L4DMods reposted an article today from qj.net warning that a recent XBox 360 dashboard update may be causing consoles to ‘red-ring‘. The article reports that ‘over 30′ people posted on the xbox.com forums claiming that their console red-ringed after applying the update.

Firstly, why would a 360 L4D player be reading a site about user created content? The SDK (when it comes out) will be a PC only affair. Ok, that’s beside the point and not entirely true. I just enjoy poking fun at 360 gamers. But my second point is entirely true:

The plural of ‘anecdote’ is not ‘data’.

Come on people, really. The 360 is known for the RRoD hardware error. Many many people have experienced it, and Microsoft have acknowledged that it was a design flaw in the original hardware. To date, over 28 million units have been sold since launch. In any given week, if one in a million consoles failed there would still be about 30 people to post about it on forums. So does ‘over 30′ represent even the smallest statistical increase in the average? No! Even if this number represented double the number of reported failures, it would still only amount to a correlation. There is also a correlation between Global Warming and a decrease in the number of pirates worldwide.

Please people, we get enough scare-mongering stories from the regular media. Let’s not allow the gaming media fall into the same hole.