Microsoft officials have addressed the issue in the documentary Power On: The Story of Xbox

As 2021 draws to a close, Microsoft has been celebrating the 20th anniversary of the original Xbox in style. The highlight of the celebration is Power On: The Story of Xbox, a documentary about the history of the brand that you can enjoy for free and which is making some eye-catching headlines.

A week ago,  The Ring of Death was one of the chapters in the documentary, the fifth in the series of episodes. It addresses and explains one of the most severe problems that affected the legendary Xbox 360: the famous three red lights that appeared on the console.

This bug affected millions of gamers at the time, and Leo Del Castillo, a member of the Xbox hardware engineering team, explained that they appeared when the connectors of an internal component broke due to a substantial variation in temperature levels. It’s not that it was too hot, but that it went from hot to cold in a very abrupt way.

Former Xbox hardware chief until 2014, Todd Holmdahl, has also said that most of his time from 2006 to 2007 was spent trying to figure out what was causing this problem. He says that there were “all sorts of stresses” when the console was turned on and off, which happened far too often. Not surprising, given the machine’s success.

It was a mistake that could have killed Xbox as a brand, so they decided to replace the Xbox 360s sold without much fuss. Undoubtedly, one of Microsoft’s right decisions did not have such a good eye on other occasions. The closure of Lionhead is also covered in the documentary, as well as a curious proposal by Rockstar that could have changed the fate of Xbox against PlayStation 2, the competing console.

Source: levelup