For some reason I get this strange feeling that the Arcade XBOX 360's are refurbished RRoD 360's that have been sent back to Microsoft.  I know it sounds weird but I have an intuition for things and this is one fo them.

It may be a shot in the dark but all things considered (for instance the timing of when Microsoft saw sales revenue for the first time, shortly after a price cut announcement) what would Microsoft do with all those broken systems?  Surely not take them to the dump.  Bill Gates is known to be protective over the enviornment,  right?

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Yes you!  What is your question?

Naw... you can look at the info on the back of the 360 to find out when it was built... if they started lieing about that all hell would break loose on them

What exactly would they lie about though?  The cases for the 360's dont cost much so replacing them isn't an issue.  So you would have to open one up but from my understanding Microsoft had the RRoD classified as "general hardware failures."  Which could mean anything but in this case it's from cold soldering and the mass of CSP chips.  Anyways,  one way or another I still think that Microsoft is using at least some if not most of the damaged hardware in the Arcades.

I'm pretty sure that there are laws about this kind of stuff

no

I wouldn't doubt it at all.  Even if thats true,  what about MS sending refurbished systems back as replacments?  I've had one RRoD and they told me they were sending me a completely NEW system.  I use the word new loosely.

Microsoft generally sends out refurbished units for replacements

After the kinds of revisions they made to the chipset the only thing they could reuse would be the case. Also, as Cueil pointed out they would then have to deal with the inevitable class action suit, and massive bad press. I think the MS execs have probably had enough bad press by now to not even consider something like that.


In theory I suppose they could desolder all the circuit elements, but the cost would be prohibitive so I'm about 100% certain they're not doing it.