On the upside, I did get to play 6 songs of Guitar Hero II first.
This will mark my second return of an XBox 360 in just about 2 years. I think it bears noting that this will be 2 more returns than I have experienced with any console EVER. I have owned video game systems as far back as I can remember, from Intellivision and Atari (my grandmother's Atari still works), through the NES, Genesis, Playstation1, N64, Gamecube, PS2, and original XBox.
I think the XBox 360 is a great system, but the number of hardware faults seen are just laughable at this point. When I was shipping my Christmas gifts, a guy came in with a unit for return, and the clerk recognized the return box on sight for what it was. That shouldn't happen.
The acceptable number of unrecoverable hardware failures for a console is 0. I'm not talking about conditions were the system reboots and all is well - I still remember those frustrations from my childhood. I'm talking about failures to the point where your purchase is rendered a doorstop, which seems to be the norm of the types of failures the 360 owners are experiencing. I'm averaging one a year, and know of folks who have been through several.
For a failure this big, is there truly a possibility that Microsoft, a company that expends an enormous amount of effort in testing and quantifying things, was unaware of it, or was this seen, evaluated, and marked as an acceptable cost for the reward of being the first of the new systems on the market?
I'm looking to be out of a system for 2-3 weeks, at a time when I have several games from Christmas to play, not to mention several holdovers from the amazing Fall season release schedule. It's frustrating, especially becoming a veteran of the return cycle. It would be great if Microsoft could update their return cycle for repeat users whereby we could get a new / refurb box shipped to us as our broken box is sent back, taking a bit of the sting out of a frustration that shouldn't be happening.
posted @ Saturday, December 29, 2007 2:00 PM