Free PC Gaming Blog

Now I’m getting pissed.

You can see how this story begins in my post The Day My Inner Xbox 360 Fanboy Died.

So here it is, one week later and I have yet to receive my coffin to send back my Xbox 360 for repair. It was supposed to take a few days. So I’m off to call support again.

For any of you that have called the support line… What is up with the voice over guy and the word “HEY!”

Anyway, I get a recoding almost right off the back that says “HEY I can see that your repair is on its way back to you and you should receive it soon.” Or something like that.  Interesting since I HAVEN’T SENT IT YET!  So I wait to talk to someone.

I finally get a human on the line and give my service number.  She goes to investigate it and I get put on hold for a VERY long time.

Ok, she’s back.  Turns out they had it marked that I was going to pick up the box. Well I live ACROSS THE COUNTRY in PA so, hmmmm, what the hell?!?!

She tells me they’ll ship a new box out right away.  So great, now I have to wait even more to get this thing sent off and even longer until I’ve got a working 360.  I ask if there’s any way to rush it since they messed up.  I get “Sorry.”

So the moral of the story here is if you are one of the hundreds of thousands waiting for your xbox 360 coffin… if you don’t get it within a week, call.  Otherwise, it may be waiting for you to pick up… wherever you’re from.

This just isn’t right.

Since theme of this blog has always been about PC gaming, I haven’t mentioned my 360. I didn’t want to drift too far from what readers have come to expect.

This post will be completely Xbox 360 related, so the PC only guys can skip right over it… unless you want some more (like you really need it) ammunition to fire at your buddies arguing over why you bought your latest gaming PC for five times the price of their 360.

As much as I love PC gaming, I have been a 360 fanboy (or hitting 30 this year with a two year old running around, I guess I’m really a fandad) for a long time. I’ve spent many many hours on my 360 as can be seen in my semi-respectable 10653 current gamerscore (Xbox screen name Boggslash).

From Gears of War, Oblivion, Crackdown, and G.R.A.W. to way too many Xbox live downloadable games… I have played a LOT on it (looks like I just hit 100 games played looking at my xbox.com profile). The system is great and I’ve loved it… when it worked.

I’ve been hearing the rumors and reading the stories about the issues people have had with the Xbox 360 crashing, the red rings of death, etc., but it seemed like I was one of the lucky ones. With every story I read I thought “man, that sucks… But it’s not going to happen to me!” (Positive thinking)

Well, about a week ago, while playing some marathon sessions of Crackdown (damn, agility orb collecting is addicting) I started to encounter some scary events on my 360. The screen would go black with some digital lines and dots here and there, yet I would still here the sound. My first thought was that the connections on the back of my TV were loose… wiggled them around a bit. Nope, not that. Pulling the connection out of the back of my 360, putting it back, and starting it back up seemed to fix it. Hmm… getting frightened now.

Fast forward to today. I finally broke down and ordered Guitar Hero 2 from Amazon. It arrived at work and I couldn’t wait to fire it up when I got home. I unpacked the new toy and started rocking out. I got through the first 2 songs and I must have really burned it up because it was at that point that my screen went BLACK! So now I’m standing there with my X-Plorer guitar, mouth wide open, staring at a bank screen.

I’m thinking, ok, I just need to do what I’ve done before, pull out the cord, put it back in and turn it on… I hear the familiar Xbox whoosh sound… no video. Damn.

Ok… there’s got to be something I can do… I look online and try suggestion. I remove the hard drive and any other accessories and start it back up. Nothing. Damn.

At this point, I give in and call support. After holding for way too long, I explain my situation and they think it’s a bad video wire. I was thinking (or more like it hoping) that the wire was all I had to worry about. Thanks tech dude… and I’m off to Circuit City to buy a new wire.

Twenty minutes later, I’m home with my new video connection. I plug it in, cross my fingers, turn it on and… BLACK. Damn.

Great, so now it’s time to call tech support again. After holding for a while, I get a new tech-dude. He tells me it needs to be sent in to be fixed and a box was on its way.

So now, I need to wait up to 5 days for the box and “up to four weeks after that” until I get my “fixed” box back.

I can’t tell you how bummed I am about this. I mean, I know thousands have bitched and complained and damnit, they have every right to. A product like this should not have such a limited life span. It’s just crap and it’s not right.

I’m not going to be one of the guys who says screw it I’m going and buying a PS3 and forget the 360. I’ll patiently wait, but when I get my “fixed” version back, it better really be fixed. If I get another black screen, I believe at that point, I’d take it out back and pull an “Office Space” on its ass.

So for now, I guess I’ll download a copy of Frets on Fire and get rocking on my trusty ol’ PC.

The Xbox fanboy inside has died. R.I.P.