I had a 360 acouple of years ago and i got rid of it because it started destroying my games and i felt i was on a short clock before it would end up dying on me. I am thinking about the possibility of maybe picking one up again, but wondered if they had actually resolved the issues with the console. I would grab a PS3 but the price is still a tad high.

Amazon was selling the 80Gb PS3 for $350, but I think it's back up to normal.

If you plan to play wireless and have any interest in Blu-Ray, the prices are pretty comparable in my opinion. I'd wait for the holiday either way, as I'm expecting a pretty good bundle from Microsoft and a slim model/price drop/bundle from Sony.

I went on a road trip home last week, and saw an old friend who had 5 (seriously FIVE) 360s in his basement. Two of them worked at all, and one of those had a bad disk drive. I didn't get into details about how old they were, and he's not the type to be savvy enough to return or repair them. The 360 has serious issues IMO, and it's the only reason I don't own one. I'm hoping for a complete redesign...maybe built around Natal.

Did you have your console set up vertically? There might still be some issue with that, but I can't say. They do have the option to copy an image of the disc to the hard drive so it only spins up the disc to make sure you have a physical copy of the game before it runs off the drive. This would greatly reduce the wear on your discs.

Sounds like an idiot to me. MS fixes them for free why would anyone drop a few hundred dollars on another one(let alone 5) without at least trying that route?

The issues aren't that serious anymore. The RROD has all but been eliminated. You still see one die here and there but not anywhere close to what it was a year ago. Plus they are still covered for 3 years.

To balance out chess' anecdotal story I have a friend who's on his third PS3. With only a 90 day(?) warranty, that means he's dropped $100+ for each repair.

It still has a few issues, though I don't think scratching discs is a problem at this point (esp. w/ the BenQ drives... if they're still using them.) and generally speaking, it's much better than it used to be.

Has Microsoft done anything to improve the XLBA issue when a console is replaced due to repair? Back in the day, if you purchased an arcade title and your console was replaced, you would have to log in to XBL in order to play those titles as full games (not demo mode). Contrary to what a few had said, MS didn't transfer the ownership S/N from the old unit to the new.

It's unfortunate that it took them so long to get the console to a "normal" failure rate. I got rid of mine after going through 3 in less than a year.

Yeah, they offer a 3 year warranty...that doesn't mean that I feel any better about the quality. I think the fact that they moved so slowly and quietly when the RROD started rearing it's head turned off (and pushed away) a lot of then owners (like myself). It wasn't til the problem got out of hand and garnered media attention that they extended their warranty and bit the bullet to really fix the problem.

Lot's of great games, such a marginally stable product.

Yes, they have a DRM transfer process you can do manually now through the website.

Not really. They say they do the DRM transfer but that wasn't the case with my last console either. You still have to go through your download history and re-download everything, sorta. If the game is still on your HDD, it merely downloads the license, so each one takes <5 seconds. Unfortunately if you have owned your console for years, going through your history and doing this still takes time. Mine took a good 30-45minutes. I'm not sure if it would be quicker, but I bet you can do all of this through the online Marketplace now.

Not only that, but if they replace your 360 with another one instead of repairing your console, they automatically transfer the DRM to the replacement console before sending it back.

BTW you can only manually transfer the DRM to a new console only once per year, FWIW.

You can, and I did

Just have your 360 on the "Active Downloads" list and click away on the online marketplace history.

He's not the sharpest guy in the world, but like I said, he is an old friend. Please choose your words better.

I agree that MS has largely sorted out the problems, but I doubt anybody would argue that it's been anywhere near as reliable as the PS3...and the fact that MS will fix it for free doesn't mean that it's something I would want to deal with. Do they fix anything other than RRoD for free after 1 year, or is it 3 years "bumper to bumper"?

I'm going to get one at some point to play Gears, L4D and Ace Combat, but not until I'm convinced that I can trust the machine to not eat disks or crap out on me.

My apologies. There was nothing malicious intended.

Did you inform him of the warranty? He could probably still send a couple in to get fixed and then resell them.

I'll be interested to see how all the 360 issues affect the consumer's attitude towards their next console. I'm sure many die-hards will not think twice about getting it ASAP, but I will certainly be holding off for at least a year.

My replacement console (after a RROD from one I bought in Sept. '06) lasted about a year and a half. When that one died it wasn't a RROD so it wasn't covered under warranty. I bought a new one a few months ago. While any kind of failure is possible, I no longer worry about a RROD as a likely possibility. Since Microsoft spent over $1 billion on repairs/ replacements for the original problem, I would feel safe that they made sure they had fixed that problem from that point forward.

I've been one of the lucky ones, still with my original 360 from early 2007 and not a single problem.

Expect a post from me tomorrow, now that I've probably jinxed myself.

No worries. I didn't think you meant anything by it.

He seemed pretty content to get a new one every year or so rather than deal with hassle/cost, and for what it's worth, he loves the console. I opted to not meddle.

Oddly, he doesn't have it online. I don't think he has access to broadband (middle of nowhere).

I know I could google this, but since we're discussing it:

What is the warranty on a new 360 if I were to buy one today? I think they still give 3-year free repair for red ring, but I've heard conflicting reports. Is it one year for everything else?

Yeah, new consoles have a 1 year warranty (DVD-Rom, HDD, etc; ) and a 3 year RRoD / E-74 extended warranty.

Well i had my console laid horizontally and the game that kept getting screwed up was Elder Scrolls IV.....so much disc accessing that i kinda expected it. I went through 5 copies of the game before i gave up and bought it on the PC instead. I was seriously thinking that the PS3 would be a better option at this stage as at least i get a more reliable machine with a built in Blu-Ray...but man i miss me some Crackdown. I will eventually get another 360 just for that game.

This is another one of the reasons I shutter at the thought of download only games.

The Jasper ones seem to be rock solid. I also run all games from teh hard drive as an added precaution.