DOuG pRATt

Xbox Live, eX-Box Dead

June 27th, 2009

School vacation has just begun and my son Eric’s Xbox 360 has the dreaded RROD — Red Ring of Death. (To be precise, it’s the three flashing red lights problem.) Needless to say, Eric and I are not pleased, especially after the expense and effort to upgrade the hard drive to 120 GB a few months ago.

To add further to our aggravation, because it’s Saturday afternoon we can’t ship it for repair until Monday. Going through the process of arranging the return wasn’t fun, between Internet Explorer 8 blowing up a couple of times on Microsoft’s own site, and Microsoft’s maddening voice-guided phone support. Bismo sent in his Xbox 360 twice for repair, and the second time, rather than repairing it again, a replacement unit was sent.

None of Eric’s Nintendo consoles has ever had a hardware failure. The Wii glitched a couple of times, but after using the lens cleaning kit we could see an obvious particle, and it’s been fine since then.

As far as I’m concerned, Microsoft is a software company pretending to be a hardware company. What really galls me is that the extent of the RROD problem was a known issue long before August 29, 2007, when Eric’s unit was manufactured. Have they figured it out once and for all, even now?

Speaking of video games, I’ll follow up a bit on the Tokyo Game Action auction that was held back on June 6. I was going to write something more in-depth about the death of arcades, because Good Time Emporium in Somerville, MA is also gone, but I’m afraid I lost my momentum.

This video shows the property, assessed by the town of Winchendon at about $400,000, being auctioned off for $115,000. Eric and I had a chance to thank Andy McGuire and to wish him well. Andy said he and his wife would be going to Japan as soon as possible after the auction.

Get the latest Flash Player to see this player.

Filed under: Tech

Tags: red ring of death, rrod, tokyo game action, xbox 360