For anyone who loves video games as much as I do, few thrills can surpass the joy of getting your hands on a brand new console. I’ve owned almost every console since the Nintendo/Media Little Master days, and I can proudly say that gaming for me has metamorphosed from a mere ‘hobby’ into a full-grown passion, and eventually been cultivated into a way of life. I’ve celebrated the birth of many a console and grieved their deaths – which has never been easy. The only console that’s ever given me grief beyond measure – to the point that I wished my life didn’t revolve around gaming – is the Xbox360.
Sure, the facts and figures Microsoft keeps throwing at us show how successful the console has been as far as sales are concerned. I would attribute that completely to the software end of the spectrum, which is Microsoft’s robust game development platform (XNA) that allows developers to code games with relative ease and, at the same time, makes it easy for them to keep the game multiplatform (i.e. Xbox360 + Windows), making it more lucrative. Couple that with the excellent developer support backbone (including an extensive developer Knowledge Base) Microsoft has in place, and you get a win-win situation for anyone who wishes to develop software for the Xbox360. That’s pretty much why you see such a large number of games being released for the platform.
That however, doesn’t change the fact that the Xbox360 has the most unreliable hardware I’ve seen in years. The whole saga started when my first 360 RRoD’d (Red Ring of Death) on me six months after I bought it. For those of you that aren’t familiar with the term: when an Xbox360 experienced any sort of hardware failure, you saw three flashing red lights around the circular power button on the console. Since this signifies the death of your console, it’s been nicknamed the ’Red Ring of Death’.
this is strange man
