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.

Re:Ummm

[nickj6282]

Yeah, they didn't do this for me. I called this weekend because my son couldn't play the games I downloaded from my gamertag on the 360 before it was replaced. I spent an hour on the phone and the final resolution was for them to transfer the content license from the old console to the new one. This required me to fax them the exchange receipt from Best Buy and now I'm on day 3 of the 30 day wait for them to do this.

I'm not confident that this will ever get done, but luckily I have some recourse. Firstly I do have an Xbox Live Gold account, and from personal experience I know that the reps will bend over backward to keep you on the gold account if you call and cancel. I'm thinking that if needed, I can call to cancel and get them to give me enough freebie points to redownload all my stuff (not that I should have to, mind you).

Barring that, all my MS points were purchased on a debit MasterCard issued by a small community credit union that actually cares about it's clients. All I need to do is sit down and fill out a form saying that I didn't get what I paid for when I bought those points, and 24 hours later the cash is back in my account and MS gets hit with the chargeback. It's ugly, but it might be necessary. Mind you, I won't do this unless I've exhausted all other options and made Microsoft well aware of my intent before actually doing it.

Personally, I think that the games should work as long as the account in question is present on the Xbox they are to be played on. That way if I log in to my friend's Xbox and re-download Geometry Wars, he can play it as long as my account is resident on his system. Once I remove the memory card holding my account or recover the account to a different Xbox, the game is rendered unplayable. If MS doesn't want to do that, then how about the option to self-transfer the license a-la the iTunes method of invalidating the license on the old console. Let users do this once every 6 months to a year. That way if someone upgrades from an Arcade to a Pro or Elite or whatever, they can know that their games will work.