I feel like everyone has gone through this phase of life – their Xbox 360 died, they yelled a few swears out, freaked out, and then realized they need to purchase another Xbox. After seeing countless number of people go through these steps, I am finally one of those individuals who has gone through with this. I am very upset about this as I have a launch Xbox 360. Unlike everyone else, I have a whole story to go along with my Xbox 360 and I shall explain why I can’t accept just purchasing a new one and not thinking twice about it. For this, I will explain my story for why I want my Xbox fixed or something worthy for it.

Like many children, I wanted Microsoft Xbox 360 for Christmas when I found out about it back in 2005. During those days, I was still a halo 2 fiend. Although, the Xbox 360 was the thing to have and of course I wanted one. I remember specifically how I kept trying to purchase it, but during those days, I did not have much money. I was all over GameStop.com constantly to check if it was sold out and such. The day that it was sold out, I was very hurt and died a little inside. So like any other idiot, I turned right towards eBay. Unfortunately, that was the worst idea since Xbox 360′s were going for almost $2,000. Insane.

November eventually rolls around and November 22, 2005 comes and goes. For those who don’t know what is so special about that, it is the release date of the Xbox 360. Well, upset little me pouted and continued with Halo 2 on my antique Xbox. Don’t get me wrong, I loved it, but new stuff is better. Being a child didn’t help, but I learned my Uncle had purchased it and was loving it. Like any other jealous child, I was at his house playing on it and drooling on it. Eventually Christmas was around the corner and he said the second best thing a child my age could hear at the time: “You can have my Xbox 360 for a week.” I literally ate, slept, and played Xbox 360. Such a huge fan and I played the hell out of it. Little did I know, I was only boosting his gamerscore.

Luckily, I didn’t have to use his Xbox for so long because Christmas came. My parents were awful people about it. (Note that they always do this to me each year.) I got threw all my presents and it was like Xbox 360 games and accessories. Naive me believed their lies when they told me that the actual Xbox 360 was backordered and I would be lucky to get it by my birthday. If you do think about it, my uncle got lucky and waited at midnight for his and it sold out like crazy everywhere. I opened all my gifts and there was no Xbox 360 to be seen. I had tears in my eyes and was choking up, but then my dad mentions that he forgot to bring out one gift and I need to get it from his room. I sprint faster than Usain Bolt and run up to his room where I see a box wrapped up. Torn it open. Look it it with eyes bigger than my face. Start playing it right away after transferring my gamertag. Gotta represent Fat Tony69!

Let’s speed up this story to June 2011 and give you a brief overview of what has happened between December 25, 2005 and June 2011. First off, this is almost a 6 years difference; more than a half decade. Damn, I don’t remember ever having a console lasting this long. Based off of Wikipedia, I am going to go through these updates so you get my point of how far it has come.

Types of Xbox’s since the time:

• Core
• Premium/Pro – the model I have had
• Arcade
• Elite
• S

There has been many updates:

• Facebook
• Espn
• Twitter
• Netflix
• Multiple dashboard remakes
• Avatars
• 1 vs 100
• and many, many betas – Halo 3, NXE, and other games.

You get the point by now that I am a huge Xbox fan. I have games like Kameo and Perfect Dark Zero as well as all of the Call of Duty games and Halo Games. I’ve wait in many midnight premiere lines. I’ve bought all the accessories – the steering wheel, the infamous HD DVD player, and the Kinect (which I have not been able to use because of timing and school, but was about to play it with Kinect Labs and games…). I even had a few faceplates which I received from Gears of War opening and such, although I always used the wood-looking faceplate to make it fit in with our shelves. I like to look fancy.

Now through out the years, I kept reading about the Red Ring of Death plaguing Microsoft and the Xbox 360. It was on the news. It was on countless blogs and every video game blog you heard of. It was on many sites. It haunted every Microsoft Xbox 360 owner, the Microsoft team, and their pockets. I couldn’t tell you how many times I have read about this and heard friends discuss this. Hell, my uncle went through nine Xbox’s. This isn’t unusual as others were on their sixth, seventh, and such Xbox 360. Although, I wasn’t one of these people. I had my Xbox 360 from the very beginning and didn’t have one issue at all. I was still on my first Xbox when others had to keep buying other Xbox’s, newer Xbox’s, repair Xbox’s…but not me.

This is where my sob story becomes more about me. On June 9th, 2011, I went to play my Xbox 360 while waiting for my friends to pick me up for dinner. Everything was smooth. Everything was fine. I was in the middle of a game in NBA 2K11 when it froze. I did not freak out. This happened before, not often, but it happened before. Although, when I turned it off and turned it back on, there wasn’t a picture. Ok, now I was suspicious. Then, I saw these Red Rings. Three of them, staring me dead in the face. I didn’t know what to do. I was stunned. It was out in the open, no issue at all. I am very upset my Xbox 360 is dead. I want my Xbox 360 back!

Look at that Xbox 360. It looks so sad. I have had my times where I’d play over 12 hours a day. I had my times where I barely touched it. I treated it like a god! I never dropped it or anything. It is my Red Ring of Death Xbox 360. This is where there is a catch. Microsoft expanded the warranty for everyone’s Xbox 360, but that is my issue! Due to the fact that my Xbox 360 is from 2005, my warranty is expired. It even says on the support page, “Your standard warranty expired on March 06, 2007.” That ruins me! The warranty is currently expired by 1,557 days. It has been 4 years, 3 months, 4 days since it expired. Well, if you consider the fact that the warranty was expanded 3 years, then I am still expired. That is ridiculously long time especially since my Xbox 360 is 2043 days old or 5 years, 7 months, 5 days old. My awesome Xbox! Everything still intact. I didn’t even upgrade the hard drive, not even new hardware – fixes or anything.

This leaves me with certain decisions. I can do the following:

1. Repair my Xbox 360 for $100.
2. Buy a brand new Xbox 360.

One issue: I don’t have the money. Yes, I can work for the money and it won’t be that hard. That’s not the main issue at hand, but it leads into the second issue. I love my Xbox 360 very much so. I don’t want to lose it. Getting it fix taints it a bit because it won’t be quite original anymore. Buying a new one sure as hell won’t be original. I like my 20GB Xbox 360 Premium. So that leads me to take this to the internet. What can I do. I am not sure if this is a big deal, but I feel like it is the only Xbox 360 left from the launch to get the Red Ring of Death – damnit, I used to brag about how I have one that didn’t break. I don’t know what to do, which is why I am asking on the internet and trying to get notice as I can’t find anyone that has an older Xbox than myself.

This is the catch. Always a catch is what I’ve heard from everyone. My catch is this, I need your help. I need to know what to do. My Xbox has been my loyal friend. This may be sad, but it is the truth as the Xbox 360 defines me. It created the world I am in now. It has helped persuade the decisions I have made and all. I guess this sounds a bit overzealous and a bit ridiculous for me to talk about this way about my Xbox 360, but truly when something has been around for almost 6 years, it does. With that said, I am hoping I can hear of a good thing from like Microsoft or something that they can fix my issue (preferably for free or get like a reward or something for the oldest usable Xbox). I am not asking for what Microsoft and Bungie did for that kid Nathaniel. Why that would be beyond amazing, I am not worth the effort. I want my Xbox working again. I want it to last until the Xbox 540 or whatever the next Xbox may be. If not, I just want something to make up for this. I don’t know. I also want one other thing, I want to know if anyone else is rocking a launch Xbox 360 or first shipment Xbox 360.

I decided to take photographs because I thought the moment called for it as I was beyond shocked and for proof of how old my Xbox 360 is.

Here are the rest of the photographs.