GAME STATE: My first Red Ring of Death

God. Damn. It.

Well, it had to happen sometime. My (used) XBox 360 finally went belly-up tonight and I don't know why. A quick check of the error codes gave me "0110", which apparently means the memory is overheating.

Which means I can't fix it myself.

Which means I have to bring it in for a repair.

Which means that, if I want to enjoy my right to play the $60 game I just bought, I now have to pay extra.

I had just finished a project and only wanted to relax for half an hour by tearing apart viking marauders. This has been my process of writing for the last six months — write to a predetermined word count, then reward myself afterwards with a cathartic virtual bloodbath.

And now as I sit here, thoroughly unsatiated, that behavioural training has bitten me on the butt. You see, the controversy over the Red Ring of Death has already cost Microsoft a billion dollars in warranty repairs. Yet somehow, over the last few months, I'd forgotten about the debacle, lost as I was in the tremendous entertainment value that is (or rather was) my Xbox 360. What did I do to cause the dreaded RROD?

SUDDEN DEATH SYNDROME

Simple. I pressed the ON button. Normally, I turn on the machine by pressing the disc eject button, but not this time. Without thinking, my hand went to the large circular button that you would normally guess was not booby-trapped. As for the console itself, it was sitting where it has always been sitting for the last two months -- on a large open shelf beneath my now blank widescreen LCD display.

The last twist on the situation is that this is not the first time a Microsoft product has croaked on me. Back in 2004, the DVD  drive of my original Xbox died a few months past the warranty period. Indeed, it was with great trepidation that I finally went and got a 360 after years of pacing up and down the aisles of the local Best Buy.

There's a store near the university downtown that repairs RROD-affected 360s. I'll be taking it there in a few days and will update this post with the results (and the cost). Stay tuned.

UPDATE #1: Blastlogic.com replied to an email from me. They'll fix my 360 for $100, and want 'one or two days' for the repair and testing. The price seems ... high. I just might try fixing the console myself if I can get the right screwdriver.