The Xbox gives up the ghost

My company gives us President’s Day off. That’s today. I had invited a few of my younger cousins to sleep over and do some gaming over the long weekend – including a whole lot of Rock Band 2, Halo 3, and some SSFT2 Turbo: HD Remix. Shortly after they arrived yesterday, they popped Rock Band 2 into the 360 only to discover that, after a paltry three or so songs, the game froze. The screen appeared glitchy and the console wouldn’t respond to the guide button on any of the controllers. My stomach turned.

Saturday night, I was playing Fable 2 when I had run into identical freezing issues. I had shrugged it off and attributed it to Lionhead’s sub-par QA process and went to bed in frustration when I had lost yet another 30 minutes of progress. Little did I know I had been witnessing the console in the throes of death.

And so, the next day, when I saw the exact same freezing happening on Rock Band 2, I knew something was amiss – and it wasn’t just Lionhead. We powered off the console and tried again. Freeze. Quicker this time. Power off and power on. Red ring of death.

I never thought I’d see this day. I took good care of the thing, after all. I hardly ever transported it, and I made sure it had ample space to breathe. There was, of course, the time when my wife destroyed my first copy of Fable 2 when she tilted the console while the game was running, but the disc tray went on to survive that ordeal (although the disc did not). So why my console decided to die now is beyond me.

The timing is just awful. My cousins were at my apartment hoping to get their game on, and I had just purchased (but thankfully had not yet redeemed) an Xbox Live Gold card card to play Street Fighter IV when it arrives in the mail at some point this coming week. Lucky for my cousins, I happened to have a lot of boardgames on hand, so we contented ourselves with an exciting game of Arkham Horror last night. Remember how I mentioned that boardgames would be my nuclear holocaust fallout shelter entertainment? Close enough.

I’m tempted to add a new chapter to my “Xbox 360 experience” series of posts – about the ridiculous unreliability and general crappiness of the thing’s hardware. Between the noisy disc drive, the sporadic disc read errors I’ve gotten (and still get) over the years, the disc-scratching issue, and now the RROD, it’s amazing how Microsoft hasn’t been hit with class-action lawsuits from multiple fronts – oh wait, it has.

Anyway, now that I’ve been forcibly pried from my primary console, you can expect me to eke out a few more blogs. You can definitely expect me to blog about my Xbox repair experience as well. I’m fortunate enough to have an Xbox that still had a few months of the extended 3-year RROD warranty coverage left on it. Don’t let me down, Microsoft. The internet is watching…

On a related note, when my wife heard the bad news, she hugged me and told me, “It’s okay, honey. That means we can spend more time together.” After gagging a bit, I turned my PSP on and settled into my office chair. It’s going to be a long wait. Happy Valentine’s Day!