Xbox 360’s “Red Ring of Death” fiasco may be one of the biggest hardware catastrophes in the history of Console gaming.  So, as Microsoft plans to release a new and improved version of the console, many will obviously be looking to see whether this version fixes the console’s most glaring faults.  Well, the results are in:  the Xbox 360 slim will not show the infamous red ring when the console has kicked the bucket.  In fact, Microsoft came up with a solution so that the new console will not inevitably kill itself…  kinda.

Instead of the red ring, the new slim 360 will flash a red dot, (See! It’s not a ring!) and automatically shut off when it has overheated to point where damage to the hardware might occur.

It’s supposed to look like that.

The dot in the center of the ring will flash red until the console has cooled down, and will stop blinking when it’s safe (read: able) to play again. While this is definitely preferable than having your Xbox die over and over again, (I’m on my third in four years) you would think that Microsoft would have wanted to put the RROD fiasco completely behind them.  If nothing else, a “no Red Ring guarantee” would be a great selling point.

Then again, apparently they aren’t that close to fixing the problem.  A video has popped up on the internet showing a brand new Xbox 360 Slim that overheated to the point where vertical lines have started appearing on the screen before any kind of warning/emergency shutdown occurred.  Recorded by a self-proclaimed “xbox fanboy”, the console’s overheating problem is just as prevalent as before, but less iconic.

Not to be a conspiracy theorist, but between this and that giant purple star-dude in Mario Galaxy 2 telling to go rest my eyes every 20 minutes, I think someone is trying to get us to stop playing video games.