, and doing last minute changes (like the addition of a Hard Drive, which modified the airflow negatively, so they put some extra holes in it, but ultimately said “fuck it, ship it out”.
To add to another comment: they failed way too early for that. If you’re doing planned obsolescence, you must make sure it fails soon after the warranty period ends, not within weeks or months after the purchase.