The Xbox 360 had a ton of problems and an alarming failure rate.  We all speculated that it was an overheating issue and we finally now get the low down on what will go down as one of the biggest design flaws in tech history.

In an Aug. 30, 2005 memo, the team reported overheating graphics chip, cracking heat sinks, cosmetic issues with the hard disk drive and the front of the box, under-performing graphics memory chips from Infineon (now Qimonda), a problem with the DVD drive, and other things.

The test machines were not properly debugged, due to an ill-advised cost-cutting initiative that shaved $2 million from $25 million paid to Cimtek, a test machine maker in Canada. The Microsoft team decided not to pay the consulting fee to Cimtek to build, manage and debug the test machines. Sources familiar with the matter said there were only about 500 test machines at the time of launch, a third of the 1,500 needed.

“There were so many problems, you didn’t know what was wrong,” said one source of the machines. “The [test engineers] didn’t have enough time to get up and running.”

So it turns out, there was a slew of things gone terribly wrong. They had a shitty product that had a tremendous upside but was not ready to go to market. They have tried to make it right with the 3 year warranty and all but for the millions of consumers who had to wait while their new and expensive console was shipped in coffins, there is a rift that may never be mended.