I have talked before of the troubles I had with my old XBox 360. Well the infamous RRoD claimed another victim – my brother. He has had his 360 just over a year now. As I have heard a number of times, he claimed Microsoft had fixed the RRoD problem now with new chipsets, lower powered PSUs, smaller processers etc etc. Last week he told me that he got three red rings but that it restarted OK after that. The exact same thing happened to me a week before mine died. I told him to pack it up and swap it for a PS3 before its too late. Unfortunately he didn’t take my advice and yesterday his XBox 360 died on him, just in time for Christmas!

The thing is, in my family there have now been a total of 7 XBox 360s bought in the last 2 years. To date, 4 of them have died while all those that are still living are less than 12 months old. Maybe Microsoft have fixed the problem with the new hardware but maybe not – only time will tell.

Moral of the story: Microsoft don’t care if they make rubbish hardware because people are still buying it. Just don’t do it!!

Update: My brother managed to get a lend of a brand new 360 over Christmas. Unfortunately, it wasn’t working so he had to bring it back to the store and exchange it for another 360. Rubbish!!

Looks like everything our mothers said about spending too much time in front of the TV was true. Check out this poor soul who spent too much time on his Xbox 360. Don’t feel too sorry for him though, with his 37″ LCD head, he has become very popular amongst his peers.

As it turns out, Microsoft weren’t making rubbish hardware that died after a couple of days gaming after all. The infamous Xbox 360 RRoD is actually a failsafe switch added to prevent us all from ending up like this guy.

Thank you Microsoft. Thank you very much!

After 1 and a half years, I have finally lost patience (and interest) in my Xbox 360. So am planning to sell up and replace it with a brand spanking new 80GB PS3.

I bought my first 360 just before Christmas 2006 to go along with my new 40″ LCD TV. The first few days of hi-def gaming with Gears of War was fantastic.The graphics were awesome and the Gears cover mechanics really added to the realism. Unfortunately, the Honeymoon didn’t last very long. The ear deafening roar from the noisy 360 itself was disappointing. Then I had to replace the 360 after less than a week’s worth of service, spoiling my Christmas games fest. This was my first introduction into the world of pain surrounding Microsoft’s dodgy hardware.  Then I had to replace my spare controller and both of my rechargeable battery packs a week later. The wireless headset was complete and utter rubbish. My second 360 has been a royal pain in the backside. I have had to deal with constant interruptions to gaming sessions due to “unreadable” disks, all of which were brand new and completely unblemished. My 360 had a habit leaving strange concentric rings of crud, which took ages of gentle rubbing to clean off.  Then last Christmas, as I was planning another annual games fest, the console suffered the Red Ring of Death (RRoD) and I was left without a console for three weeks. Actually, I bought a Wii to cover the loss so it wasn’t all bad. Since then, it has been used less and less. I would play once in a blue moon, often interrupted by the “Unreadable” disk error. Then, the other night, as I settled down for a rare hour on GTA IV, it happened within 5 minutes of starting up. The final straw.

It is sad because I still love the console for all its faults. All of my brothers have 360s. The controllers are the best of any console, Arcade was great for a quick blast of Geometry Wars and online play was second to none. With big changes to the menu system, Gears 2 coming out this Christmas, and the brilliant Microsoft only PGR series, it would be tempting to stick with it for a while longer, or even just go for a new 360 in the hope that they have sorted the issues out.

I would love to hear from anyone else with similar experiences, particularly those who traded in for a PS3. How did you find the switch? Any regrets??