Digging a Shallow Grave

I haven’t posted for a while so I guess I’ll update now. I’ve been away on a beach for the past week so obviously away from my XBOX and PC (and work thankfully).

When I got back I got the dreaded 3 red quadrants on my XBOX360 and so I had to dig a shallow grave for my machine. I actually started having problems about a week before my vacation and initially I thought it was problem with the software I was playing. I had just gotten Oblivion, I really hadn’t planned on playing this game yet but so many of the Live! Friends had it I couldn’t resist. The game is fun and I found myself enjoying it when I noticed that regularly the screen would be filled full of garbage and the 360 locked up. I hadn’t seen this effect before in any of my other games so I presumed it was Oblivion itself that was causing the crashes. After rebooting the 360 at least 10 times in the space of 2-3 hours I started getting frustrated because any time I made progress in the game the machine would lock up and I’d lose my progress. I decided that perhaps there is more to my problems than just Oblivion. I loaded up another game that I knew pushed the 360 pretty hard so I fired up the Full Auto demo and after playing for about 20 seconds it too caused the screen corruption and lock ups.

At this point I knew I was in trouble, my 360 was on its last legs. I disconnected everything then reconnected it and still the machine would lock up. I decided to take a break as I knew I was going to probably have to return the box and use my warranty. The odd thing was that a day later I tried to load Oblivion and strangely I was able to play for 2-3 hours again without any lock ups so I chalked up my problems to perhaps the machine was overheating. I left on my vacation that my 360 was okay and I was just having and isolated incident.

After getting home from my vacation I loaded up the 360 to read my messages and within 5 minutes the 360 locked up with the screen corruption and this time I was only in the dashboard. The machine was screwed at this point, it wouldn’t even restart and any power-on INSTANTLY caused the 3 red quadrants.

I returned my launch day unit and got a replacement but sadly it too initially loads up with the 3 red quadrants and I have to restart the machine for the red quadrants to disappear. Initially I’d say the unit has problem with the RF transmitter (for the joysticks) because when it loads up with the 3 red quads the joysticks are never discovered. When I reboot the machine it finds the joysticks without issue and works fine.

I’ll probably just keep this unit for a while, as long as I can limp through and play my games but as soon as it becomes unusable I’ll take it in yet again and get another replacement. I have some good ammunition for a replacement this time as my first replacement I had to argue to get a full replacement (rather than have them try and repair it) so when I go back (if I have to because the machine is totally dead) I’ll just demand yet another full replacement unit since they’ve done that for me in the past.

Do the problems I’m having hurt my opinion of the machine? Not really, I sort of accepted that buying a lunch unit was a risky proposition and considering how many hours I got out of the thing (probably at LEAST 250-300 hours) I was pretty happy. I am disappointed that this totally new unit (manufacturered on March 20^th) initially seems to be having problems but so far I’m able to play my games without issue so we’ll just see how things go for now. I still think for $500 (where I live) the 360 is excellent value considering how many things it does. If the PS3 launches with no problems and offers the same or more functionality then I’ll probably change my stance but considering how much new technology the PS3 has in it I have my doubts how stable the launch systems will be.