The Red Ring of Overreaction?

"The Red Ring of Death," the Xbox 360 hardware failure caused by overheating, has become the rallying cry for Sony and Nintendo fanboys, anti-Microsoft crusaders, and doomsaying game store employees everywhere. It's also a very real thing.

How real? I bought an Xbox 360 on launch day, and since then I've had five "red rings." If anything, my ring ratio is on the unlucky side, even considering that various surveys have reported 30 percent to 60 percent failure rates around the world (though red rings are reportedly much more rare these days after some changes to the console's internal architecture.)

And yet here I sit four years later still playing and loving the console. Why? Because "red ring" repairs are always free, and even though it was a downer to see those lights each time, I was always back to playing games with a repaired or new console on Microsoft's dime within two weeks.

Not everyone has the same outlook. One of my friends got a red ring and went out and bought a PS3. Another got a red ring and, instead of sending it off for the free repair, cracked the console open and tried in vain to fix it himself - voiding the warranty and leaving him with no system.

The 360, its library of games, and the Xbox Live features are a great fit for the things my family and I want from a game console, and that's the most important thing as far as I'm concerned. To me, that's more than worth dealing with the red rings - only one of which has happened in the last two years.

Still, it's important to be aware that the red ring is real and to take that into account along with the things the system offers when deciding if it's the right console for you. But then it's equally important to keep some perspective if it happens: Do you want to wait two weeks for a free repair, or do you want to turn it all into a giant nightmare by overreacting?

It's just ring. It doesn't have to change your life. Unless you consider a trip to the UPS store a life-changing experience.