I had an XBox 360 replaced in November 2006, a casualty of the infamous RRoD problem (Red Ring of Death). Gears of War was just relased, and it's intense graphics processing took a toll on many XBoxes during the 2006 holiday season. I was forced to take a leave of absence from achieving gamerscore points for 3 whole weeks (the length of time it took to get my replacement XBox). The "new" XBox got me another year's worth of warranty, WOOHOO!

A whole year goes by without a problem...but literally days after my warranty expires I get this:


One blinking red light, and an error message telling me to contact XBox Customer Support. "E 74"...whatver that means?!?!?! I gave the customer support center a call, and they said that it would cost me $99 to repair. "WHAT?!, I thought there was a 3yr warranty for all XBox 360s?!?!?!" The rep explained to me that the 3yr deal only applies to the 3 flashing lights problem...not the 1,2, or 4 flashing light problems. I was furious, but eventually surrendered my 16 digit Visa number to them. I can look forward to another 3 weeks with no xboxlive :(

I've done some digging on the web to see if others were experiencing this issue, and as expected I found a few topics at the xbox.com forums:

Thread 1

Thread 2

Thread 3

Why is Microsoft limiting the 3yr warranty to the 3 lights issue, when apparently there are other hardware issues that are much too common? By reading some other user's comments, I might be lucky that this is only the 2nd time that I'm going through this. I'd be half as angry right now if MS started a swap-out program, just as EA is doing with the RockBand guitars. Then I wouldn't have to wait 3 whole weeks to build upon my gamerscore. ARRGGGGGHHH!!!

Posted by: Colby | December 11, 2007 3:38 PM

I stumbled upon an article which describes a bunch of people picking up "Guitar Hero III" from EB Games. Oh, I can picture the amount of joy expressed on their faces when they opened up the box to find the actual game missing!!! What makes the situation even more joyous *evil grin*, is the fact that by EB Games' policy, they weren't able to return the bundle for an exchange or refund (the game was missing...muahahaha!!!).

I’d say this is the perfect example/excuse to open up those holiday gifts early…just to be sure you’re getting what you or your loved one has spent all that money on. To those of you getting video games as an Xmas present from me, I hope you don’t mind that it’s already opened…and tested (I wouldn’t want to give you a faulty disc now would I?) *grin*

Posted by: MuchoTacoBurrito | November 21, 2007 1:45 AM

'Guitar Hero III' is turning out to be as fun as I expected it to be, IT RAWKS!!!

I have to contradict myself (from an earlier comment) because the timing is noticeably looser than 'GH II', which is better for the beginner to average player. However, the expert player might find this robs some of the fun out of the game. I say this because during some of the perplexing note patterns, I feel like all I need to do is "mash buttons" to get by. You can tell they spent a lot of time designing the note patterns, as it really feels like you’re playing guitar (yes, I play a real guitar aside from GH).

The addition of the boss battles makes the game for me, because they are VERY challenging. They key to winning in these battles is knowing when to deploy your attacks against the competitor. What I really enjoy about the boss battles is that the songs you play really showoff the style of the real counterparts (probably because they actually wrote and recorded those tracks for the game).

In previous GH games, we were treated to excellent covers of some great songs. Here in 'GH III' we are able to enjoy the original recordings of a lot of the tracks. This makes the Guitar Hero experience seem just a little more authentic (I'm playing guitar for Pearl Jam!!!).

With the 70+ songs on-disc (what a killer song selection it is), and more to come via Xbox Live download, I'm sure I'll be enjoying this game for quite a while...at least until RockBand is released. IMHO, replay value in the 'Guitar Hero' series is quite high.