Games Thirst – Amazing Life
No, the console won’t pull a RROD on you, Microsoft is keenly aware of its past mistakes, and it has put in place mechanisms that would see the console powering down if it gets too hot.
That’s according to Xbox’s general manager of console development Leo del Castillo, speaking to Gizmodo. Del Castillo said that while misuse of the console cannot be prevented, if that indeed happens – and it will, actions are in place for the console to safeguard itself.
We can’t prevent misuse of the product, but we can certainly anticipate it,” del Castillo explained.
Just like a PC, Xbox One can ramp up the speeds of its large case fan if needs be.
“The way we designed the box, we don’t actually intend it to ever have to go to maximum speed under normal environmental conditions,” del Castillo went on. “But there is overhead. So we’ll allow the fan to go all the way up to its maximum speed and if that solves the condition without the user having to do anything.”
And if increased fan speeds doesn’t do the trick, Xbox One reduces its power usage during moments of extreme heat.
“With the architecture of the Xbox One, is that we can dial back the power of the box considerably,” said del Castillo. “We had a little less flexibility with the 360. And so basically, if we couldn’t dissipate the heat, there wasn’t a whole lot of leverage we could pull to keep the heat from being generated, so we had a limited amount of time before it just shut down.
“Xbox One can actually dial it back to a lower power state, so low in fact that it can in a mode that uses virtually no air flow.”
If all else fails – say the user has the Xbox One placed in an obscure position with little to no ventilation, the console will give on-screen prompts prior to meltdown.
“If we get to the point where that is no longer enough, we have the mechanism, the interface, to deal with that,” del Castillo said.
It should come as no surprise that Microsoft spent a lot of time making sure Xbox One isn’t a box that fails often. After all, Xbox 360 holds the record for the highest failure rate of any console, ever.
