In a rather lengthy interview, someone who supposedly worked with Microsoft for years to develop the Xbox 360 shared a few things about the console known for hardware failures. Specifically, the man went into detail regarding Microsoft's ill-advised decisions that led to a faulty gaming machine and what the world's biggest software company intends to achieve using its multimedia platform.

According to this insider, the red ring of death which plagues Xbox 360 units is "caused by anything that fails in the 'digital backbone' on the mother board." However, this does not exactly mean changing boards (from Xenon to Zephyr to Falcon) will eliminate the RROD threat entirely.

The insider cited other causes of the dreaded red ring, including bad parts, incompatible parts that lead to timing problems, bad manufacturing process resulting in flawed solder joints, misapplied heat sinks or thermal interface material, missing parts, broken parts, parts of the wrong value, and missed test coverage.

Even units that are in good condition when they leave the factory are subject to fail early, he said. "The main design flaw was the excessive heat on the GPU warping the mother board around it," explained the insider. He continued, "This would stress the solder joints on the GPU and any bad joints would then fail in early life."

Most people believe the Xbox 360's failure rate is around 30%, and if this person who claims he's an insider is to be believed, the number hit the spot. "This quarter [Microsoft is] expecting 1 M failures, most of those Xenons. Some of those are repeat failures," he cautioned.

Unfortunately, there seems to be no way to tell if your 360 is near death. "There's no way to tell when yours might die. But the cooler you can keep it, the longer it will probably last. So stand it up, keep it in free air, etc," the insider advised. He also mentioned that dashboard updates periodically brick boxes.

Owners of Xbox 360 units with Falcon motherboards need be warned as well. Quoting the insider, "I've heard that the failure rates for the current design is sub 10%. Much much better, but still too high imoh." He added, "...those designs haven't seen much life yet, so no one knows if that failure rate will hold."

Rumors of the Xbox 360 Ultimate's existence are rampant, and they may not be without merit. "[Microsoft] will come out with new hardware at least once a year until they retire this design. That's the console financial model," he stated. The insider believes Microsoft will keep on churning out new models of the Xbox 360 with key features intact, but with reduced cost and price; and perhaps improved quality if needed.

Gamers will not be happy with new SKUs every year, you say? Microsoft may very well be willing to risk that. Here's what this insider said:

Xbox's mission statement is to preserve the Windows monopoly and extend it into the living room, as a media extender for a Media Center PC, along with a host of other MS and other company's hardware devices that fit into a digital entertainment lifestyle. MS has the bucks to keep losing money on Xbox for a long time, maybe forever. They've already lost around 6 billion dollars.

In the middle of '03 I tried to convince our director of "innovation" that we needed to do motion control, simple and intuitive controllers, and focus on family oriented and just plain fun content. Well before the Wii came out. He completely disregarded it.