It’s been a problem since day one with the XBox 360, the dreaded red ring of death. I personally knew numerous people, more than I can count on both hands and feet, that had the same issue. Myself I’ve been lucky. I receive my console from Microsoft a full week before launch, it came shipped in a box without any kind of packaging material, and the XBox 360 box itself beat up. Again, I was lucky. Besides a disc read error every now and again, my 360 has been flawless. But that all changed with Lost Planet this weekend.

After a 4 hour marathon session with the game I went to bed. I woke the next morning excited to jump back in and kill me some Akrid, only to find my game turn to a bright sky blue 2 minutes in. After trying to exit I was promptly greeted with a Black error screen and a big E74 error message. Fuck. Looking at the XBox showed the worse…a blinking red light. I powered off the console and immediately turned it back on to the same error. I left it be, running in a panic to my computer to look up the error code. E74, E74…ah here it is. “Problem with AV Cables.” Solution? Most likely not plugged in correctly. Well that can’t be. So I checked the connection, turned it on and it was working fine. Ah but not for long you tricksy XBox, not for long. 2 minutes into a game the same sky blue screen and tons of video corruption. After letting it sit for an hour I was able to play some XBLA games. I fired up Gears of War only to be greeted with insane video corruption on all 3D scenes, and crystal clear 2D menus. What. The. Fuck.

Needless to say the XBox 360 is dead.

The failure rate on the XBox 360 is totally unacceptable. To Microsoft’s credit they have been prompt to repair and replace consoles for users, even extending the warranty. But this entire thing should not be happening to begin with. Over at Evil Avatar we are showing over a 30% failure rate. 30 Percent!!!

I better get a new 360 soon, very soon. I need to get back into Lost Planet. And the new 360 better last until the next XBox comes out.