Talking Point: Did Your Xbox 360 Suffer The Dreaded RROD?

If you owned an Xbox 360 during the first few years of its existence, we're willing to bet you know exactly what we mean when we say 'Red Ring of Death'. It's what you see in the image above - the console displaying three glowing red lights indicating a general hardware failure, pretty much rendering the system obsolete.

The RRoD was a significant issue, both for players and Microsoft. As noted on an IGN podcast back in 2015 (thanks KitGuru), former Xbox executive Peter Moore figured out that fixing and replacing all the broken systems, of which there were many, could be a "billion dollar problem":

“I remember going to Robbie Bach, my boss, and saying, 'I think we could have a billion dollar problem here'. As we started to do the analysis of what was going on, we were getting the defectors in, it was a challenging problem for our engineers, and we couldn’t quite figure out what it was. We knew it was heat related. There were all kinds of fixes. I remember people putting wet towels around the box."

The company extended the standard warranty on the Xbox 360 to three years following increasing reports of the 'Red Ring of Death', and later added the notorious "E74" issue to the warranty as well. "After investigating the issue, we have determined that the E74 error message can indicate the general hardware failure that is associated with three flashing red lights error on the console," read a 2009 statement.

Xbox Summit 2005, Japan

Fortunately for late adopters, the RRoD problem generally affected models released from 2005-2010. It was with the release of the overhauled Xbox 360 Slim in 2010 that the RRoD became much less of an issue, and the same can be said for the Xbox 360 E released a few years later.

By that time however, a significant number of people had already experienced the 'Red Ring of Death' issue, and in some cases on multiple occasions. So, did you? We want to know whether your Xbox 360 suffered the RRoD, how many times you dealt with it, and what your experiences were like getting it fixed and/or replaced.

Did you ever experience the RRoD with your Xbox 360? Share your memories in the comments.