Cause of Xbox's dreaded red ring of death finally explained by Microsoft

The question which has tormented gamers for almost a decade has finally been answered.

Xbox owners know what it feels like to live in fear all too well - as the dreaded 'red ring of death' could appear at any time and shatter your dreams of beating your high score.

The moment you saw those green rings turn a menacing shade of vermilion can only be described as true heartbreak - hence it's terrifying nickname.

Back in the days when an Xbox 360 was the centrepiece of every bedroom, Robbie Bach was the head of the video gaming giant and was celebrated for bringing the advanced console to the market.

But just several months after it's launch, complaints started to trickle in which ended up being a monumental mistake that cost the company a cool $1billion.

In Bach's book, Xbox Revisited: A Gameplan for Corporate and Civic Renewal, he explained that a gang of of team leaders met in his basement to discuss the huge problem: widespread reports of dead Xbox 360 game consoles.

Instructables

"At the end of a long, difficult conversation, we took a deep breath and decided to extend our warranty to three years and repair or replace every console affected," he wrote.

What he described as the 'biggest decision' he'd ever made in his 22-year career at Microsoft because of the red ring of death ended up biting the firm in the backside financially, but it was a win for disgruntled customers at least.

He admitted that the original design of the Xbox was 'ugly', so the team had concentrated on creating something visually pleasing when it came to the 360 at first - and fitting all the guts inside the console was a secondary thought.

Bach told Business Insider in 2020: "It's a three red lights thing, which unfortunately for us doesn't tell us anything. It doesn't tell you squat about why, but the hardware is saying to us 'I'm finished and I'm not going to start again'.

"It could've been almost anything."

Microsoft

So you can imagine how if the creators didn't have a clue where to start, teenage gamers had no chance.

But luckily, we can now all put our minds at ease as Microsoft have revealed the cause of the red ring of death - even though most people have now upgraded to the Series S/X.

In the upcoming Microsoft documentary Power On: The Story of Xbox, the former head of Xbox, Peter Moore, explained that the console's rapid changes in temperature was the source of the problem.

The issue was that 360's typically got extremely hot and then quickly cooled itself down - but this took a big toll on its internal system and sucked the life out of it, leaving the red ring of death staring back at you.

Microsoft could have let us know a few years prior before we slung our Xbox 360 out of the window in frustration, though.