In a press release issued on the Microsoft website, the company states that "Any Xbox 360 customer who experiences a general hardware failure indicated by three flashing red lights will now be covered by a three year warranty from date of purchase. All other existing Xbox 360 warranty policies remain in place...For any customer who has previously paid for repair expenses related to the three flashing lights error message on the Xbox 360 console, Microsoft will retroactively reimburse them".
Even in the face of such a massive about-face on the issue, there is still some company line touting, with current Xbox head man Robbie Bach saying the usual “The majority of Xbox 360 owners are having a great experience with their console and have from day one", though he continues "this problem has caused frustration for some of our customers and for that, we sincerely apologize.”
The program is expected to cost Microsoft more then a billion US dollars, which may eat into Bach's optimistic plans to achieve some sort of profitability for the Xbox division by 2008 (although this $1 billion charge has been stealthily applied to the 2007 financial year to keep 2008 clean and sparkling for investors). To date, the Xbox and Xbox 360 have made a net loss of more then six billion US dollars for Microsoft, including a $US315 million loss for the quarter ending March 31st 2007.
Loading...
