John Sell, Xbox One chip architect at Microsoft.
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Microsoft discloses details on Xbox One and Kinect chips — and how they should avoid the ‘Red Ring of Death’

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 3 min

PALO ALTO, Calif. — Microsoft disclosed details for the main processor and the Kinect image processor in the Xbox One video game console today at a chip design conference, showing how its designers had learned the lessons of the Xbox 360’s Red Ring of Death” and have incorporated what they’ve learned into the upcoming Xbox One consoles.

Those details are critical for the kind of experience that consumers will have with the Xbox One when it launches this fall. The guts inside the box will determine how the tech will affect the quality of games and whether the machine will be prone to failure, as the Xbox 360 was when it debuted in 2005.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.