I don’t have to tell you that video gaming systems are really hot these days. From Nintendo WII to the Xbox 360 to the various portable hand held units, video gaming has been big business since the early days of the Atari and a few of its contemporaries. The technology that goes into these highly advanced pieces of machinery is truly remarkable. The graphics that these systems produce today versus what some of the earlier gaming systems put out truly is the difference between night and day.

That in large measure is why people today absolutely love their video gaming systems. The Xbox 360 is one such system.

The dreaded “Red Ring of Death”

Today there are 10’s of millions of owners of the Xbox 360 and every day many of them “go on the fritz”, suffering what is commonly called the Red Ring of Death (RROD), or you may know it as an e74 error. This happens when the console or the power supply (as Microsoft states) suffers some type of hardware failure, which in turn causes 3 red lights to begin flashing in a semi-cycle on the front of the console itself.

I won’t get into why many of these systems are suddenly becoming inoperable, as that is beyond the scope of this article. The fact remains that when you have a Xbox 360 you’ve not only spent hundreds on, but also hundreds more on games themselves only to suddenly find it sitting somewhere in your home not working, and if you love your system as much as I love mine you may be suddenly and unfortunately facing a decision as to how to handle your Xbox 360 repair.

As someone who has undoubtedly shelled out large sums of money on their Xbox 360 it’s easy to see that when it finally stops working (assuming yours has) the first thing you probably wanted to how is, how much is this going to cost me?

Xbox 360 Repair Cost?

Xbox 360 repair cost I was able to find can vary anywhere from $59.99 to $140, with the greater of the two amounts being what Microsoft charges for those people holding expired warranties, not to mention the extra expense of having to ship it back to them.

Again you have the cost, in total about $170, including shipping. Then you have to wait as long as 8 weeks (a minimum of 8 weeks, could be longer depending on their backlog of repairs) to have it repaired and returned to you.

If, however, you’re still contemplating what to do about your broken Xbox 360 and you’re leaning towards having Microsoft repair your system, then that’s certainly your decision to make. But is that your cheapest alternative and therefore your best decision you can make at this point?

When my system went down, I was a little hesitant about what to do but then I found another way, (a way that didn’t include the high cost of Microsoft intervention) in fact a much quicker, less expensive way.

How to fix an Xbox 360?

Repairing an Xbox 360 is much easier than you could imagine. In fact as long as you have the right repair guide and the proper tools you can repair your system yourself in as little as 2 hours. And that’s exactly what I did, I located an awesome Xbox 360 repair manual and along with using some basic tools I had around the house I was able to get my system up and running in no time flat.