While I’m not seriously into my consoles, Kate is. She’s a big first-person fan and plays games like Halo quite regularly to let off steam after a hard day’s coding.
And while I cut my Bungie gaming teeth on the classic Marathon trilogy back in the days before Microsoft had even cooked up the idea of the XBox, I leave most of the frag fest action to my beloved.
Back in September I got Kate the latest and last chapter in the Halo franchise for her birthday. Called Halo Reach, it gives a prequel to the ealier Halo games and gives you an idea of what happened just before the original Halo game, launched in 2001, was set.
Having played her way through all the other Halo games, Kate was pretty excited to get her Halo Reach a day early via Amazon Prime. But since them it’s been downhill all the way.
We’ve seen random freezes, and the annoying disc read error which seems to be affecting more than just a few XBox 360 customers from the older Pro models through to a small number of Xbox 360 elites (our console) and even Xbox 360 slims.
After a few calls to Microsoft’s XBox 360 helpline, Kate still hadn’t got a resolution. She’d been told to apply patches, wipe the Xbox 360′s cache and even double-check for any defects to the disc.
And while the game disc itself is only a few weeks old and pristine, we’re still getting the horrid disc read errors. It even happens when you install the game on the hard-drive and try to play off it there.
So, today I decided to have a go. What follows is the FIFTY minute call I had with a Microsoft representative. You’ll note through the call that we point out we’ve tried the disc in other Xbox 360s (without any issues) as well as doing everything else suggested.
But still, Microsoft appears reluctant to admit that any of its own hardware is at fault. Our choice? An exchange of the disc under warranty, or pay for an expensive repair.
So we’ll take the disc exchange and hope that it is miraculously solved. Failing that, we’ll sell the Xbox and go for its main rival – the Playstation 3.
