I got the flashing red lights of death on the 360 as I tried to put in my new/used copy of Lego Star Wars 2 I recently traded in for (traded in Call of Duty III -- Hey, by the way, did you know there was a big invasion of Northwest Europe by the Allies against the Nazis in 1944? I know, like, I was totally surprised too as I played through it for the fifth time). I just got the 360 in December as a gift from my buds and wife for graduatin', and I already have the "burn out" lights? I only play this thing maybe once or twice a week! Jeepers Creepers!
Ya see, the original Xbox 360s have a design flaw that results in three flashing red lights (denoting a "hardware problem") appearing after so many hours of use. Back when the 360 came out (Xmas 2005) they only had a 90-day warranty, so anyone who didn't play the hell out of their 360 to get it to die before the warranty was up was S.O.L. Fortunately, Microsoft extended everyone's warranties in early 2006 to one year. Then, just last month they extended all warranties to THREE years because of this problem, and finally admitted it was a design flaw with the system (at the same time releasing the new and improved "360 Elite" console), though they had already screwed a lot of early adopters by waiting so long.
I went through all the troubleshooting on the website, and then called 1-800-4MY-XBOX, listened to the voice recognition tree complete with goth/emo rock background music (it was totally X-treme), and finally got to a guy who took my name and address. He said that they'd be sending a box to me "ASAP" to ship it to them where they can fix it, but then explained the details and I found out that "ASAP" evidentially means 4-6 weeks. He didn't ask for any "date of purchase" or bullshit because as of the announcement last month, their warranty on the very first 360 sold isn't even up. Let's hope this baby comes back to me soon.
I guess you never know how much you'll miss something until its gone. I thought we had more time before the end...*sniff*...if I had only known... I never would have wasted all those hours beating Dead Rising six times...or...or playing through Gears of War multiple times to get all the COG tags...*sniff*...
...but wait, what of my Halo III preorder? It comes out in only a little over four weeks from now!
That means that I won't be able to ...
...KAAAAAHHHHHHHHNNNNNNNNNNN!
