You’ll forgive the pandering headline, I hope.
It would be easy to make jokes about how everone knows the Xbox 360 is prone to overheating, but that would be gauche. Instead, just the facts: an Xbox 360 in Arkansas caught fire and nearly burned down a house. The kicker is the owners weren’t home, it wasn’t being played when the fire started.
Microsoft did recall power cords from the original Xbox due to fire concerns, but this Xbox 360 fire is unrelated. No word from Microsoft today on the fire, but we expect to hear something by Monday.
My Xbox 360 didn’t catch fire but the power supply came very close. I was playing Bad Company on Saturday when the system simply turned off. I saw the green light power off when it happened and immediately smelled burning plastic. Puzzled, I reached over to the tabletop that the power supply was sitting on and picked up the power supply. When I wrapped my hand around the power supply I almost immediately felt the burn. I dropped the power supply back onto the stand and started cussing. I then unplugged the power supply cord from the wall. I took the cable that is attached to the power supply and flipped the power supply over. The power supply was brown on the bottom (where the rubber feet are), there was a large bulge on one side where my hand had gripped, and the plastic case of the power supply was distorted all over. I wonder how toxic it is to breath in that stuff.
After making sure the system was not on fire I cooled my hand off under water. After about 15 minutes I called microsoft and tried to get help. After dealing with several incompetent people over the next few hours I finally gave up on them and have started down the path of talking to a lawyer. I gave Microsoft an opportunity to make the situation right by letting them take the xbox 360 back and give me my money back but all they want to do is send me a cardboard box back so that they can “fix the system and send it back (to me).” I was dumbfounded when they spouted that one. There’s no way they’re going to be able to repair that power supply…it’s literally melted. I don’t mind shipping the box back to them but I don’t want that fire hazard in my house anymore and told them I simply don’t want it anymore.
Next they asked me what compensation I would want to put this bed. “wtf?” I asked. “You want to pay me off?” The 400 bucks I spent on the thing is one thing I want back but the way they asked it sure sounded a lot like soliciting a bribe in order to keep the story quiet. I’m sure the console itself probably was not affected (but who knows) and by what I’ve read on line there is a history of these power supplies burning out and overheating. It looks like there are a lot of complaints about people just giving up and spending $100.00 to replace bad xbox 360 power supplies. There certainly does seem to be pointers to the fact that these are unstable and dangerous components. I can completely understand how these things can be linked to fires especially if they are closed up in a cabinet or something like that. Mine was placed directly on a table top surface and unobstructed. I work as a sr. security engineer for a fortune 500 and spend some of my professional time figuring out amps, watts, tons of sensible cooling needed for server racks and clearly understand and practice proper ventilation for electrical equipment so that it doesn’t get destroyed. I’ve seen what cooling outages can do to a system.
This device is dangerous and should be recalled. I wouldn’t dream of keeping one plugged in if I wasn’t using it in plain site.
Microsoft - grow up and do the right thing and recall these things. You’re going to end up being responsible for killing someone or some family because you rushed a product to market without designing it correctly.
i am a xbox 360 user too after reading this i am thinking twice now because my power brick is right behind my moniter with my ps2 power brick FYI its tiny also i had like no space for it but now i will move it also that is my gamertag if people were wondering shadow2347