Dead Xbox 360 + long weekend = !@#$

Woohoo! ~~Four~~Three day weekend!

As we start one of the Unique American Holiday weekends, I’m looking forward to three days of hanging out at the house and doing some cleaning. I would like to be playing Dead Rising or something on the Xbox 360. Shame it’s dead.

Oh, yeah, that’s right. The Xbox 360, which I purchased in February, died. It froze up while playing a demo of Hitman. For some reason, it appears that a lot of people are having the same problem. I’ve seen a lot of postings on sites like Kokatu and the like talking about how after 8 months, their 360 up and died. The first two articles on the Xbox Support page are the symptoms that I experienced, and the Xbox Hardware forum is over 50% “My Xbox died” posts.

You would think that after paying $400 for a gaming computer, they’d give you a longer warranty than 90 days. Nope. they offered a 2 year “extended warranty” in the package for $39.99. I should have bought it. Make note of that kiddies.

Make sure you buy an extended warranty for your Xbox 360!

Don’t say I didn’t warn you. I don’t care if you get the Best Buy warranty or the Microsoft warranty or Billy Bob’s Thrift Story warranty. I gambled that I wouldn’t have a hardware failure and didn’t pay the $40. Instead, it’s costing me $130 to get it repaired. The “good” news, if you can call it that, is that Microsoft will let you add the extended warranty to the refurbished Xbox. So, this time, I’m going to play the safe bet and drop the $40. It won’t keep you from the possibility of spending a three day weekend at home with your thumbs up your backside, but, it will keep $130 in your wallet.