Tales from the Box - Burning Ring of Fire

To name this segment more appropriately, it should be renamed Tales from the white plastic thing sitting on my coffee table that doesn’t work. Yes, I’ve now joined the unfortunate and growing subset of humanity known as an Xbox owner with a defective Xbox.

See, it was working fine prior to around the first week of December. And then, kaput. Aside from a couple of freeze-ups playing Dead Rising with Kevin, my Xbox had been free of issues. If anything, I was mightily pleased and surprised by the quality of Microsoft’s offering.

Not only was the Xbox easy to use and get into, but its features such as Live, were a dream. Where Sony and invariably on the PC, online gaming is a jungle of mind-boggling tasks not unlike a frat boy frosh test, Xbox made it clean and quick to hook up to online play.

So, was my experience too good to be true? From reading online, the answers is perhaps. There was a mighty cry into the empty night from many a nerd following Microsoft’s latest software update. Apparently, this update was something of a covert nature – intended to produce HD TV in the new downloaded televisions shows now offered in the Xbox Marketplace.

Alas, from the forums I’ve browsed, the updates had the unintended consequence of messing up a number of people’s consoles, maybe including mine. The problems after this supposed Dec. 6, 2006, update are various including visual problems (like my console) to bricked units where the little indicator light turns red (called the red ring of death).

So, after three phones calls to Microsoft and testing my console at a friend’s house (where his Xbox worked), Microsoft has agreed to replace/repair/hit with hammer my console for free since it’s under warranty for a year (I only got the system in September).

Hopefully, once I’ve packed away my little white friend and sent him away, I will in return receive either my same little friend, only repaired, or a cousin who is equally operational. The real stress of this situation is that the Xbox was a gift – an expensive gift – and I hate the feeling it gives to the person who bought me the gift in that the gift they got, is no longer working (say that last sentence five times fast – it’s almost as hard as “Scott Stapp sex tape.”).

Conversely, the universe did balance itself by rewarding me with a Wii; but more about that adventure in my next post.