Black Screen of Death

Was walking around a Target store last week when we came across the demo setup for the new Xbox 360. I’d heard that there were people reporting all kinds of problems from overheating power supplies, overheating units to regular crashing. The Target system seems to be in the latter group; hardly a great ad for the system (and because they had it in a sealed perspex box it couldn’t be reset by anybody without the key).

I also notice that Microsoft has chosen to move away from their famous blue screen of death, which was seen on the original Xbox (most famously, on stage at a trade show when Bill himself was trying to demo something new on it). Black is the new blue it seems, and as luck would have it the abbreviation that most people used for the blue screen, BSOD, still works fine with black as the background 🙂

Apologies for the quality of the photo – I only had my cell phone with me and it doesn’t do so well on indoor shots.

Update: Stopped by the same store last night and once again the unit had this message displayed on it. I did see somebody playing a game on it a little later, but midway through his game it crashed again. This looks like another MS quality product – let’s hope Sony’s offering next year is more stable.

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