My XBox 360 Is Dead! Long Live My XBox 360!

Now, before I recount the latest developments in the saga of my failing XBox 360, I want to say that I will always feel as if I made out like a bandit in the purchase that landed Boneman's father-in-law's 360 in my lap last December. The $300 price tag (with no tax on top of it), which included Halo 3 and Gears of War, was a steal at a time when a new console would've set me back close to $500. The hundreds of hours of Halo 3 that I played over the holiday period paid for the purchase alone, including solo play, online deathmatches and a heck of a lot of co-operative play with McChicken and Tammy. Recently McChicken and I have gotten into Gears of War as a co-op winner, which I'd never have discovered if GoW hadn't come with the box. Taking all of that into consideration, that box didn't owe me a nickel by the time this weekend rolled around.

Which is good, because as of last night it pretty much died on me. I thought that I'd gotten by the Lost Planet lock-up issue until I attempted to resume the game around midnight last night. At that point, it locked up once again, and then began to display the dreaded "red rings of death" that Microsoft gamers the world over have come to know and loathe. From that point on, I couldn't load any games at all without the box locking up, and before long it was locking up during start-up.

I called the 1-800 XBox Service number this morning, only to be put on hold for nearly ten minutes before being transferred to "Billing," who could do nothing for me. Another call, another long period on hold, and then I made it to a polite Indian call centre representative who was well familiar with the ubiquitous red rings. Unfortunately, the combination of his strong Indian accent, my apparently-strong Canadian one, a poor phone connection and what sounded like millions of his co-workers in the background, all chattering on the phone at the top of their lungs, made for a tricky conversation. Eventually it came out that I wasn't the original owner of the box, and his information was that Microsoft's recent, and well-reported 3-year warranty on defects involving the red rings therefore wouldn't apply.

McChicken still believes that I may be able to get the box fixed for free (through the 3-year warranty), but I remain skeptical. So much so that, after a brief conversation with Vicki on the topic, I went out and bought a new box this afternoon. I opted for the 60-gig model (up from the 20 gigabytes that my first box has) and am now the "proud" owner of a second XBox 360. Nine and a half months of exposure to it was more than enough to sell me on the console, although it's clearly not of the same level of quality as the PlayStation 3. The latest rumours are that approximately 33% of all 360s suffer the red rings of death fate and require fixing, whereas you rarely hear of people having problems with their PS/3s.

And for those scoring along at home, this means that I'll soon be playing through the first two Lost Planet missions for a mind-numbing fourth time!