During the holiday season, Microsoft has released an unusual sweater for its employees, reminiscent of the biggest technical problem in the history of the Xbox 360 — the notorious «red ring of death».
Microsoft has created an Xbox 360 Red Ring of Death ugly sweater. The sweater went on sale at Microsoft’s company store earlier today and it’s proving to be a popular item with employees. Details: https://t.co/deozPso8JU pic.twitter.com/IdZZLzrzPZ
— Tom Warren (@tomwarren) December 11, 2024
The design of the sweater includes a power button that can glow both green and red, and has a distinctive pattern of green and yellow stripes According to the information According to The Verge, the sweater is available exclusively to Microsoft employees through the company’s internal store, where it has already sold out.
Owners of early versions of the Xbox 360 will remember the «red ring of death» problem, which turned the console into a useless piece of furniture. In the Power On 2021 web series, the company revealed the causes of this massive malfunction.
According to Leo Del Castillo, an engineer in the Xbox hardware group, the «red ring of death» was caused by damaged connections inside the console’s components due to sudden heating and cooling. This problem, combined with thermal stresses and mechanical stresses at the solder balls of the Xbox 360, led to complete failure of the consoles.
Microsoft repaired and returned the defective consoles to their owners free of charge. According to former Xbox executive Peter Moore, it cost the company $1.15 billion. Subsequent versions of the Xbox 360 and the newer Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S consoles did not have such massive technical problems.
The company has continued the tradition of creating Christmas sweaters for seven years. Last year, Microsoft released Christmas sweater with the famous Windows XP wallpaper. And even earlier, the main character of the festive design became Clippy – Office virtual assistant in the form of a paper clip. The previous collections included sweaters with logos of Windows XP, Windows 95, the graphic editor Paint and the cult game «Sapper».
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