For those who don’t know, I won the Xbox 360 at CFUnited ’06 from Microsoft’s booth. Immediately upon receipt, I had to spend $150 on this “free” system for a wireless network adapter and one game, just to play it. That’s the most expensive free system ever.

That Xbox lasted a long time, relatively speaking… It was around spring of ’07 when the disc drive tray decided to stop opening/closing. I wasn’t experiencing any of the overheating, red-ring-of-death problems I read so much about. I figured that perhaps the problem was overblown or whatnot, or maybe I was just lucky.

Well, my luck ran out. A few months after getting my first replacement, it died. Now, just moments ago, my replacement’s replacement died. After weeks of inability to just log in and play games, thanks to Microsoft’s servers buckling under the pressure of Christmas sales, I now can’t play any disc-based games. On top of that, the 360 is also our DVD player, so not only can I not game (and use my 360 subscription that is paid for), but I won’t be able to watch movies (and use my Netflix subscription that is paid for).

I’m thinking that it’s time to bite the bullet and actually buy a 360 Arcade (or a used 360 still under warranty) for the other room. Not for primarily gaming, but as a Media Center Extender. I’ve built up quite the library of movies, and it’ll be nice to watch them from the other room, too. And, when the next XBox dies, I’ll have a spare to tide me over until the repairs are finished.

I love how Microsoft claims that there was no outage. Sure, only a small percentage of people were able to log in and play over the past week, but that’s not an outage. Apparently the servers never went down, they were just overwhelmed. Next, the power company will say “Sure, only a small percentage of our customers have power, but it’s not an outage. The power plant is still functioning.”

We deserve compensation for the service we’ve paid for that we were unable to access. Of course, since they don’t provide compensation for service unable to be accessed when your defective console is going in for repair, I expect them to pull the same shenanigans with this, and pretend that they owe us nothing.

It’s been mostly ignored by the social media sites, but XBL has been having major issues the past few days. Inability to log in, people getting kicked off of XBL in the middle of online games, etc… And it’s a worldwide problem, not just in the US. Hopefully Microsoft can actually provide us with the service we *pay* for, on the days we’re getting new games, and actually want top play them online.

Oh, if any of you are able to sign in, have COD4, and want to play, send me an invite. My gamer tag, as you might have guessed, is iotashan.