Thursday, February 28, 2008

The Blinking Red Lights Revisited

Its been less than a year since my XBox 360 went on the fritz and decided to die. I commemorated the death of my console with this post on my blog last May. Since receiving my new 360 in June of 2007, I have not had to deal with the three lights of death, but I have run into a hand full of problems that make me want to toss my XBox 360 into the garbage receptacle.

Before I get into these problems, it should be noted that a good chunk of the gaming population who owns XBox 360's have had problems with their console. You may think I am making this fact up, but a study conducted by Square Trade has showed that 16.4% of 360 owners run into some sort of hardware problem with their 360. So when looking at XBox 360 hardware failures from an overall standpoint, the chance of your 360 having some sort of mechanical defect is somewhat high. I guess I am just one of those lucky ones to be included (insert sarcasm here).

When looking at the various hardware failures my 360 has encountered, its ranged from minor things, such as my game disc's getting minor scratches on them to major things such as the Three Rings of Death where I've had to send in my console to Microsoft. Major or minor, I have had a nice long list of troubles with my 360, and am tired of it, especially my most re-occurring problem of my system freezing.

The one problem that stands out the most with my XBox360 is the fact that my games sometimes freeze up. This happens in two ways. First and most noteworthy is the "Disc Read Error" that has plagued my system a lot lately. It mainly happens with newer 360 games that run at a solid 60 frames per second. It's quite simple, as you'll be playing your game, and all of a sudden, the audio goes...then you hear the disc drive clicking, and all of a sudden, you get a message popping up from your XBox 360 Dashboard, stating that the "Disc is unreadable". When this happens, you must restart the console, and reload your game. The other way the 360 freezes up, is when your game simply freezes up, and you are stuck staring at a frozen screen.

Here are some of the examples I've encountered so far:

1. NBA2k7 - This game gave me disc error messages during the game, and for some reason, my game would freeze whenever I played a home game with the Cleveland Cavaliers. I know the second part sounds strange, but it did happen, and I really wanted to play a season with LeBron James and the Cavaliers.

2. MLB2k7 - One in about every 15 games I played would freeze. Doesn't sound like many froze, but when the game did freeze, it sucked, as half the time I had a good game going that I did not want to see end.

3. NBA2k8 - I am able to play with Cleveland in this year's game, but I still get lots of "disc error" messages as the game play is going too fast for the disc drive to process it. Looks like 2kSports made their game a little too good, as the 360 system has struggled to keep up with the speed of the game.

4. Madden 08 - I have enjoyed playing this game, but every once in awhile I would be playing and signs of my game ending would arise. It would start out with the pathetic radio commentary going away. After that occurred, you could hear the 360 disc reader skipping on the console, and finally...BAM!!! The Disc Error message popping up on the screen and my game was over. This was especially frustrating after I had it happen once in a game where I returned TWO kickoff returns for TD's in the same game.

5. NHL 08 - I've played countless amounts of this game, and only a few times, I have had the disc error message. In addition to this, I've also had the game actually freeze up, as the screen freezes, and I am forced to restart the game.

So as you can see, with the faster game speeds...the XBox 360 has been unable to handle the pressure, as I've had multiple sports games go on the fritz and freeze up on me.

To counter this dilemma, I bought a cooling fan for my 360. Initially, this cut down on the amount of times my system froze up a lot, but to this day, I still am having problems with my games freezing up. Quite frankly, I feel that when paying $400 for a video game system, you should not have to put up with your games freezing up at all...period.

So why make it such a big deal with only a couple of games freezing up. Well lets just say that prior to purchasing my XBox 360, I owned a PlayStation2, Super Nintendo and a regular Nintendo. Put all three systems together, and its about a 13 year period between owning all of those consoles. Sure with the Nintendo, you had to blow out the cartridges once in awhile, but even that was very minor, and that system never had a moment where the games froze. Overall, during this 13 year period, I never once had a problem with any of those systems and I never even had to return one of my consoles to the manufacturer...looks like Microsoft ended my 13 year streak.

With all the problems I've had with my 360, I am starting to give up on this console. Sure it is one hell of a machine and is a fun system to play, but at the same time, all the mechanical problems put a black eye over Microsoft's newest gaming system. I'm not sure what I will do, but the PlayStation 3 is looking like a great alternative, as I have not heard people having much problems with that system...and in addition, it also doubles as a Blue-Ray DVD player.

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Posted by Kyle at 10:55 PM | | Comments

Friday, May 25, 2007

Til death do us part...


This past weekend, I read a video game magazine that talked about the XBox 360 and how people have been having troubles with their consoles failing on them. Its something that has become more and more evident as of late as the number of reported cases by 360 owners have increased.
The failing 360 console is signified by three flashing lights on the power button, which have been referred to by experts as the "three rings of death". This name is given because when this happens, for the most part, you are SOL as your XBox 360 does not work after this happens. Whats even more weird is that there are no signs of this failure coming, and out of the blue, you get the three flashing red lights and you are stuck with an inoperable XBox 360.

Upon buying my XBox 360 about nine months ago, I never envisioned this problem happening to me. I figured if I took good care of my hardware, and treated it well, I would be out of the blue. About two months after I bought it, I had my first case of the three rings of death. However, upon turning my console on a second time, the lights went away and the problem never did return...well until about six months later that is.

Today, after playing a game of NBA2k7, I turned off my XBox and ate my lunch. Later in the afternoon, I booted up my XBox to play a game of hockey, and bam...the three red lights appeared. My initial reaction was to just reboot my 360 and the problem would go away, but it didn't. After turning off my XBox about 10 times however, I finally realized the problem wasn't going away. My XBox was toast.

There is some good news to come of this story. For starters, Microsoft said my XBox 360 is still under warranty, and that I will get a free replacement one at no cost. In addition to this, they will also pay for all of the shipping costs incurred by this transaction (I guess Bill Gates does have some pretty deep pockets).
Until I receive my new 360, it looks like I am "without sticks" for two weeks, as I will have no video games to play. I'll probably use this time to intensify my job search for a full-time job, devote more time to this blog that hasn't been updated lately, as well as many other types of constructive time-management activities.

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Posted by Kyle at 12:05 AM | | Comments