Archives
3 Red Lights
Published on July 10th, 2008 - 6:56 am - by Josh | Add a comment below 
Category: Rants
I guess it was only a matter of time, but in the back of my mind I was kind of hoping mine would run the distance. Everyone I know that has an Xbox 360 has had to return it due to the infamous “3 Red Lights” failure; but not me, mine lasted almost three full years. :) But it finally bit the dust the other night when I was wanting to play a little.
So I made the call to Microsoft, and as expected they asked me for the serial number of my Xbox. As I was reading it off over the phone I noticed the manufacture date of mine was actually November 2005! Probably not very exciting to most of you, but if you own a 360 you probably know that they extended the warranty of most units from one year to three years to try to alleviate the outcry about so many broken 360s. Whew, I just barely made it. I guess I should consider myself lucky that it broke now, and not six months from now.
A few minutes later I was told I’d receive a UPS label and then I could drop it off at any UPS Store and expect it back in two to three weeks. Overall it has been a relatively painless process so far for me, but I’ve heard some pretty bad horror stories (sorry Autstin), so I’ll keep my fingers crossed until I receive my new Xbox 360.
Curse you Microsoft.
Tags: 
Entries RSS
July 20th, 2008 at 8:41 am
I think Austin actually got a new 360 when he sent his in and it seems to be working pretty well. That is if those of us who don’t use them could figure out how to work them. We ended up watching Spiderwick the other night with subtitiles cause we couldn’t figure out how to make them go away. That was probably good in the end as well, since your mom can’t hear.
Later and I hope everyone is doing well.
G.
July 20th, 2008 at 12:13 pm
Hahaha. Nice. I tried to talk Mom through it over the phone, but no such luck. I got my 360 back just a couple days ago and all is well. They just replaced it with another one for free
July 21st, 2008 at 7:00 pm
The fact that they can simply give you a new one is an indicator that the manufacturing cost is probably less than a third of what you actually pay for one. You know in mass production they get their components for next to nothing. Anyway have fun with it.
In the mean time I am still waiting on the multi-dimensional hologram gaming where the actual play is not on a screen, but is dimensional imagery displayed centrally between the players, either off a flat table or as an overhead projection to the playing surface. With network capability to project across the net so even players at multiple locations have the same holographic multidimensional images displayed. Battle scenes would be awesome.
Why don’t you and Ryan program this capability so we can all retire.
G.
July 21st, 2008 at 8:40 pm
Hahaha, yeah, true virtual reality gaming would of course be awesome
And yeah, you would think they make a killing off of the console, but everyone they sell they actually sell at a loss for the first couple of years. They don’t start turning a profit on them until about this time in the life-cycle (the third year). They make all their money by getting as many of them into homes as they can then selling all of the games, on-line downloads, and subscriptions.
It’s weird, I think the video game market is the only place that this ever happens….