02.16.07
xbox 360: fatality
The BBC ran a particularly awful piece on Watchdog this week about the fact that Xbox 360s currently have a lower life-expectancy than teenagers in my neighbourhood, and that Microsoft UK are being shits about sorting it out for poor numpties who bought their product expecting it to actually, you know, work and so on.
Now, I do sympathise - although perhaps not with the frightening creatures from the blackest depths that they dragged up blinking into the light to act as the Faces of Gaming for the programme - one of whom was exposed to excess oestrogen in the womb and has the face of a trout, the other of whom appeared to have some kind of mechanical device lodged in his ear and spoke with such a dense rural accent that I expected him to end each sentence with “Mr Frodo”. Their awfulness was offset only by having the lovely Ellie on to actually speak some bloody sense on the matter.
No, I sympathise in a more general sense I suppose - after all, my first Xbox 360 died a horrible death only a month or so after buying it, and when Microsoft failed to get back to me about fixing the fucker (it was a freebie) within, er, five months or so, I went out and bought a core system to replace it. I wasn’t about to miss out on Dead Rising based fun for the sake of a mere 200 quid, dammit. Still, I was rather miffed.
Not, I’ll grant you, as miffed as I was when I turned on my Xbox 360 on the evening that the BBC broadcast their hard-hitting report on how lank-haired trout-faced men are getting wobbly bottom lips due to Microsoft’s intransigence. “I know,” thought I, “I’ll kick some men in the fucking face and knock them off some big fucking buildings in this Crackdown game that Tom has been blathering on about!”
Ah. No, perhaps I won’t then.
Perhaps I’ll just be a bit sad about the fact that for no apparent reason, my 200 pound piece of hardware has decided that six months is a pretty good innings, and it has nothing left to live for.
Yep, that’ll definitely be how I’ll spend my evening. Those three lights, according to the MS knowledge base, mean “you’re right fucked, mate”. Helpfully, they also refuse to actually sort out this problem (i.e. arrange a pick up for my now deceased console and send me a new one) over email, so I’ll have to talk to a helpdesk moron in person - here’s hoping they have something REALLY GREAT for me to listen to while I’m on hold for an hour!
Note how my PS3 and one of my PS2s are both silently mocking their Xbox cousin, as if to say, “look at that stupid dead bastard!”
Oh well. On the plus side, the next day the Sennheiser wireless headphones I’ve been coveting for two years arrived from an eBay seller who miraculously had a brand new sealed pair for about a third of the retail price. They’re ridiculously huge but also incredibly light and comfortable, and I’ve found myself on a number of occasions walking downstairs to take a piss and not realising I’m still wearing them, which makes me look like a complete knob. However, I’m easily pleased, and the novelty of being able to walk to the other side of the room to look for something while still listening to music on my headphones probably won’t wear off until well into 2008.
Tom said,
February 16, 2007 at 11:31 pm
I have a UK Xbox 360 that I bought in January 2006, which is still working fine, and an American version I bought in the summer that’s fine too. I have no idea why my luck has held, but I’m glad it has, because it really is the only console I bother with on a regular basis. The PS2 is more or less dead to me now, OutRun 2006 aside, and the Wii has inevitably become the “once a month for a new game” console it was always destined to be. The PS3 is sitting there in the middle swallowing all the power in the world to maintain a red standby light of disuse.
Rob Fahey said,
February 18, 2007 at 12:51 am
Both the Xbox 360 and the Wii fall into the “one game a month” category for me, really - although the Wii seems to be better at providing stuff I’m still playing ages later. Zelda was a solid 40 hours, Wii Play and Wario Ware hauled out every time there are people over, and I play Wii Sports about twice or three times a week - it’s like scratching an itch at this stage.
The 360, on the other hand, has provided a fair few eight to ten hour games - Dead Rising, N3, Gears of War, and so on, with Crackdown by all accounts being a game which fits this profile as well. They’re neat, well-executed efforts that entertain for a week, then go to live in my game drawer and never get dragged out again.
The PS2 and PC are still the meat and veg of my gaming. FFXII is still entertaining me after 70 hours, and there are a bunch of other games like Digital Devil Saga 2 and Okami which are eating my time. World of Warcraft is a huge time-sink as well, of course, and I’m also playing back through Half-Life 2 and Episode One for fun. Next up, Rogue Galaxy and Supreme Commander…
Next-gen just isn’t doing it for me yet, I guess. It’s all very shiny, but the quality is coming through on the older platforms, for my money. I just don’t have the mentality of a frontiersman when it comes to gaming any more I guess
Wrestlevania said,
March 5, 2007 at 3:22 pm
“Note how [...] one of my PS2s [is] silently mocking [its] Xbox cousin”
Um, can I have one of your spares then, please? Mine’s deader than a very dead thing (i.e. your Xbox 360)…
~~~~
On a more serious note; we had a UK launch Xbox 360 ‘Premium’ in my previous office, which was played almost every lunchtime for the better part of a year, and we never experienced any trouble with it–ever. Which is odd because - call me howling bat-shit insane - I would’ve thought, of all the hardware revisions in a modern console’s lifetime, a launch machine would be the model that carks it for most owners.
PS: I’m well aware of how late* to the party I am on this post, but have you had any luck in getting MS to replace it yet?
* I really enjoyed your “Three Steps Back” editorial on GI.biz last week, so was compelled to go a-Googling to see if you had a blog or similar.
Rob Fahey said,
March 12, 2007 at 10:28 am
I’ve not actually got it replaced yet, but that’s my own fault - I’ve not been trying very hard, because I’ve been incredibly busy with other stuff. My initial phonecall was a complete failure involving an age spent on hold before giving up, and I haven’t tried again since then.
I don’t actually have a spare PS2 as such - there’s one normal retail version, and one “TestStation”, the Sony-issued ones that play gold discs and review code. Oh, and an American one, but one of my friends has nabbed that to play through some RPGs. That is, admittedly, a silly number of PS2s to own, but not as silly as the three Xbox 360s which m’colleague Tom has on his shelf…
Glad you liked the editorial - I fear this blog is evolving into something rather less measured and rather more rant-filled, but I suppose that could be fun in its own way too