I have fallen victim to the 33% failure rate of the XBox 360. Last night my games kept freezing, and I saw the red ring of death once. This morning I was on the phone with XBox 360 support, and the red ring re-appeared and the games kept freezing while we were troubleshooting.

Most importantly, through troubleshooting, we ruled out the game(s) and hard drive as the problem. The console by itself is busted. Now I can't even get the "boot up" screen to show up (although the audio works).

The good news: I'm covered under the warranty and Microsoft will pay the bill for everything, including shipping to a repair center.

The bad news: it takes 3-4 weeks to get your console back. Not good timing for the September 25th Halo 3 release date. It's too close to call. I may very well be without a console when the game releases.