Diorex

Alright. I am just about done with Microsoft. My original Xbox would hang up and freeze every 30 minutes or so. My year old Xbox360 is about as reliable as a teenager with beer and car keys.

I can sometimes play for hours without freezing, other times it freezes before I even get the game turned on. Nothing quite as frustrating as sitting down to play a video game after a hard day and it taking 20 minutes even to get into the game.

This started on a consistent basis back in November when I bought Gears of War(it had happened a few times before that, but not consistently). To be fair I am not sure it was Gears of War that broke it, I had not played in about a month and before I could play the game I had this huge downloaded patch that had to be applied, it probably took 20 minutes.

Anyway, after this, the game would freeze on me for absolutely no reason. I played certain segments 10 or 11 times because there was no way to save until you reached a checkpoint. Then I picked up The Godfather, which was a strange sort of fun for me… but I cannot tell you how many saves I made and how much progress I lost because I would go through a 15 minutes mission and then the game would freeze on my drive back to a save point.

This has been a problem in each game I have played since November… the game just freezes for no reason and with no rhyme or reason.

So I went to my friend who knows everything…Google…This is what I got from Microsoft - no need to read it, it says try turning the system off, try unplugging all peripherals, try wiping the hard drive, try wiping the user account, try robbing a bank so you can buy a new one because you are screwed.

Then of course there are the forums with ideas like wrap it in a wet towel, place the game over an empty box, hang the power brick from a nail in the wall and a ton of other stupid stuff. I tried em all anyway, with no results.

So I called Microsoft to find that I bought the game 1 year and 5 days ago and my warranty was expired. I nicely explained that the problem had been regularly occurring for several months and was rebuked with “you should have called when the issue started”, I explained I was not trying to enforce a warranty I was just trying to get the system to work as it did before the patch was applied and was there any way to roll back the patch like I can in Windows.

Honest to God, this was the CSR’s response…”Sir, we are the largest software company in the world, we would never release a patch that would harm your machine, everything is thoroughly tested prior to release.”

Good thing I was not drinking hot coffee or juggling swords when this was said as it would have been very painful for me. I asked for clarification of this remark, and she explained that the Xbox was produced by Microsoft -”You know, the software company” and that they would not produce software that did not work properly.

I just about lost it at that point….Instead I just decided to quit entirely and let the damn thing collect dust. Screw it, I have more productive things to do anyway.

Unfortunately for me, the last game I had played was Viva Pinata with my 4 year old. She was having a blast. A combination of getting to play with Daddy and the game being somewhat on her level….Every day for the last 5 days she has asked me “Daddy have you fixed the game yet?”

So now where do I go? Disappoint my little girl at a time when she is showing interest in something I enjoy? Buy another crappy Microsoft product and reinforce the poor design? Is Sony any better?

Anyone know of anything to do to help this problem?

This entry was posted on Friday, February 16th, 2007 at 4:04 pm and is filed under Rants. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.