Game console news

If you have an Xbox 360 player at your house, you may’ve heard of “the red ring of death.” Explains a Seattle Post Intelligencer blog, “when an Xbox 360 suffers an indeterminate major hardware failure, the normally green ring of power lights turns red and the system will not boot up. This is not a software crash but a total hardware failure, and the sad owner of the Xbox [used to have] to mail it to Microsoft and then pay $140 for them to service it and mail it back.” It’s not a problem for most 360 owners, MS says, but for those who have experienced it, good news: Microsoft is extending the Xbox 360’s warranty, saying it will devote $1 billion+ to the repair costs,” USATODAY reports. “Microsoft said it should take two to four weeks to repair damaged consoles.” Meanwhile, there’s good news for PlayStation fans too: Sony’s taking $100 off the price of its PS3, USATODAY reported in another article. The new price is $499, and Sony “plans to introduce a $599 package with a larger (80-gigabyte vs. 60-GB) hard drive and one game next month.” Analysts say PS3 sales have lagged a bit in the face of the Nintendo Wii’s success.