Consolation Prize

I was getting a bit worried about my Xbox 360 that I’d sent back to Microsoft (three flashing red lights!) a few weeks ago. It had been 17 days since it was picked up by UPS and I’d not heard a peep from Microsoft support to confirm they’d received the console or if it had now been fixed. I was therefore resigning myself to the fact that it was going to take the full 25 days as estimated to either get it repaired or replaced.

To my surprise I returned home today after work to find a UPS delivery notification stating that they’d left a package with my neighbour. Without delay I rushed next door to pick it up.

It was indeed an Xbox 360, not my original but a replacement. The cover letter reads:

“So you can get back to playing and enjoying your Xbox quicker, we have replaced your Xbox console with a replacement unit.”

If it takes 17 days to “replace” a unit I’m glad they decided not to fix it or else it may have been gone for a very long time.

So far it’s working fine but I did notice that it sounds different to my previous unit and I hope this is down to an “enhancement” that has been made to stop the problem reoccurring.

All in all the process was relatively painless and I’ve been sent a couple of complimentary one month Xbox Live Gold subscriptions as a gesture of goodwill, but at the end of the day we shouldn’t really be seeing hardware failures on this magnitude from a mass produced commercial console.

Related:
Death of a 360
The State of Play

My Xbox 360 finally died on me at the weekend. It has been playing up for the past week and had frozen a few times whilst playing games so I had an inclination that all was not well. On Friday evening I finally got the three red lights of doom, fortunately the extended warranty is now in effect so I gave Microsoft Support a ring on Saturday morning.

After a 58 minute wait on hold and after about the one hundredth time of hearing the words: “Please remain on the line and a support representative will be with you as soon as possible. Thankyou for your patience.” I finally managed to speak to a representative.

A few questions about the console followed (serial number etc) and I eventually got the option of having the UPS labels sent by post or by email. Initially I said I wanted them by post but as soon as I found out that it can take up to five days to get them I promptly changed my mind to email. At this stage I needed to change my Xbox Live email address so I gave the representative my new details and to my amusement the representative said he would have to write them down as the system had just crashed. I asked him if there were “three flashing red lights” displayed on the front of his PC but I don’t think he was too amused with the quip.

My console is scheduled to be picked up tomorrow and there’s currently about a 15 - 25 day turnaround for repairs (i.e. get a refurbished one sent back). I’ve had the console since the UK launch and I honestly thought I’d escaped the abysmal reliability problems but alas that was not to be. During my 360’s downtime I will continue to post news but unfortunately trial and demo impressions will have to wait until I get the console back. On the up side I should now have the time to play a few of my back catalog of games for other platforms that have built up over the last year and I hope to post reviews as appropriate.

The annual summer games drought is fast approaching and as the selection of quality releases dries up I was asking myself if the drought has come early to the Nintendo Wii. I’ve so far only purchased 3 games for the Wii,
Red Steel,
Wii Play, and
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. Wii play was only really bought because it came bundled with the extra remote, not for the games on offer (although some are quite enjoyable with family and friends). Red Steel was purchased soon after release to provide an alternative to the epic questing involved with Zelda but it didn’t really captivate me for too long.

Since finishing Zelda the Wii has been gathering dust, occasionally it’s used to browse the web when I can’t be bothered to boot up my laptop. I was hoping that
Super Paper Mario would fill the void during the summer, but for us European PAL users no firm release date has been scheduled. As far as I can see that leaves a distinct lack of games that interest me until the latter half of the year when we’ll (hopefully) see the release of
Metroid Prime 3 and
Super Mario Galaxy.

This is therefore the perfect opportunity for me to try out some of the virtual console games as I missed out on the NES, SNES and Mega Drive etc. during my youth (I was firmly in the Commodore Amiga camp). I’ve so far downloaded
Castlevania IV,
Gunstar Heroes,
R-Type, and
The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past is next on the list. Don’t get me wrong, I certainly wouldn’t advocate buying a Wii just to play retro games. I would prefer to have an original game running on the system, but at least the virtual console provides a small ray of light in the bleak months ahead in the Wii games portfolio.