, The ballad of a brothers frustration. (aka broken consoles) @ Gamer411

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Blogs: The ballad of a brothers frust...

You gotta be me I guess, to fully understand the quirks that come with being a sibling to a person that 20 years ago was your best friend. It's probably a universal truth that goes with knowing someone well enough that you simply know when things happen without being told.

Both my brother (step) and I own Xbox 360s. I returned my first one to get one that was manufactured within the past 6 months, he bought his recently around 3 months ago. Recently we both nearly around the same time started having serious problems with our consoles; Both started having unreadable disc errors and games will not start up. Every game I own, goes directly to the screen that says, "please insert this disc in an xbox 360 console" and all of my games do that and have unreadable disc errors. The damned thing is a month old. So, last night I set up a room in rainbow six for my brother and I to play in, but for some reason my brother wasn't entering.. I figured he was inserting and ejecting his disc continually to get it to actually start up. Usual business.

After about 10 minutes I just thought to myself, "oh no, he did it". This is where the title comes into play.. I had recently just come from visiting him in the city he resides, it's about 150 miles away. Driving back from his place with a long time friend, I jokingly stated "it's only a matter of time before that thing is going to be in at LEAST 20 pieces"....... laughs abound. I was not joking.

He can afford another one, this leads him into being the type of person where when things like this happen, it's all over. Trying and trying to get the game to work, 20 "insert" screens later, his xbox 360 would not give him his disc back. It was stuck in the tray, and eject button or guide eject button would not work.. it would rev up like it was going to eject but not even move, it was trying to keep it. This is the fuse that lead to his xbox360s demise.

"I gave into my desires to destroy it", he says. I replied, "I knew, last night, it's like I felt it's soul leaving this earth and going into the eternal beige box landfill". I knew it was only a matter of time before that thing was toast. It's not even a temper thing, he even methodically took off the hard drive, placed it gently on his desk, unplugged the system, sat it in the middle of the floor and simply let the damned no excuse for breaking POS have it for the last time.

After confirming my senses of it dying, I called up the friend I had mentioned to that he would break it very soon and laughed. Believe me, I'm feeling the same way right now... i had put in a flawless, brand new copy of the LE Gears of War game, at least 28-30 times trying to get it to even begin to spin the motor... nothing. Vertical placement, horizontal placement, removed the HD, Cleaned the absolutely clean scratchless disc, air dusted the drive... everything..

A few dozen tries later, FINALLY it came up with the "insert this disc in 360" screen..

Why in the hell does this damn system come equipped with the error anyway, or even then, why would the discs have that error while putting it in a damned Xbox 360 console anyway... I mean it's like putting an audio CD into a discman only to have an error that says "please insert this audio cd into a Discman".. grrr.

Gears worked, I played. Within an hour I had two "disc is unreadable" errors. I mean it's a good thing i insured the system so i can get a new one today... but this will be my 3rd console.

My brothers died.
Mine is dying in the ER.
Our friend's xbox is dying the same way.
His friend has a xbox 360 that constantly gives him the dvd error.
A few of our friends online have had the error 3 out of 5 times on average.
All of us have Disc read errors in the middle of games.

And all of us, have had systems manufactured in the past 6 months.

I even confirmed it with 1-800-4my-xbox, discussing the variables that go into such a high call volume in the last half year with people saying the same crap we are experiencing... From the opinion of the support techs I have talked to, the vast majority of people that have called with these problems have recently got their 360, are knowledgable enough to know better, do not place their consoles on carpet or mistreat them, cool air all around, and theirs were nearly all manufactured in the 3rd-4th generation of production models.

Since I am impatient, I bought a 30$ 1-2 year replacement plan with Ebgames. No way will I send a broken 360 into microsoft to get a refurbished xbox360 console, after working at nintendo fixing F'd up Gamecubes people sent in and sending them back someone elses used parts with a new replacement drive.. Imagine getting a gamecube that some kid pissed on that has a new mini CD drive and lens, only to have a GC that smells like piss.

Fun..

Anyway, I dont blame my brother, I just thought it was funny how he treats his stuff. It could have been worth $1500, and if he was stuck in keeping it without being able to replace it, and it was simply not working, it would have been dead too... Especially if he had the money to just go get another one after unleashing his rage on the previous.

Good times.

He's going to go buy one again today. As he laughs with his new gamestop/eb replacement insurance. Only this time around, he'll probably not break it.

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