Xbox DRM and the Red Ring of Death

manekineko2 writes "In the latest case warning of the perils of investing in DRM'd media, an owner of an Xbox 360 reports that after his Xbox suffered the infamous Red Ring of Death, it was replaced by a new system with a different serial number. Upon receiving his replacement, he found that he could only access the media he had purchased from a specific account. He also received the run-around for months from customer service before his case was escalated, only to be informed that there is no ETA for a resolution, there is no way to receive status updates on the process, and there is no compensation that will be granted. Given claims that the Xbox 360 defect rate is as high as 1 in 3, has anyone on Slashdot gone through this as well after getting their system exchanged?" Update: 02/14 17:11 GMT by Z : An emailing user noted that the original summary was not very accurate; rephrased to be more in-line with the situation.

Comments

Ummm

[tgd]

You call them. They give you the points you've spent on a temporary XBox Live account, you redownload the software.

After that they'll run fine not logged in on the 360, or on other 360s logged in with the original account.

Its a pain in the ass -- I've had to do it twice, but its not nearly how the story makes it sound.

Re:Ummm

[MyDixieWrecked]

You call them. They give you the points you've spent on a temporary XBox Live account, you redownload the software.

They didn't do that for us. When we got our 360 back from repairs and the content wouldn't play on the other accounts, I called and was told that the purchased content was meant for the account that purchased it and not the others, and the fact that it worked to start doesn't mean that it will always work that way into the future. I was mostly peeved because I was trying to see how many achievements I could unlock in a single round on XBLA games.

I get the feeling that depending on who you happen to talk to at support, you get different stories of how things work. When our 360 originally red-ring'd, we were told that it wouldn't be covered under warranty (we got a Rev-B 360, about a month or two after it was first released), but the unit still worked on and off... it would just occasionally not start up. After MS extended the warranty to a year, we were able to send it in and get it replaced. Although a friend of mine's unit red-ringed a couple days after ours and his got replaced, no questions asked. His also came back in about 8 days, where ours took 3 weeks.