A lot of gamers are inclined to look online for answers, and the answer online is to send it in, since there is a three year warranty.

 Why are you showing me this?  I never disagreed that a lot of 360's get sent in for four rings of death, I'm saying it's stupid to put in an extra screen, almost as stupid as not correcting the grammar mistake in your signature.

 Last I checked, the MAIL was how you send systems to repair places (the address comes with the intructions on most electronics with warranties).

But once again, you don't just put a 360 in a box and say here you go Microsoft, fix it now! There is an actual process you have to go through.

I suppose you could just send it, but if they don't know what's wrong they aren't going to touch it. 

 Don't you think that could be exactly what I meant? Too many systems sent with no apparent problem?

The 3 year warranty only applies to the RROD, which probably accounts for about 50% of 360 failures (this is a guess based on anecdotal evidence). There are a lot of failures not covered by the 3 year warranty.

Also, unlike Sony and Nintendo, Microsoft doesn't advance replace units or cross ship. This means you'll be without your 360 for approximately a month.  This is particularly odd since they take your 360 and send you a different refurbished one in most cases rather than actually repairing yours and sending it back.

 Then yes, people just randomly sending their XBox to Microsoft without calling tech support are in fact morons and once again, a little annoying screen isn't going to do anything to fix that.

 You seem to forget that people that dumb look at pretty pictures more than they would think to call tech support. That's a basic marketing rule. You could have a bitmap of master chief in front of two 360s, one with three rings, and one with four. The dumb people would see MC saying "Remember, everyone, you don't have to send four rings in for repairs, just check the plugs."

 I am not saying Microsoft should do that. I'm just pointing out it's not a dumb idea, solely on the basis of you not knowing how it would work.

The thing is, do we even know if Microsoft will accept random 360's showing up without any kind of support ticket? Even more, after looking at that random Master Chief picture and deciding to act without any further research (IE- call to Microsoft's support number that's right there on the manual as well on a number of gaming websites for support for gamers), where would they get this address to send it to without getting any information on the process they are supposed to follow as well as paying for the shipping?

I'd think there is more to it than "I think I'll just send in my 360 without contacting Microsoft to find out what to actually do". Especially since it's more than just them saying "okay, you have a hardware failure, we'll send you a box for you to send your 360 to a repair center". I don't even know the full process, but I do know that vital information will be added to their information database. Things such are your name, address, 360, what was wrong with it, ect. Not to mention the actual generation of the support ticket, which will probably be referenced for any time you want to find out information about your 360 or the history of your support call woes and such.

 Well thank you for exlaining the full procedure for that, unlike twestern.