Thursday was the day that I finally picked my car from the mechanic after having to have major work done on the engine due to a snapped timing belt. I pretty much had to buy a new engine and I could have bought twelve Xbox 360 Arcade systems for the check that I handed over today. I had a choice of getting the head on my engine retooled and drilled at a machine shop or to go with all new parts. The difference in price was only two hundred bucks but the assurance of quality from the new parts was much greater than trying to fix the old damaged unit.

The whole experience with my car made me think about the "repaired" Xbox 360 operation that Microsoft has going on to deal with the Red Ring of Death hardware failures. There has been over 4 million dead Xbox 360s that has gone through the reanimation process of being brought back to life so to speak.

Believe it or not I am a little nostalgic about just writing about Xbox 360 games rather than writing about the hardware issues on the machines that run those fun games.

First off they don't send you a new Xbox 360 or the same Xbox that you purchased. What happens is once you mail your Xbox 360 to the national Microsoft service center nearest you they send you an Xbox that was in their repair pool and the whole process takes around ten to twenty days on average. There has been such a massive demand for Xbox 360 repairs that their expansion of the repair line at the local service centers can't keep up the pace and Microsoft has started sending Xbox units around the globe to a factory in China.

Now the biggest problem that I have with the repair process is that since there is no one specific part or kind of damage that the overheating can cause. Almost all the chips and solder joints on the motherboard has a possibility of taking some damage.

When the timing belt broke in my car it threw the pistons out of alignment, busted seals, bent rods, destroyed sensors and the coolant pump. One massive malfunction and it caused major damage all over the engine. That is a perfect analogy about what can go wrong inside an Xbox 360 once things start to fail due to overheating.

The service technicians have to hunt for damage and do what they can to fix it but almost anything inside the Xbox has a chance of being damaged due to a possible cascade of damage from the failure of other parts. The uncertainty of the possible diagnosis combined with the incredible demand for repairs does not instill me with confidence that the Xbox you get back is going to be anywhere near as stable as when you first got your Xbox 360. When an Xbox is manufactured the components are checked for a certain standard of quality but after a 360 has been cooked due to overheating I don't see how the assurance of quality can be anywhere near when that Xbox unit first left the assembly line.

From what I've gathered it's been a major struggle to find technicians that can get the repair jobs done on time, under budget and done right. It's nowhere near as simple as popping out an old fan and gluing a new one on. Since there is a huge back log there is a pretty good chance that you might get an older Xbox than the one that you mailed in and they can't do a real world usage test under the specific conditions that your going to subject that repaired Xbox to when you play it.

Here is an email that I got from James/Hellblazer:

" Just thought I'd let you know something about my 'repaired' Xbox 360- it's not the same one I shipped off for repairs."

"I know, they can send you a new or refurbished system if they want to. But where this is different is that this one has the same serial number as the one I sent in for repairs- but a different manufacturing date. It's now 2006/6/23- which is older than my original Xbox 360, the one I brought back in January of 2007."

"So, now I have a system that is completely different, but still only considered to be repaired under my standard warranty. Typically, if MS sends you a different system then they extend the warranty from the time that they ship it out to you- but by doing this, they don't have to. No new serial number = no new warranty."

"So, I'm going to play as normal and see what happens. Already, the disc drive sounds like a jet engine- which is significantly louder than my previous console. We'll see what happens..."

My biggest concern with getting a "repaired" Xbox back is that it's already failed and taken damage once before.

I stopped by my local Gamestop and asked what the trade in value of my Xbox 360 minus my hard drive that I would keep. It was $150 and I could use that towards a purchase of a new Xbox 360 Arcade unit and then just snap my hard drive on. At Gamestop they turn it on once to see that it can boot up and play a game. Once they have accepted it it's their responsibility and the poor sucker that finally buys it then becomes their responsibility. Sure the original extended warranty from Microsoft is still there from the date of manufacture but you don't know how many times it's failed and been mailed back to the repair shop. There is simply no way on God's green Earth that I would ever consider buying a used Xbox 360. You simply don't know what's happened to it or the conditions of it's internal parts.

So the difference is about a $130 to trade in and upgrade to a brand new out of the box Xbox with the newest and more reliable design. Sure it's nowhere near as reliable as a Wii or PS3 but I would rather pay the difference to know that it had a much greater chance of hardware failure.

Sure it is way cheaper for Microsoft to try and fix the over 4 million broken Xbox 360 units than to send out brand new never failed units out to their customers but another issue about the whole Xbox 360 repair process that is rarely brought up. That is the environmental impact of storing and disposing millions of dead RRODed Xbox 360. The cost of getting rid of them in an environmentally responsible manner would be substantial.

Here is a fun fact. Since I published the interview with "Xboxfounder" traffic to 8bitjoystick.com from people at Microsoft.com net domains have gone up about a factor of hundred.

I wish that Microsoft offered an upgrade program so that instead of rolling the dice on getting back a pre-cooked "fixed" Xbox I would rather pay a hundred bucks for piece of mind of a new unit. My father used to say that the definition of insanity is doing the exact same thing over again and expecting different results. Since the entire point of buying an Xbox 360 is that they are fun and I would have a hard time having fun while worrying about the chances of a previously broken system failing again. I have over sixty Xbox 360 and BC compatible Xbox one games so I would like stable hardware to play the substantial investment I've made in game software.

It would be awesome if you got a new Xbox out of the deal but you sort of get patched up previously dead "zombie" Xboxes back instead of a new box with the newest motherboard designs.