The famous Red Ring Of Death (RROD) became synonymous with Xbox 360 hardware failure and was one of the greatest PR nightmares in gaming history when widespread reports confirmed suggested that almost half of the Xbox 360 units sold during its first years in market were plagued with it.
To its credit, Microsoft has poured billions of Dollars to remedy the problem and managed to make it ancient history.
It seems that the newly announced Xbox 360 Slim model is yet another nail in the RROD's coffin, but for a different reason than what you'd expect: Microsoft has changed the shape of the hardware failure indicator to be a red dot, instead of the old ring. It seems that the change aims mainly to get rid of the dreaded RROD mantra, as a green ring is still used to indicate that the console is functioning correctly.
That's not to say that the slim Xbox 360 still suffers from the high hardware failure rate witnessed in the original Xbox 360s. In fact, it has gone a hardware redesign and die shrinkage which reduced power consumption and noise levels as well as increased the console's resistance to failure.
Hopefully, this won't be the start of a RDOD plague.
