danial

Yesterday I tried to play a relaxing game of Oblivion when all of the sudden the console froze up. I thought it was just some freak thing, so I got it all up and running again. To my surprise, after about one minute into gameplay, the system froze again. "Hmm" I thought. Rebooted, and tried again, and recieved the same results. At this point I couldn't even boot into the dashboard without it freezing. I decided to give GRAW a go at it. It froze up before I was able to load a level.

I rebooted again, and was greated by three lovely red lights around the power button. I hopped onto xbox.com to see what that meant and followed the knowledge base article to the letter. I then rebooted and it went to the dashboard. I thought everything was fine. My wife even played Zuma for about 30 minutes with no problems, and I was able to play the Tomb Raider demo for a little bit...

And then it began freezing again. It finally got the point where I couldn't boot the machine at all and was only recieving the three ominous red lights. So I called up Microsoft and now I'm expecting a box from them in which I'll have to ship my 360 off and wait for it to be repaired or I'll be sent a new machine.

In any event, this is pretty annoying. It isn't going to ruin my life or anything, however, paying that much for something only to have it crap out 5 months after you get it is less than fun. My machine was purchased on day one and I have read reports of many others with similar problems.

I'm personally convinced it is an overheating issue, because the problem began and was only aggrivated during attempts at actual gameplay. If I was willing to just buy a new machine I imagine, upon upening this one, I would find that the thermal pad/paste would be very poorly applied. I've even read reports in which individuals found that the thermal pad was still attached to the contact paper (which is a small strip of tin or Al I think).

I think the 360 is great in just about everyway. Microsoft produced a fantastic machine. However, this has convinced me that the release was a little bit too rushed. I imagine waiting just a few more weeks would have helped iron out this issue. I would also think that the amount they are having to spend on all the refurbishments/replacements is greater than the amount they would have had to have spent or lost in waiting. Of course, I could be wrong. Perhaps they factored in this "damage control".

[/end mild rant]