Xbox = ass

How in the world did Microsoft expect to take over the console world with something of such low production quality?

I bought an Xbox when Halo 2 came out. I played Halo 2, was hugely disppointed, and then I didn't do anything with my box. I probably got maybe 30, 40 hours of play out of it including multiplayer, then it sat, perfectly level, boxed back up, for a couple months before I got a couple of other games. Cranked back up, it ran for maybe 30m before dying, and now on boot it tells me to go call customer service (two codes depending on its mood: 7, HD toast, 12, DVD toast). And of course it's out of warranty now, since I bought it back in November. Wheeeeeeeeeeeee.

So that's $150 + accessories for 40h of light use before it melted down. I guess storage in a room-temperature environment for those months when it didn't have games I could play caused it to grow petulent. And now what am I going to do -- spend another $150 on a box that's pretty close to the end of its lifetime in order to play a couple of games? This is exactly the kind of pointless money-flushing I left PC gaming to get away from.

The only good part is that since my warranty had expired anyway, I cracked it open to check the cable connections (looked good, which in a way is unfortunate) and got to look around the innards. Didn't make me feel any better about the money, though. And tomorrow, Jade Empire and Psychonauts arrive, and I have no console to play them on.

My Playstations have worked without complaint for years, my Dreamcast still cranks on to play Skies of Arcadia (awesome!). Or, to put this another way: my average console lifespan to Xbox lifespan ratio is easily 100:1. I'm sooooo not buying the next generation Xbox.