According to the Guardian, listeners of BBC4 radio show; "You and Yours," said that shortly after getting the Kinect their Xbox died showing the dreaded red ring of death. Though Microsoft has fought hard to correct the issue that has caused nearly 30% of their consoles to fail, it's possible it might be back.
The radio show got calls and emails from listeners reporting that after hooking up the Kinect their console failed soon after. Adam Winnifrith, a ten year old listener called in and said,
We plugged [Kinect] in the day we got it but only played it a few times before we got the red lights. The next day when we tried it again we still had the red rings of death and haven't been able to use it since.
In response to the claims Microsoft issued a statement to the BBC saying,
There is no correlation between the three flashing red lights error and Kinect. Any new instances of the three flashing red lights error are merely coincidental.
It seems unlikely that connecting a USB device to the console is causing it to fail. What is more likely the cause of the problem is the consoles are probably the older models that had higher failure rates. The families that purchased the Kinect probably haven't used their console for a while and the Kinect has given them a reason to blow off the dust and enjoy some family fun. Shortly after the console fails; as it probably would have eventually anyway.
