Santa came early at the Turner house. My Xbox 360 arrived this afternoon! I was impressed by the size of the console but not so impressed by the size of the power supply. It’s huge but I can live with that.
Setup was easy. It only took me a couple of minutes. I powered on the console with the plan to convert my Xbox Live account to Gold before playing any games, but low and behold the video card crapped out. Yep, that’s right.
The box was on for less than 5 minutes when the video card crapped out. The screen got fuzzy with red dots all over then thin black and white lines were displayed. My first thought was the video card was fried. I powered off the console and called support.
I was put on hold so while I waited I decided to unplug the console, plug it back in, and try it again. The console booted up fine and the video was okay. Whew, maybe it was just a freak one-time video problem.
I was still on hold with Microsoft Xbox support. I decided to stay on hold while I worked my way through the network setup and Xbox Live account conversion. Luckly I wasn’t experiencing any more hardware problems. I did have some problems converting my Xbox Live account and had to do the process twice. Microsoft could improve the conversion process user interface a bit, in my opinion.
Still no hardware problems and still on hold with customer support. 20 minutes had past so I decided to drop in my first game, Amped3. I decided to hang up the phone too. 2 minutes later, red dots everywhere! The dang video card went crazy again!
So my first impressions are not good based on the first 30 minutes or so. I felt like I did yesterday when I saw Microsoft demo pre-release version of Visual Studio Team Services on Launch Day and it did NOT work. I have been browsing the Xbox support forums and it seems others are having problems with their new Xbox too. I’m glad I’m not alone but I’m very disappointed with Microsoft.
After powering down the console, unplugging it, plugging it back, and powering it up again, I was finally able to play Amped3. The next 40 minutes were problem free. I’m heading out in a few minutes so I had to turn it off. I think I will turn it back on while I’m gone to do a burn in test.
I noticed the manufacturing date on my console is Nov 14 2005. Barely a week ago and it makes me wonder if Microsoft ever performed a burn-in test on it. Well, one thing I do know is if the video goes out one more time I’m returning the console and games.
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