So, me and my roommate were fighting over who should pay for the Pizza we ordered, so we decided to play a game of HALO 3 to decide who pays...

so, i dug out both my XBox 360s and grabbed a few copies of HALO from the Shelf..

one of my 360's immediately started suffering from the Red Ring of Death


Now I learnt how to fix the RRoD awhile back (which is why i now have 2 360s) so I am not ticked off,, but it made me think..


now, this is the Second Time I have gotten a RRoD, However my NES and SNES work as good today as they did when I got them..



Could this be a sign of Hardware Manufacturers no longer building things to last like they used to? possibly even building them so they will eventually fail so people will have to buy replacements?

opinions on the Subject?

i think the consoles are made now so that they last, from first day of release, long enough for the next gen of consoles to come out. so when your ps4 craps out, they'll be releasing the ps5 soon. maybe. i dunno.

Nah, the main problem is that the last console generation were energy hungry monsters when the first models launched, consuming about 200W and generating a lot of heat and making it more easy for the hardware to overheat. While the NES, SNES and PS1 were all like 10W or less and generated so little heat not even fans were needed.

Both Microsoft and Sony realised their mistake though, and the launch models for both PS4 and the XB1 consume about 140W.

In a way it's a bit unfortunate that the 360 and PS3 were released when they were, because they were just released about the time the hardware manufacturers went into more energy efficient computing. For decades their only mantra been "make it more powerful" and first around 1996 or so CPU fans were needed in home computers and the heat curve went upward fast, and the very hot Pentium 4 and Geforce 5000 Series became a bit of a wake-up call I suppose.

But now we kinda got all the home computing power most need, and there been a big rise of smaller computers like Raspberry Pi and so on, which is nice.

I'm certain the overheating was a design flaw and not an attempt to get you to buy another console. MS and Sony actually lose money for every console sold by selling at a loss. Where they make their money back and profit from is the software (licensed games) sales.

Wait, so you are just realizing now that [censored] is made like crap? We have been living in a their away society for the last 15+ years.

Don't forget the NES didn't have any moving parts whereas there's a lot complicated machinery under the hood of a disc-based console. Meaning by virtue of what it does there's more to go wrong.

It's not in their business plan to make customers buy the same console twice - like as said, their profit is in game sales and licensing.

Yeah, since the introduction of consoles with an optical drive, it's easily the part that breaks the most often (usually related to the laser). Well, except for the overheating with the 360 RROD and the PS3 YLOD.

That's also why I'm so pleased now that all PS4 and XB1 games are installed, that means the optical drive will be used relatively little. How is it with the Wii U? Are all games installed there too, or optionally installed?

Just needs more lead