I've been playing on my Xbox 360 every night I can. It's got some good games for it, and some bad ones, but I'm happy with what I own.
I saw someone post on a forum today about their 360 failing with the RROD, and loads of people piled in moaning about the high mortality rate of 360s, and how appalling it is that a piece of equipment should still routinely fail for so many people.
I had a few thoughts on it, and yes it is really shockingly bad how often these units fail. But worse than that, it's a big part of why I own one, and why I am playing with it so much.
I'm a person who sees no value in buying the newest console just to keep up with trends or keeping up with other players, and for a few years it was impossible to care even slightly about 360/PS3/wii, but I know that if I forget about the 360 now... it's not going to be like any other console where I can just buy the machine 5 years later and all the games cheap and play my little heart out, oh no. Every single 360 is going to be dead in 5 years. It's going to have been superceded by whatever Microsoft want and they always drop their old stuff as soon as possible (because it's poo). It's the same with their operating systems, their applications, everything - they drop all their old stuff and old support because the old stuff is bad, even when the current technology is worse (points at Vista, points at 360 hardware - there are older examples as well). So I have to buy one now and play it to death now if I'm ever going to play with it at all. Not only will the machines be dead but I bet all online stuff will die out too - all the servers will be shut down.
I bet the retro market in 360s is going to be roaring in 20 years - even though there are tons of the machines around now, they will all be dead by then. And everyone who owns one will be scared to play on it, or it'll be like vintage wines - you either sell them for a ton of money or you drink it all down - one hour and it's gone forever. And so is the £££ you spent on buying it.
The whole situation kind of disgusts me as a gamer and a person who loves their old faithful consoles and never stops playing games when they're old.
I'm having fun playing on the 360 right now, but it also saddens me that it's like a child with a terminal disease who doesn't really know it. It's going to be far more dead as a console than any other that I own, in 5 years. In 5 years I will still be able to play on my Atari 2600 but my Xbox 360 will be dead. It's terrible.
There's a cute website which sets up a blog for your Xbox 360, which actually just auto-generates posts based on activity on your gamertag. It also gives your Xbox 360 a bit of a personality based on how much you've been playing and what you've been doing, so it's all quite amusing. Mine is currently happy and randomly quotes dialogue from the game "Portal", and says things that aren't true about me (I'm really not the controller-throwing type!), but it's all in the name of cheap entertainment so I don't mind. If you want to read it, it is here:
tenshi alpha's Xbox 360 Blog
Who knows? Within a few weeks I might be back to normal, playing on my DS and PS2 and Megadrive, and watching anime... or I might still be Xboxing while I still can...
This weekend I'm going to play PS2 ports of "Bubble Symphony" and "Bubble Memories" (Bubble Bobble sequels) with my brother. He says that he looked it up and the last last boss in "Bubble Memories", after to go through the game once then go through on "super" mode, is a Skelmonsta with a Wave Motion Cannon! O_O ooh, wish us luck...! XD
