Previous news: 1 March 2008

RIP Xbox 360: 26th August 2006 - 1st March 2008
When I first heard reports about Xbox 360s failing I thought it was due to a production fault in a limited number of cases. As time went on more people seemed to be more vocal about the issue, but I thought it was a vocal minority rather than a true representation of the issue.

Since then I've read into the issues and have come to believe that there is a real problem. It appears that at least 30% of 360s will fail, which compares to around 2-3% of Wii and PS3 consoles.

It appears to track back to when the 360 was being created, Microsoft wanted to be first to market ahead of the PS3 and so they took a few shortcuts along the way. Sadly for us gamers, a few of these shortcuts have come back to haunt Microsoft.

It all started to go downhill for me after I'd purchased a copy of Mass Effect for a nice second hand price. (Why pay full price for a piece of data?) I'd not played on my 360 since my brother lent me Assassins Creed, so I was looking forward to something new to get absorbed into. But literally a minute after firing up the 360 with Mass Effect it froze on the character creation screen!

"Peh, must be a dirty disk" I thought, so I took it out and gave it a clean. Since then I've had to endure random lockups and freezing while playing through the game. Sometimes after a few minutes, other times it could keep going an hour or longer. It's much harder to relax and enjoy a game when you don't know how long it'll keep working for...

Then tonight I'd made the decision to call Microsoft on Monday and pay £60 to have it repaired. I thought I'd try and play one final session on Mass Effect before sending it back. So I tapped on the power button and saw the ring of light give its final message.

So the good news is I should be able to get it repaired for free at Microsoft will replace red ring failures for three years over the original purchase. But I'm seriously considering selling my soon to be repaired 360 and buying a PS3 instead, because I want a console that I can rely on.

Mav