Well, my Xbox 360 gave up the ghost last night. While browsing some photos on my PC via Windows Media Connect, my console froze.

I turned it off, restarted and got the fun, flashing red ring 'o death. Reset all the cables, remove the hard drive, offer fervent homage to the dark lord of crashed game consoles. None of it worked.

The really funny part -- and by funny I mean kind of almost impossible to believe -- is that the crash happened not five minutes after I read on Kotaku how one of the site's writers, Brian Ashcraft, had his Japanese 360 go belly up.

I literally read his post, turned off my laptop, fired up my 360, and five minutes later was staring into the abyss (I think it might have stared back into me).

But fear not, gentle reader. Since it was a review unit from Microsoft, I should hopefully be getting a replacement before too long.

My console was actually part of the intial launch batch of systems from 2005, and I thought I had dodged a bullet, since Microsoft has admitted that there was an unusually high number of defects in that first run. So much for dodging.

Doug Note: I know it's going to happen to me soon. I have been lucky so far!

Victor note: Hey Daniel, I don't know about the Halo 3 edition (since it isn't out yet), but the Elite is definitely susceptible to red ring syndrome, although I have heard far fewer reports of Elites going code red.