From GameSpot:"In early 2006, several months after it launched the Xbox 360, Microsoft ceased manufacturing the original Xbox. Today, the company pulled the plug on its first console entirely. The company has officially ended out-of-warranty support for the original Xbox, some eight and a half years after Bill Gates handed out the first device."
"On March 2, 2009, service repairs for Original Xbox video game systems for which the Warranty has expired will no longer be available," reads Microsoft's official support site. "Any other technical support, documents, and content, however, will continue to be available to all our customers.
Man.... that really sucks. Luckily my Xbox has had no problems ***knock on wood*** but it just cheezes me off how shitty Microsoft treated the original Xbox. As badly as Sony acts, they haven't done what Microsoft did; completely & utterly abandoning a console only 4.5 years after its introduction. I know there are reasons that they dropped original Xbox like a hot rock; apparently all the components were licensed, so they didn't really "own" it & lost money on every unit.... I dunno.... their attitude was (and is) nothing short of a big F.U. to everyone who ever bought an original Xbox. They're like, "Xbox??? THERE WAS NO XBOX BEFORE 360." Trying to erase its existence.
I love the system, it was powerful, reliable, had a decent-sized hard drive that didn't go away (*ahem* PS2 Slim?) and it's still my main DVD player thanks to the remote & IR dongle. I could save music files to it... unfortunately in .WAV format so they took up a lot of space... but at least I could use my own music in games that supported it.
Xbox is just a great little system that had a big hurdle to overcome, being the first console from a company new to that particular field. There's a lot of similarity between original Xbox and PSP: They are both the first of their kinds from publishers who'd never done that before (Microsoft- make a gaming console/ Sony - make a handheld console) and they are both a little too powerful for their own good. I'm scared that PSP will end up sharing the same fate as original Xbox.....
There are still a few original Xbox games I'd like to get... for real cheap.... Just Cause... Doom 3.... The Suffering 2..... Stubbs the Zombie..... unfortunately EB games has basically whittled down their Xbox games library too.....
I hope my Xbox keeps working for years to come.
*GameSpot article: Microsoft pulls plug on original Xbox support*
later
don
2 comments:
Microsoft may have shut down the original XBox but they are doing something Sony did not NO CHARGE WARRANTY repairs for a known defect.. 1 year after I purchased my PS2 I got a disc read error...a known problem, called tech support and they said "Please send your PS2 in and that will be $135 please." When I asked what causes this she said I don't know sire I am not a technician. Then how does she know $135 would fix it. RROD Microsoft has stepped up to the plate and ate a bunch repair costs.
That's a good point. At least Microsoft extended their warranty to 3 years to handle RROD.
Still, the fact that RROD is a major problem, that it took Microsoft awhile to actually even ACKNOWLEDGE it was a problem.
That's one of the main reasons I'm really hesitant to get an Xbox 360... reliability is really important to me. I don't want to take a big chance that a console will suffer problems. I haven't seen anything yet that makes me confident that Xbox 360 has gotten past its problems.
later
don
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