"What the HELL are we doing with 4 Xbox 360's?" And we were about to buy yet another one for the same teenager that had just gone through his 3rd one! Absolutely ridunkulous!
I come from the age of Atari and the original Nintendo...even played the fancy Sega at a friends house when they first came out. Now my younger boys have portable game systems, consoles at my house AND their dad's house. Every child that recently came over for a party had a Nintendo DS in their hand. All the kids were playing each other on their handhelds. While the adults, being as lame as we are, were playing each other on the 3rd functioning Xbox we have.
The teenager complains that his system is slow, or that the fan is always running and it interferes with his music. Then about a month or so ago, he comes to us saying that his current Xbox 360 has the RED RING on it. Dope...there that one goes! Another $300 that didn't make it through the year! AH-HA...I learn that the new Xbox is coming out in just a few weeks and my "Mommy" mentality kicks in.
This kid must think I was never a kid once too. So, I talked it over with his dad and we started putting two and two together...and guess what...it equals 4! That's right folks: 4, the number of Xbox 360's we have in our home that apparently do not "work" due to the RED RING!
So with this in mind, I thought, surely since the beginning of this gaming era of the Eighty's, someone at Microsoft has figured out that their $300 machines that are getting 16+hours of game time a day, need to hold up. Surely, a $300 machine isn't going to just quit working when my sloppy teenager doesn't dust his room for a year! Off to Microsoft.com I went!
Parents: Do not try this in front of your teenager! It was cause convulsions, eye-popping, and utter disbelief in the gaming world!
Microsoft does have a fix! No more buying new Xbox's!
I had the teenager assist me in this laborous plan, we hooked up each one of the "broken" Xbox's and I went through the self-support site on Microsoft. Apparently each Red Ring indicates a seperate, fixable issue. Either by yourself or by Microsoft. When we discovered the first unit was repairable but outside the regular warranty, that's when the Teenager knew there was NO WAY his unit was repairable because it was older than the first....drum roll please....His WAS repairable AND his expiration date was 3 days away!!!
So, in one fale swoop, I ruined a Teenage Boy's dream of a brand new Xbox for Christmas! Hahahahaha...but not really, because I'm giving him the joy of having 2 renewed units fresh on his shelf by New Years! Oh, and the other unit we had wasn't under warranty, but the site did offer solutions to our technical problems we were having and instructed me on how to reset my unit and get updates...Works like new now!
Super mom to the rescue! By the way, I have, indeed, banned our home from buying a new Xbox for the next 10 years at the very least! Who wants a game system that keeps screwing up, even if they will pay for it to be fixed?
Want one for the road? The next day, my middle son's Nintendo DS quits holding a charge....that's a whole other fiasco that doesn't have room on this blog!
