Help! My Xbox One X has started turning on my electric fire!
Project Scorchio.
Microsoft will tell you its Xbox One X is hot stuff - but one owner says the world's most powerful console is proving a little too warm for comfort.
Andy Eggleton, 44, from Cottingham in Yorkshire, told Eurogamer his Xbox console is accidentally switching on the electric fireplace in his lounge.
His fireplace - an Endeavour Fires brand Castleton Electric Fireplace Suite - is designed to be remote controlled. You can switch the fire on and off and select temperature and brightness options, but these are meant to work with the fireplace's own remote control - not an Xbox.
I have to admit, when Eggleton got in contact this week via an email with the subject line "Help! My Xbox One X has started turning on my electric fire!", I was sceptical. But he was keen to provide evidence for this burning issue.
"I was thinking we must have a poltergeist or something. My missus said it must be a fault with the fireplace."
"My initial thought was the batteries were going in the fireplace remote," Eggleton told me when I gave him a call to find out more. "So I took the batteries out the remote and the fireplace didn't turn on again that evening. But then the next night the fire turned on again - and the batteries weren't in the control.
"I was thinking we must have a poltergeist or something. My missus said it must be a fault with the fireplace."
Eggleton realised the fire was switching on whenever he was sitting down to play video games of an evening. He would turn on his console via the button on its front and a few seconds later, his fireplace would kick into gear. He tried it again and again, and videoed it happening. I asked to see the video. He sent it over.
Of course, Eggleton could be hiding a remote off-screen. Someone else could be in the room operating things. I asked him if he wouldn't mind demoing the issue live to me via Facetime - and so last night through an extensive video chat we ruled out any of those things, and he gleefully showed me the same thing in real time, again and again. It was bizarre.
"Don't get me wrong, I think it's really cool," Eggleton said. He's not annoyed about the issue - just a bit perplexed why it has started happening now.
"I've had the X since it came out - the Scorpio edition - and the fireplace since last December and it's never happened before."
So what's going on? I asked Digital Foundry's John Linneman for the technical lowdown on how an Xbox console could turn on a fireplace, and hoped he wouldn't start a flame war. Did he believe Eggleton's story?
"Sure," John said. "The remote for my TV causes my LED lights to colour cycle. IR signals can interfere with other devices causing weird behaviour."
I felt like we were getting warmer, but the mystery remained why this had only started happening recently. Microsoft has given no official indication the Xbox One X's IR blaster - which floods a room with infrared signal to find any nearby controllers, and was presumably triggering the fireplace - had suddenly upped its strength or sensitivity. Eggleton hadn't suddenly moved his Xbox and fireplace closer together. He hadn't changed anything at all, he told me.
Eggleton has phoned Microsoft's customer support line for help, although they were just as baffled. Initially, they thought he was phoning to report the Xbox itself was on fire instead.
"They said, thank you for ringing it seems you have a real problem here, can you still see flames coming from your console?"
When contacted by Eurogamer, Microsoft was unable to comment officially in time for this article's publication.
This morning, I phoned Endeavour Fires, the Yorkshire firm which made Eggleton's fireplace. When I said I had heard about the issue, they asked if I was Eggleton himself, who had been in contact with via email about his fireplace. He had asked them if they had a solution. They did not.
"I can't think of any reason why an Xbox would start to control our fire," a customer service rep told me. "It's very strange."
Eggleton says he won't stop using his Xbox - or his fireplace - although will continue hunting for clues as to why the two suddenly work together. In the meantime, it means one less remote control to worry about, and a grate party trick. Lit.