Thursday, August 23, 2007

More Xbox 360 Hardware Failures: Smoking Racing Wheels

I had seriously considered getting the Xbox 360 Wireless Racing Wheel when it came out to play Project Gotham 3, but I am really glad I didn't now. Joystiq is reporting that the racing wheel smokes used with a wired power source instead of batteries and is going to "retrofit" the device to not smoke. Isn't "retrofit" just the weasel way of saying recall? Retrofit or recall, MS needs to do this for the Xbox 360, not just fix/replace them as they break.

My friend Jenny's writing partner Andrew wrote about the design failures of MS with the 360, and now you can add the wireless racing wheel to the list. Even more sadly, Jenny's Xbox 360 has been put in a coffin and shipped off to MS, where they will hold onto it for 4-6 weeks, this was after a 1 week wait for the coffin! Anyone that says they don't care about 360 problems because they have a 3 year warranty hasn't thought it through. If your Xbox 360 fails, you could be without it for greater than 1 and nearly 2 months!

All that said, and contradicting myself from the Xbox 360 recall post, I am in rapture with BioShock. When I told my wife I was going to get the game, she said "aren't you afraid you'll kill your 360 before Halo 3 comes out?". I am, but BioShock is so good I am willing to take the risk.