Xbox RROD number 3 and console reliability in general

For the record, my 360 red ringed again (3rd and final time) about a week ago. Phoning Microsoft, they kindly informed me that the console was now out of warranty, even for the red ring failure. Not to worry though, they could fix my console for £90, including a whopping ONE MONTH of bonus Xbox Live access!

Needless to say I didn't exactly jump at this less than stellar offer and now I have a new Xbox 360 arcade, complete with HDMI socket. The new console is quieter, time will tell if it is more reliable.

In other news, I also modded my original Xbox with a bigger hard drive now that Xbox Live for the original Xbox has been turned off. It's very handy having access to all the best Xbox games just from the hard drive.

It's interesting how consoles have become less and less reliable. I always considered the PS2 to be poorly made. I've been using my PS2 a lot recently for playing Final Fantasy 12. FF13 doesn't sound worth the effort from the reviews, but 12 is really superb. I'm around 80 hours in and there's still lots left to do. I noticed that my PS2's controller input seems to be wearing out however. Sometimes the console fails to recognise the pad first time and a restart is necessary. I do take the controllers in and out rather a lot because I also use them on my PC with an adaptor. Weird thing is that they don't always work well connected to the PC now either. Wonder if there's some sort of design fault on the connectors?

I'm on my 2nd PS2, the first one died and stopped reading disks altogether, this one struggles to read disks but most of my games I run from the hard drive. Moving parts are always likely to wear out, I noticed my Saturn isn't as good at reading disks as it once was and amusingly my Super CD-ROM2 (PC Engine) only reads some games when it is upside down. On the bright side my Mega CD seems to be fine.

Out of the really old consoles, the most notoriously unreliable was the NES, with its design fault on the cartridge slot that resulted in the red blinking LED problem. I'm on my 2nd NES and I only bought my first around mid 2005.

Nothing lasts forever I suppose. DVD players seem particularly prone to failure, the cheaper ones only lasting a couple of years. Strangely, I remember most VHS recorders lasting much longer than this. Anyway, this post has turned into a bit of a ramble so I'll wrap it up for now, may your games consoles forever stay functional!