It’s been almost two years since Guitar Hero II came out for the XBox 360. I know this because that is pretty much why I bought one. That, plus I was working at Novell at the time, and our project had just been cancelled again, so I was kinda bummed, and I needed to blow a lot of money to feel better about myself.

Amber said yes, and I was pretty stoked. So I bought myself and XBox 360 from BestBuy. I’d heard about the now-famous Red Ring Of Death, so uncharacteristically I decided to pay for the extended warranty.

Unsurprisingly, our XBox 360 eventually decided to sport the Red Ring Of Death – a fate, much like real death, that is unavoidable for older XBoxen. What is pretty amazing about this experience is that ours chose to manifest the Red Ring Of Death about one month before the warranty expired.

Really. That is pretty incredible. That’s how I know it has been almost two years since Guitar Hero II came out.

Microsoft, I hear, has been pretty cool about handling this Red Ring Of Death thing, and since my machine was less than two years old I figured I could get Microsoft to replace it. But then I remembered having purchased the extended warranty. So I took it in to BestBuy today to see if they would replace it.

(By the way, can you guess what the customer service associate typed into the “Reason for Return” field on the return form when I brought back my XBox 360? “Red Ring Of Death.” I don’t know if that is funny or embarrassing.)

So here’s what happened:

  • On April 6, 2007, I purchased my XBox 360 from BestBuy for $399.
  • Some time ago, Sadie gave one of my XBox 360 controllers a drink of orange juice. It got heartburn and never recovered. After that, we let Oakley play with it since it was completely non-functional.
  • Last night I packaged up the XBox 360, with all the accessories and the non-functional controller, to take back to BestBuy.
  • Today they gave me a brand new one, which means:
    • My new XBox 360 has a 60 GB hard drive instead of a 10 GB hard drive.
    • My new XBox 360 has an HDMI output where the other did not.
    • My new XBox 360 came with two new video games where the other did not.
    • My new XBox 360 comes with a brand new manufacturer’s warranty – clock reset.
    • My new XBox 360 only costs $299. So I got also got a sweet BestBuy gift card for the difference, which I am thinking might be well used to buy something like Fable II.

Yeah, this Red Ring Of Death thing ended up being pretty sweet. I completely upgraded my XBox 360, got some new games, a new controller, and reset the factory warranty for, uh, negative $40? Sweet.

Only bad thing: I lost all my old saved games, because I can’t figure out how to save them to a memory stick. Am I a doofus, or is it just not doable on the XBox 360? It seems like a software engineer should be able to figure that out.

Oh well. It is a small price to pay for such a sweet deal. I’m looking forward to 23 months from now, when hopefully my XBox 360 will Red Ring Of Death again.