Got a message from one of my friends on xbox live..

To all my friends,

My xbox died a horrible death last night so I won't be online until microsoft can fix my crappy xbox and send it back to me, which will be in feb.. *sigh* I guess I will be playing checkers by myself until then

At least the Live service we pay a premium for is stable and reliable.  Oh wait.. It's not.   Playstation 3 is looking better and better.

Our office xbox 360 had been having problems ( 3 red lights of death ) so we are sending it back.  One of my co-workers was going to bring his 360 in so we could still play while our old one was out being repaired.  Sure enough, he turned it on last night to play a little before he brought it in and it it red ringed on him.

Another one down.

The World : Charging for Live isn't going to cut it.  PSN is free and microsoft needs to make Gold memberships worth it, or make it free.

 Microsoft : No problem. We'll make it more attractive by taking away features from free users.  If you keep complaiining we'll brick your 360.

There is something seriously wrong with this company.  It's the equivalent of when my dad used to tell me that he'd give me something to cry about.

Me: Windows Vista is slow

MS : Fine we'll make it unstable too.  You happy now?  ungratefull bastard.

On the day after Thanksgiving we purchased Rock Band for the Office 360.  It immediately began the RLOD of death ritual.  Currently it's limping along while we wait for for the MS coffin to arrive to send it back for repairs.

When we complained to MS about it being the second time this particular 360 has had to be sent in.  They offered up 1 month of Xbox LIve.  Which is pretty weak in my opinion.

EA and Harmonix apparently have a different take on taking care of thier merchandise.  If you get a broken guitar ( which is common ).  Then you can give them your credit card information and they will ship you a new guitar with a return box.  If you don't ship back the broken guitar, then they charge your card.  This is a much better method than the 3 week turn around time to get your 360 repaired.

This might be impressive for some, and congrats to the xbox for doing it, but I have to think that is says more about the PS3 than it does about the 360 in Japan.

http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/834/834094p1.html?RSSwhen2007-11-09_083400&RSSid=834094

I really don't understand the ferver surrounding the wii.  We've been trying to buy one for family members for months now, even though our personal wii never gets turned on or used.  Sure it's an interesting diversion, and when people first come over they are most likely to want to see the Wii first.  But after playing the wii for a while people usually want me to turn the 360 back on and show them some other games.

 

Lately it's been guitar Hero 3 on the 360 that attracts people.  Sure I could have bought it on the Wii, but Nintendo's online blows, and they aren't going to have downloadable content.  Not that I'm happy with the price downloadable content is heading towards anyway.

 

What does the Wii lack for me?

Dolby Digital.  I mean really.  It's not 1998..  5.1 Digital should be required.  To me 5.1 makes a bigger difference in games and movies that Hi-Def does. Hi-def hi quality graphics, while I can easily acknowledge that graphics don't necessarily make...

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Apparently, MS may be adding parental timers to the 360.  So they can set a usage limit for a given time interval.  It's a great idea.  Just like the parental controls in the original xbox.  Unfortunately, they never marketed that functionality to parents.  I hope they do better this time should it turn out to be a feature really are adding.

http://www.engadget.com/2007/11/06/xbox-360-parental-timer-coming-in-december/

North American Sales figures are in.  Not really too surprising.

HW Sales
Xbox 360 527.8K
Wii 501K
Nintendo DS 495.8K
PlayStation Portable 284.5K
PlayStation 2 215K
PlayStation 3 119.4K
Game Boy Advance 75K

I had written previously about an ex-coworker who's 360 had given up the ghost.  He messaged me yesterday to let me know that he got 2 months of free xbox live out of the deal. ( Hey, I've had 2 red light repairs and they didn't give me nothing except the runaround. )

The one they sent back also had an HDMI port, so he was pretty excited.  However, when he hooked it up he attempted to reconnect his wireless controllers and found that they wouldn't recognize them.  After being on the phone with Microsoft support and running through some diagnostics they had him send his "repaired" 360 back.

So keep up the good work Microsoft service and support.  Someday, you might actually get him back to playing games again.

kotaku.com/gaming/he-hate-them/gabe-newell-totally-hates-the-ps3-309613.php

The creater of arguably the greatest FPS shooter of all time has consistently been critical of the PS3 design.