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Red Ring of Death Redressed. Xbox 360's warranty extended to 3 years.

Microsoft expands Xbox 360 warranty coverage to a more than respectable level. And there was much rejoicing (yeah!).

Back in February, we covered the Red Ring of Death story, briefly summarized in this snippet:

A minor buzz was created around a BBC Watchdog report that they have received over 250 complaints about Xbox 360s crapping out within 2 months of the warranty expiring.

Microsoft must have hired some actually intelligent people in the public relations department since they are no longer waiting for bad press to happen to them. Today they'll announce that any Xbox 360 customer who experiences a general hardware failure, indicated by three flashing red lights, will now be covered by a three-year warranty from date of purchase. That's a damn fine extension by any criteria. This applies to both new and current owners. To make it a trifecta, they're also going to retroactively reimburse any customer who has previously paid for repairs related to the three flashing lights.

Here at Zolved, we tend to be pro-consumer, anti-corporation in general, with MS being a pretty easy target usually. But it's hard to find a downside to this announcement. I guess if you see the Xbox 360 as Microsoft's play to control your digital living room (Xboxes are used for watching DVDs, web surfing, music listening, chats, and oh yeah, gaming.), this is a move to secure that position. Maybe if I was an economist, this would tell me something: "Microsoft will take a $1.05 billion to $1.15 billion pre-tax charge to earnings for the quarter ended June 30, 2007 for anticipated costs under its current and enhanced Xbox 360 policies." But I'm not an economist so I'm letting MS have their day in the sun.

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