Last month was the fifth anniversary of Microsofts Xbox 360 and it has been through a few hardware changes. The most recent change was the ‘S’ edition of the console which featured a sleeker look and more notably the combination of the CPU and GPU into one chip. Tweaktown claims that the next-generation Xbox will be based on technology from AMD based on production at Globalfoundaries of their 28m, “high-k gate first” process.
It was only a matter of time before Microsoft would announce a second bundle for their new Kinect peripheral, as few gamers were happy to hear that it would only come with the 4GB version of the console. Better late then never I always say, so those who ended up going for the PS3 instead of waiting may feel like they missed out; others who knew this was coming may rejoice, quietly, everyone else may pass this by apathetically.
IBM and Microsoft have been working quite tirelessly on making a chipset that would reduce or even eliminate the RRoD issue. It seems smaller means better in this case, as they decided to squish the graphics process and CPU together into one chip, that takes up less space, power and cost than previous iterations. The new chips name, “Vejle”, which had been assumed to be the oft-rumoured Valhalla, is going to powering the new Xbox 360 S. After the break is a picture of the evolution of the CPU and GPU of the Xbox 360.
After announcing many new features of their fancy new baby, Bungie also took the time to make another announcement. A limited edition silver matte Xbox 360 with the UNSC emblem placed on it. Now, as you can see from the image above this is the new Xbox 360 S that has received the royal Bungie treatment.
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.
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