To be clear, when we spoke with Mr. Kohler, the Xbox still ran like a champ. In fact, after we finished our "Special Edition" Monday recording I proceeded to play it. It was Tuesday that things began to turn sideways.
I was playing The Last Remnant, somewhere around hour five-hundred thirty-three of that game, when I noticed some strange graphical glitches. Much of the action was covered in small black squares. Graphical glitches being nothing new for this title, I assumed Square Enix's struggles with Unreal Engine 3 had found a new way to manifest itself.
Of course, it hadn't. I saved, having just claimed a new remnant (The Dead-Heart), I had already saved. I just turned the system off and started it back on. Everything seemed okay, so I continued to my target, a confrontation with forces of "The Conquer."
The graphics began to struggle again, so I turned it off, after getting a taste for the joy I was about to experience. It would have to hold me over until I got home from work the next day.
Of course, I spent at least a small amount of time that day thinking about how "awesome this will be."
I came home.
Turned on the console.
E74.
It's a strange feeling. When I bought my 360 I knew all about the hardware failures, yet I never felt that there was any risk it could happen to me. It left me feeling powerless.
I went through the stages of grief.
1. On - Off - On - Off. Certainly, this thing would work long enough that I could complete this battle.
2. I grumbled and groaned that Microsoft cannot create a consistently reliable piece of hardware. I wanted all these years to get a dependable console. "They must be some kind of incompetents!"
3. "Come on, you can run! I know you can! Just let me play the rest of the game, and I'll send you off for some much-needed R&R!"
4. I began to think there was no way I was going to ever complete this damn game. All that time lost. Wasted. I was beside myself.
5. I went and dug up some packing material, a cardboard box from 1999 for an industrial Panasonic VCR. As to why I had such a box I have no answer.
Of course, I screwed up the packing job, I neglected to put my address and the repair number on the exterior of the box, as Microsoft's handy packing chart extols you to do. They have the serial number and my address on the repair, if they can't connect the dots then there really is no helping them.
It landed in the mail Friday. UPS Stores are predictably a bit chaotic at this time of year, but it wasn't particularly harrowing.
If you've bared with me through this narrative, thank you. I'm sure it's even more boring then when you listen to me tell these stories on RFN (if you don't listen, please do!).
Really, the story isn't the important bits here. I did some math as to how "deep" I am into the 360, from a monetary standpoint. It's about $470.00 including the console. Once again, not really the point.
The point is a bit more technical. The 360's failure is a direct result of the power the system wields. I'll spare you the physics, but as a microprocessor becomes more complicated, more powerful, and more sophisticated it takes more electricity to run. That creates more heat.
Heat is bad for electronics.
In the case of my poor 360, it was lethal.
Having worked myself through school doing various technical support jobs, I've seen more than a few laptops cook themselves. That was something it was always unpleasant to tell a client.
Of course, as technology advances, a processor of the same power becomes more efficient. It runs cooler. Computers don't die.
In the future, consoles are going to become more powerful. At the moment, it seems almost a fools errand to try to put more power into home consoles. Games look stunning, and every year games that look even more stunning are released. However, it's going to happen.
Progress.
I'd never had a console fail before. Nintendo makes fairly robust hardware, and I have always been primarily a Nintendo owner. Don't be surprised if system failures are part of the console future. The more you pack in the box, the greater the risk.
I do hope that all future consoles look at the example of the Xbox 360. Robustness is an underrated element of console design.
Let's not kid ourselves, even after the life-cycle of a console you still expect it to work. What good is your collection of games if you have no machine to play them on?
Let's just say that I expect to see a hole in my entertainment center again, sometime in the future.
Just to be clear, I'm not writing this as a dig at the Xbox 360. It is a good console with a solid library. It just is fragile.
