8 Video Game Console Design Flaws That Made Us Rage

1. Xbox 360 - Red Ring Of Death

There are few consoles as mighty as the Xbox 360. It really pushed the boundaries of innovation when it came to breaking for no obvious reason. If you bought an Xbox 360 in its early years, you will have undoubtedly experienced the pain of the Red Ring of Death first hand. It wasn't really a question of if it would happen to your console, but rather when.

If your Xbox suffered a fatal hardware failure, 3 red rings would flash around the power button. The root cause of this was simply poor hardware design. The 360's inadequate (and noisy) cooling system combined with Microsoft using the wrong kind of solder was a recipe for disaster. If you were unfortunate enough to have your Xbox crap out on you when you were out of warranty, it was tough luck. Microsoft refused to cover the cost of the repairs and essentially buried their heads in the sand.

This led to many gamers desperately trying to fix the issue themselves, resulting in bizarre methods like wrapping the system in a towel until it overheated, apparently bringing 360's back from the dead in some cases. It wasn't until 2007 that Microsoft eventually caved to increasing public pressure and announced that all Xbox 360s bought since launch will have a 3 year warranty.

They pledged to fix RROD for free and to compensate those that had paid for repairs out of their own pockets previously. All in all, the whole fiasco ended up costing Microsoft over $1 billion dollars.

Still, despite their fairly bad track record the Xbox One has proved to be a pretty reliable piece of kit thus far. You live, you learn!