And it's out of warranty since it was bought on December 2005.
I remember I was shopping for a new graphic card. While I had a dreamcast, gamecube and ps2 I just cherrypicked the best of the best for those while my main gaming time was on the PC. Alas, I learned that since I last revamped my PC, a new standard in expansion slots (or maybe it was expansion slot speed? I can't remember) had surfaced some time ago (that's AGES in PC time since graphic cards are on a 6 month cycle; yeah it's crazy I know) and I couldn't fit any new card on my PC. There were some high-end cards from a prior gpu gen which were both compatible with my rig and supplied enough performance to run new games adequately but those were outrageously expensive old-tech dinosaurs. Ah, funny thing... there was also a new batch of processors that required a new socket on the motherboard aswell as new RAM, so it was either paying top dollar for old tech or buying a whole set of mobo, cpu, ram, power source and gpu (that's just a case away from being a new PC).
Decisions, decisions... while pondering what to do I wandered into a big "electronics+cultural content (books, movies, music)" shop (a big chain from France, le Fnac) to buy a nice game from the past I dismissed at launch. Slightly off-topic, but that's one of the sweetest aspects of PC gaming console peasants will never get to experience - since both the CPU's and the OS have legacy support, publishers keep reissuing their best games at laughable prices... you can score a whole year or two worth of 10/10's for less than 100$. Heck, since it's an open platform, there are solutions to play games excluded from the legacy support. Nowadays you can play DOS games (that's 80's games for those not in the know) without much hassle. On top of it emulators for old consoles are huge on the PC, so it also becomes the best platform to revisit the console past - pretty much the Holy Grail of retro gamers (untill XBLA and WiiWare became big providing a sort of suitable alternative yet still vastly inferior).
But I'm digressing.
At the shop I saw a big aisle with what looked like a new console. It's almost 2006... it's been what, 5 or 6 years since the dreamcast? Guess it's that time of the decade again... I casually glanced over the necessarily small game section for the new toy on the city: Call of Duty, Need for Speed? The big guys are in. Rare? Didn't these guys work for Nintendo?. PGR3? Looks nice... (side note: I loathed racing games until Burnout 3 so I missed on Metropolis Street Racer). Then I realized: I didn't need a new PC to browse the internet, use email or Office. I just needed it for playing... games - and it'd become obsolete in two years at which point I'd be pretty much forced to upgrade the whole shebang again. At that precise point, three words flashed on my mind: fuck that shit. Not "this" shit but "that" shit - I was already past it. I grabbed a 360 Pro pack and never looked back. Two years later my trusty grey plastic PC suffered a stroke and since I off-loaded its gaming duties over to the 360 I had nothing holding me from acquiring a sleek 24" alu-imac in late 2007, pre-loaded with that wonder called OSX.
It's been 41 months, but this one's my third 360. Like many users I've seen more than one unit die. My launch 360 lasted until April 2007 (that's 16 months) - it was an unusually cool unit, discs didn't come out too hot (just slightly warm), I had suffered none of the dreadful circular scratches and overall provided gaming bliss until the disc drive stopped reading discs. After the obligatory call to MS CS the next day I had a guy at home to pick my dead 360. I hadn't been told they would be that fast and my 360 wasn't packed; nevertheless the guy took it and told me he'd pack it himself at the office. Wow, now that's first class service. Four weeks later I had to drive several miles to the main warehouse of the delivery company... apparently MS pays a lot for the pickup service but skimps on the delivery.
I remember the guy tending the parcel pickup at the warehouse. When he saw the information on the pickup ticket, he said "Ah, you are here to pickup your console, aren't you?" to which I just nodded. While his colleague was rummaging through the boxes to find the one with my name, I asked him "So, do you guys get many people here to pick up 360's?". A half-smile crossed his face while he nodded; "You'll be back again, you all do". Not exactly reassuring.
Boy, was he right. The unit I received (a refurbished 2006 unit) was a letdown. Noisy as hell and it reached quite the temperature - literally, it expelled discs extra-crispy. I was surprised to see the disc labels could resist these temperatures... It wouldn't have surprised me if the labels started to bubble up due to the heat. A month later I had to call MS's customer service again - the disc drive suffered a weird anomaly, apparently the sensor which detected wether the drive was open or closed malfunctioned: the cd-tray refused to open while the console was on and remained open as the console powered off. Yeah, laugh at it... I did too.
Anyways it was mid-August when I received my third 360. This time it took six weeks, apparently the German facility was slightly collapsed, that summer the average repair time was a month and a half. It was slightly noisier and hotter than my launch unit but definitely an improvement over the first refurb I got. It's lasted 20 months, which ain't bad for a 2006 360. Two days ago, however, the dreaded red ring signaled the end of its operating life. It's quite interesting - you see, it's been three years and a half reading posts and listening to people talking about the dread RROD - which I never got to see by myself. Until now.
Oh well.
Current-gen game collection uploaded on the profile, full of win and good games; also most of my PC games. Lucasfilm Games/LucasArts 1982-2008 (Requiescat In Pace).
