Nerd Alley: The RRoD & Me: A Love Story

Death!

A.K.A.  Jason rants about a poorly made video game console.

Oh Microsoft, I am lamenting.  You sit side by side with my Sony Playstation 2.  One of you still working very well, the other a $300 brick connected to my flat screen television.

You have managed to make the Windows ME of game consoles.  Great job.  How do you expect consumers to continue to shell out bucks for a system that has 50% chance of failing!

Personally, I am not the type of consumer who needs to have gadgets first.  I don't want to be a paying beta tester.  There were issues with most next gen systems when they first released.  Does anyone else remember turning their PS1 upside down so it didn't overheat?

FromWikipedia

With the early units, many gamers experienced skipping full-motion video or dreaded physical "ticking" noises coming from their PlayStations. The problem appears to have come from poorly placed vents leading to overheating in some environments—the plastic moldings inside the console would warp very slightly and create knock-on effects with the laser assembly. The solution was to ensure the console was sat on a surface which dissipated heat efficiently in a well vented area, or raise the unit up slightly by propping something at its edges. A common fix for already affected consoles was to turn the PlayStation sideways or upside-down (thereby using gravity to cancel the effects of the warped interior) although some gamers smacked the lid of the PlayStation to make a game load or work.

I'm getting off base here, but you get the idea.  I'm sick of shortcuts.  What happened to just releasing it when it's ready?  Then you wouldn't have to extend your warranties, lose even more money on replacing all of these bogus systems.

My experiences break down like this:

I've sent my system off for repair twice within the first two years of ownership.  After my warranty expired, as well as my system (again) I looked into a way to repair the system myself.  Being familiar with electronics from modding my PS2.  I won't bore you with talk about GPUs and heatsinks, but what I found out is all of these fixes were quite temporary (towel trick, LOL.) When the ring would rear it's ugly head again, here I go back into the guts & bolts.  I feel like some sort of electronics ob-gyn.

So the obvious question is, "why don't you just cut your losses and buy a ps3?"

Good question.  I'll divert that question to the backlog of games I have yet to finish.  I'm a gamer & there are some great games on the Xbox 360.  I just can't let the pirates at Gamestop have all of these for just about nothing!

I know exactly what's going to happen, and I know it's wrong.  I'll buy another 360 console from someplace, buy the in-store warranty (racket!) and pray to the Geek gods that I don't have any problems.  With electronics becoming more pricey everyday, this mentality is unacceptable.

Just another day (and dollar) in capitalist America.

http://blog.seattlepi.com/digitaljoystick/archives/129866.asp