Whilst my dying 360 gently steers me towards Nintendo or Sony

Yeah, I replaced the 360 about 3 weeks ago with another machine so I am not left without a console, however it is rather frustrating as I hate to see these things go the way of the bin. Nevermind, it was worth a try.

Thanks and looks like it is more than just the Spring Update.

 

I'm still waiting for my 360...

 

I don't remember if I told my Red Ring story did I?

 

No, I don't think so. Sounds like a bedtime story for J Allard & his team...

"When considering your next gen console please remember the story of the Red Ring!"

 

Seems like ages since I last saw your name pop up on live matey. A few weeks now. Sadly, this 360 is way past fixing and has no further warranty. I am just going to ditch the motherboard and keep the spares just in case I need them. I may find a working mobo in the coming months and drop it in.

 

Ok I'm waiting ALL DAY for UPS to arrive I'm even outside swearing at cars that aren't the UPS truck this is back in November but it was an unusally warm November day.

So FINALLY at like 5pm the guy comes with 2 boxes. I rush up stairs to my room and unpack. Prop my 360 up next to the TV as it takes me forever to figure out how to turn the controller on finally I figure it out. Pop in DOA 4
pick hitomi and I'm cookin I play for oh I guess around 15 minutes......RED RINGS I freakin had my system for a half hour and my system red rings on me. SIGH I turn it off call tech and after the most annoying automated system I get some dude in India keep in mind the system at this point wasn't even OUT IN INDIA! the Guy didn't know what he was talking about
I'm annoyed I hang up and turn my 360 on again...hey it boots up. I pop in Sonic next gen which at the time of the first red ring I hadn't even opened yet so I'm playing after the 3rd load screen......Red rings. AHHHHHH Dammit I call tech again......no help. But I did unhook all the cables and hook everything back up again. Turn it it on leave it on for a while AWESOME it's working.....while I once again get some idiot in India.

I decided to put my system on it's side rather than upright and I unplugged that son of a bitch from my power strip and plugged it directly into the wall.
Besides a few freezes sometimes (mostly in Rumble roses which I think is more a game glitch) My 360 hasn't given me any problems since.

 

Of all the things you did, putting it horizontal was probably the only thing that made any difference. ;p This way gravity is working for you rather than against you. I like the idea of having it vertical and having more space to put stuff, but I don't trust the hardware to work that way. Isn't it funny though, everyone seems to have a story about how their 360 bit the dust or came close. There's been nothing like this since the early PS2 units.

 

2 weeks plus a day now. =(

 

I noticed a thread a while back where one AG user suggested that he thought only about 12 grumbling Xbox 360 users (possibly even just spoilers) were going around spending their time complaining about their 360 units whenever they sneezed or coughed! I wish!

MS Europe call centre seems to be based in some French speaking nation (possibly even France!) so I don't mind listening to them. It makes a difference from the Indian call centres most other companies use. However, I do wish that they'd turn off the hold music. It's been the same segment of French band "Air" since launch. It does get a bit annoying and now I associate the band with failing Xbox 360's thanks to the Pavlovian effect. Whenever I hear Air, I immediately salivate...

I've been particularly unlucky I think. This surely cannot be the experience of most 360 owners. The weird thing for me is I treat all these units as if they were my off-spring! It's not like I have even tried to hack them, upgrade the firmware illegally or played on them for 55hrs straight (reference to DP).

My launch edition just couldn't stand life and died so often that it ran out of warranty, run out of luck, ran out of parts to replace and had to be put down! I actually gave it away for free yesterday. That's how little respect I had for it! Someone on Freeshare was looking for spare parts, so off it went. It was like the bad apple in the batch I guess.

Contrary to popular belief I wouldn't be going on about it if it wasn't happening to me. I don't invite hardware failure. I'd rather it didn't happen and it is GREAT when I hear people say "Dude, mine is a launch edition and it has been no problem at all". It gives me a warm glow to think that Microsoft actually made some 360 units that didn't immediately choke under the strain of their own operation.

Anyway, I am onto my 5th Xbox 360 since December 2005 and I am guessing that this time the odds are stacked in my favour! I mean, you just can't have 5 units fail on you, can you?

Fingers crossed!

Just as an aside, and this is where the real grumblers will say "See, he's a PS fanboy, I knew it!" I borrowed a PS3 from a local independent retailer. He's had a Japanese PS3 kicking about for several weeks and he couldn't shift it, so when I was mentioning me 360 plight he offered to let me road test the PS3.

First impressions?

Firstly, it's butt ugly, even up close! I genuinely dislike the design, but the PS2 never really floated my boat immediately either. Now I look back on that angular striped thing with fondness and spit on the Slimline design!

Immediately though I thought "excellent, no huge heavy, hot PSU" and this continued as I ran both systems for a bit and realised the PS3 is not only quieter, but doesn't generate remotely the same amount of heat.

The controller is however pretty flimbsy, feels too light and the LT2 and RT2 buttons seem to be too spongy and move too far into the controller. They certainly don't have the same resistence as the PS2 dual shock. I hate the 4 little LEDS on the side. A status LED would have been more useful, but I can see that when in multi player mode it makes sense to see which player is which, however it is not a huge deal and they could lose those straight away. See, I can envisage price cutting aspects already!

I like the fact I didn't have to put in batteries, but I disliked the fact I had to put in a USB cable first off and again when I updated the unit. The 360 controller has more weight and a far better feel to it. So, confirming I am not a PS fanboy, I can see one advantage already in using the 360.

Setting it up took about 15mins. Some aspects of it were easier than others and I did have a bit of a tussle with trying to get the HDMI to work on the TV as this was the first thing I have ever hooked up to my TV in HDMI. I didn't realise for instance I had to switch the damned port ON via menus on my TV. That said, I liked the Sony selection menu in system setup. There is a bit of noise that comes through the TV when it switches ratios, but the output was very crisp. Not 100% sure about the colour handling, but that could be partly down to my Sharp LCD.

The unit was the Premium edition and comes stuffed with little features I could probably live without such as the card reading ports, but others actually proved quite useful. The hard drive light flickering on the front was reassuring during firmware update. The inbuilt wi-fi and subsequent ease of connection was brilliant. Unlike the 360, which took about 30mins to piss around with to get online (and I had to change the wireless router I had at the time), the PS3 was up and browsing in under 5mins.

The firmware update was longer than life itself... I could see my evening passing before my very eyes and the wife (already tired) fell asleep. It took 45mins to upgrade! Unlike the 360 however the PS3 has several "are you sure you want to do this?" layers and I liked the fact you could download the update, then apply it later if you wanted or ditch it. My experience with the Spring Update on the 360 has made me wary.

Browsing online was cool, but the image on the screen was so small it hurt my eyes. I should check to see whether I can change the viewing scale!

Because it was a Japanese unit I couldn't tell you how it handled films or PAL PS2. However, both my wife and I were unimpressed with Spiderman 3. The game looked good and tonight I'll give it another quick blast, but by comparision the graphics during the short film clips were shocking. The faces look completely unrealistic and there were lots of artifacts, especially around the eyes and mouths. If anything they made skin tones and humans look rubbery and weird. It was more like a PS2 game than Next Gen and by comparison with the 360 I was a bit disappointed tbh.

I was stunned at how much information per game is saved to the HDD. Almost 2700Mb of information had to be saved before I could do a single thing. There was no "Quick Game" and loading one title took about 6mins (is this normal?)

So, first impressions based on about 3hrs with the PS3 last night is that it is quiet, well designed (apart from the controller), the hardware is rock solid and I feel confident it wouldn't die on me 5 times. The GUI was straight forward, pretty easy to set up, simplicity itself to get online, some great features the 360 should have had from the off.

Games wise, I struggled to find a title I really wanted to play and that is pretty much the reason I suspect the unit isn't selling (that and the price). Spiderman 3 didn't make me think wow, in fact it surprised me at how bad certain aspects of the graphic handling was.

I guess in time the developers will come up with better graphics, it's early days for the PS3, but by comparison the 360 had several excellent games in the same time frame. Nothing currently available for the PS3 made me think - I must have this!

This unit will be going back. I can't see the point in owning a PS3 and not being able to use PS2 and films, but I am still not convinced at present I really need a PS3 at all. Perhaps once more titles hit the shelves.

Thus far my experience of "Next Gen" gaming just makes me appreciate the last gen more. Ah, those feel like far flung trouble free days when hardware worked and software was thrown at you left & right!

 

checken ze PMs Parris!

 

Some people claim to have gone through 9 360s before they got a working one.

No Comment on the PS3....I've bashed it enough.

 

I've had seven die on me since launch. My eighth console is still running strong but now it's banned from Xbox Live because I modded it so I could file swap in DOA4. I bought an Elite system for XBL and I haven't had any issues with that as of yet.

 

If these people are going through 9 consoles I guess, like me they are tussling with the heavy & hard decision - If I ditch the 360, what is the alternative? MS seriously are depressing me with their attitude towards their customers. It gives me no faith in the product if they are simply saying "if it breaks, send it back" as I don't think so many should be failing. Would it not be better to admit that something is wrong and fix it? Clearly, if the PS3 suddenly had a plethora of "PS3 Only" titles that rocked, people may feel inclined to re-consider the unit.

We keep mentioning the price of the PS3 and sucking air between our teeth, but I am not going to shame myself into admitting just how much I have spent on Xbox 360 hardware. More than any other single console ever! That actually includes development kits. At this rate I will be unable to afford to be a 360 user! Thank god some of those repairs were under warranty, but I still had to buy the machines and I am quite literally onto my 5th machine, not just 5th return.

I can't find fault with the PS3 hardware and OS (apart from the minor issues I mentioned earlier).

Given the option of an expensive piece of hardware that worked and a cheaper one that needed frequent repair or replacement, it's a no brainer. Microsoft should consider their options and we die-hard gamers should be putting our feet down.

It's a strange society we live in today. We demand quality, but the moment you start complaining about any aspects of commercial practice you are suddenly rounded on for being negative. All I think any console owner actually wants is to know that their hardware & software will run reasonably reliably, with the minimum of fuss & repair and I don't think that changes whether you are a Nintendo, Sony or Microsoft fan.

As a throw away society we are taught to just go back and purchase another item, which sends out all the wrong messages to Microsoft and kind of lets them off the hook! I am as guilty of that as the next man, sadly. However, given my experiences with the PS3 and 360 my suspicion is that as the available selection of PS titles increases and they iron out the graphics I may be tempted to have a second look.

If however Microsoft were big enough to reassure me that the revisions to the 360 Elite are sufficient to stop the hardware failing so frequently, that might be the route to take. I'm glad to see Grap3fruitman is having a better experience with his Elite system and I wonder whether that additional fan system is all it has taken to solve the issue. If it is, then why won't MS admit there is an issue with prevision revisions?

Silence on these things just create rumors, suspicion and the opening for anyone who seriously does want to bash Microsoft. I hope that my posting at least demonstrates I am not.

 

I like to think of the xbox 360 as a ticking timebomb

 

no one hates the PS3. we just can't justify the price.

 

Just to add confusion to this thread. I had a 360 with 3 red segments showing i.e. a general hardware failure. Out of warranty I decided to cut the seal and have a look inside - nothing to lose after all.

Now, I actually didn't do anything to the unit. I took it right back, cleaned all the connectors and wiped every cm of the board so that it gleamed. The fans were filthy (worse than I realised) and I even took the DVD drive completely to pieces.

On reassembling the unit it booted up immediately and over the course of the last few days I've been using it on & off without a hitch.

A bad internal connection perhaps? Strange machines to just give up under the stress of a bit of dust. ;-)

 

Try replacing the X clamps and buying a bigger cooling system :thumbsup: maybe a higher power fan or cutting a hole in the side of the case, fitting a fan there too, or add some heatpipes.

 

Resolder the GPU and it'll work like magic. Atleast that's what I always hear.

 

Reading this thread was depressing. We have a "family" 360 that we've had since around launch time. It's worked fine so far. But I want to get my own to take to school. But I can't afford to have it die on me. I hope the Elite is fixed. I'm saving up for one right now...

 

People have had Elite's fail on them too. It's luck of the draw really.