The Xbox 360 is less than a year old and it already has its very own version of the Windows Blue Screen of Death...the Three Flashing Red Lights. Besides the question of whether we can expect Zune to suffer from another primary colour error, is one that's of far greater importance: What's gone wrong with all these Xbox 360s and what is Microsoft going to do about it???

There seems to be something of a spate of red-light suffers (just check out the official Xbox forums), leading to all sorts of conspiracy theories, especially when Microsoft has charged for repairs...

Today however comes news that Microsoft will repair any Xbox 360 built in 2005 for free, following the realisation that there are just too many suffering gamers to ignore. In a statement Microsoft said:

"As part of our standard and ongoing process of analyzing repair data, we recently noticed a higher than usual number of units coming in for repair. Upon further investigation, it was further discovered that the bulk of the units were isolated to a group that was part of the initial manufacturing run of the console. Returns for repair are coming in for a variety reasons and it's a higher rate than we are satisfied with. We've made the decision to comp repairs for consoles manufactured before January 1, 2006, and provide refunds to the small group of customers who have already paid for repairs."

Having experienced the dreaded red lights ourselves on more than one occasion, today's news certainly comes as a relief.

We'll have more news shortly...