Xbox is celebrating its 25-year anniversary today, November 15, 2026. Below, we take a look back at Microsoft’s great, and infamously buggy, second console.
In the mid to late aughts, the Xbox 360 reigned supreme. It felt like the center of the gaming universe, as the best place to play multiplatform hits like Modern Warfare and Grand Theft Auto, and the only way to play exclusive blockbusters like Halo 3. All of my high school friends were on Xbox Live every night, and online gaming became a ritual to me. My clearest, purest memories of gaming come from this era, and the Xbox 360 remains one of my favorite consoles of all time. It’s too bad that I burned through so many of them.
The Xbox 360 was as infamous for hardware failures as it was famous for its amazing software library. It’s nearly impossible to look back at the 360 without also recalling the Red Ring of Death, the ominous three red lights surrounding the power button that indicates a general hardware error. This red ring was a plague on the initial Xbox 360 model, and the shipping and repairs for affected consoles cost Microsoft a little over a billion dollars. The Xbox 360 platform as a whole had an amazing lifespan–the first Xbox 360 consoles themselves, though, did not.
Somehow, I had completely avoided the dreaded red ring with my original 360 model, but it wasn’t spared of all technical issues. One night, I plopped my Halo 3 disc in the tray, only to be met with a suspicious clicking-like noise. Instead of the Halo 3 icon appearing on my dashboard, a generic “Open Tray” message appeared in its place. Troubleshooting was a maddening process–all of my discs were returning the same message, and Google searches were largely unhelpful. Despite the functioning software, my 360 refused to read any of my physical games. It quickly became clear that my 360 was a lemon.
I removed the hard drive, enveloped my 360 in bubble wrap, stuffed it in a box, and left it with UPS. The ordeal cost me $90, as my Xbox was out of warranty. My precious Xbox 360 and the digital space that my friends occupied on a nightly basis became completely out of reach.
About two weeks later, my replacement 360 came home. Being able to jump back into Xbox Live felt like rejoining society, and the countless hours of Halo, Call of Duty, and Left 4 Dead resumed.
Months later, the clicking noise returned, and I was back to square one. Back to UPS for me. It felt like cruel irony that my consoles never received the ominous red ring, yet fatal errors still caught up with them anyway. My third Xbox 360 fared well, I recall.
Then, after leaks and rumors, Microsoft announced and shadow-dropped the slim Xbox 360. For me, and presumably many others who went through similar hardware struggles, this announcement was a godsend. The Xbox 360 was a fantastic platform with limitless entertainment, but it was unfortunately trapped in a sickened body. This new, sleeker model was a total overhaul of its internals and form factor, and it was incapable of red-ringing (mainly because it literally had no red LEDs). You can bet that I was quick to trade in my original model 360 for this newfangled, glossy Xbox.
It only took nearly half a decade, but Microsoft finally fixed its biggest problem. The Xbox 360 platform overcame its flawed engineering, and the hardware itself was finally able to keep up with the amazing software support and bustling online community that had built up despite all of the technical issues. I don’t remember any issues with my slim Xbox 360 in the years that followed (except accidentally hitting that touch-sensitive power button every once in a while), and that version of the Xbox 360 is how I choose to remember it today.
Arguably, no platform since then has had the omnipresence of the Xbox 360, at least in the West. Despite the popularity and sales success of the PlayStation 4 and the Nintendo Switch, it felt as if the Xbox 360 dominated attention and broke the containment of gaming communities into the mainstream in ways other platforms couldn’t. It was a transformative platform, defining what an online service infrastructure should look like for gaming, and housing so many influential titles like Gears of War, Mass Effect, The Elder Scrolls 4, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, BioShock, and Grand Theft Auto 4.
For me, the Xbox 360 was a source of joy, and the time of the platform’s peak was when gaming became a central pillar of my life. But with all of its successes, the 360’s prolific technical fiascos are forever intertwined with the platform’s history. They say you have to break a few eggs to make an omelette–I apparently had to break at least two Xboxes before I could truly have fun.
