I Hate Microsoft, Volumes 9 & 10
Sunday, September 19, 2010 at 11:53PM Last night, I was playing Bioshock 2 when my 360 froze with a funky patterned screen of blue herringbone. After a few reboots I determined that it was now just booting to display a 3/4 red flashing ring. Is this the Red Ring of Death™? I can't keep track anymore. I sort of think 3/4 is different from the full red ring but whatever. The main point is that Xbox #4, old stalwart that it was, has bit it. Well, you can buy a new 360 "slim model" with 4Gb of flash RAM for about what MS charges to service an old model, so let's do that! Off I went to Best Buy.
First note: the new "slim model" has a bare SATA port, and thus won't take the OG 360 hard drives. Really Microsoft? You decide to shaft the early adopters? Well, you decided that years ago, but I guess the shafting is still ongoing. Turns out it's pretty easy to open the case of the old hard drive, extract the bare drive and stick it in the SATA slot. Google it to find the relevant Youtube videos and have your Torx drivers ready. OK, done. (But wait, I hear you saying. Does the SATA drive slot *only* take laptop drives? After all, that's the been the whisker-thin justification all along for the hard drive gouging! No, it takes a full-size drive. The laptop-sized drive I freed from the enclosure just sort of floats in that larger space. But I'm sure the high performance of the drive is well worth the cost! (rolls eyes))
Second note: Did you buy a memory card to store your account on? Oh sorry, the new 360 can't actually connect original memory cards! D'oh! You'll have to recover your account, which takes about 15 minutes. I don't know what the fuck you do if there is real data on that thing. Sucker! In 2010 people use flash drives like real computers. If you bought the previously gougy memory card than Microsoft will laugh at you all the way to the bank.
Third note: You need to transfer your licenses to the new console. For whatever reason, Safari didn't work for me and I had to use Firefox. Visit http://www.xbox.com/drm and follow the instructions there.
Fourth note: Yes, that "4Gb model" you just bought only has 3Gb of storage available. Sucker!
In conclusion: if you've bought more than zero Xbox 360's? Sucker!
Reader Comments (2)
Mmmm... I love some fresh snark in the morning.
Sorry to hear of all the hassles, but why in the world were you playing Bioshock 2? I thought everyone was playing Reach? :)
Meh. I'm not very big on FPS play, and don't ever play Deathmatch or Capture the Flag style things. Just not gametypes that interest me. I realize the irony here of talking about playing Bioshock which is also a FPS but the distinction is that I'll probably never try the Bioshock multiplayer. As for single player, there are two issues: 1 ) Halo really isn't that great of a singleplayer experience and it never has been and 2 ) Reach *does* have cooperative play of the singleplayer store, so I'll probably play it at some point in the future with my 360 co-op game playing friends. Thus: playing Bioshock 2. The Bioshock story and environment is cool enough to overcome being a FPS that doesn't thrill me.
Plus, I bought Bioshock 2 at a discount when Amazon had it on sale *and* I used an Amazon credit to reduce the cost further. So part of the answer is I didn't buy Bioshock 2 when it cost $60 and I'm not buying Halo Reach now because it still costs $60. Sometime in the next six months it will be available for $40 and we'll all pick it up then.