23 November 2005

Saga of the XBox

Okay, so let me start by saying that, contrary to Ellen's blog entry from two days ago, neither I nor my husband are crazy or obsessed with video games. I like to play tetris, and he plays the occasional round of Tiger Woods golf or snowboarding race. BUT we are going to see his best friend from college and his family over Thanksgiving (whom I haven't seen in over a year), and Bill wanted to be able to play the XBox with him. So Bill sold back his PS2 and all the games and accessories to buy the XBox, believing Microsoft that it would be the best system ever...more on that later.

He drove to the nearest Wal-Mart, and the line was already 3 rows long, so he said, "forget that" and drove up to the next nearest Wal-Mart about half an hour away. The line there was much shorter, and the person standing in front of him said, "Hey! If they have the number of XBoxes available that they said they would, you'll get the last one!" Neat.

What was NOT neat was the horrible, horrible woman at the front of the line who brought along all her (many) children and her sister and her (many) children to each "buy" their own XBox. The manager informed the woman that Wal-Mart was allowing one XBox per household, and she started yelling at him and throwing a fit about how she would sue them for "age discrimination". (She's lucky I wasn't there because I would have called Child Protective Services about her having her 6 & 7 year-olds in Wal-Mart until 1:00 a.m. on a school night and using them as slave labor to buy XBoxes that she was almost certainly going to scalp on E-Bay.)

Long story short, Bill did indeed get his XBox. The people in front of him were counting the horrible, horrible woman and her 9 children/nieces/nephews. Brought it home, excited as can be. Woo-hoo! Opens it up last night, gets everything plugged in and put together...

And it sucks.

No way around it. It's jerky and slow and, yes, the graphics are good, but the only games that it ran well were the "tetris" like games (that I thoroughly enjoyed).

So to make a long story longer, Bill packed it up, took it back to Wal-Mart, and we'll buy a new stereo receiver with that $$$ because ours is shot. I'm sad that he sold back his PS2, but he said that he'll just wait for the PS3 to come out and get that. Probably won't be waiting in any lines, though. And some kid will get an XBox for Christmas that wouldn't have otherwise.

Bill Gates releasing an inferior product to get quick, easy sales over Christmas? NO! Surely not!!

6 comments:

Shelli said...

Bummerrooski! That sucks.

Shelli said...

....wait a minute. Isn't this the same person that sold back his Ipod after only having it for one day?

Hillary said...

grrr Microsoft. Micropooystuff! That's so frustrating!

Anyway, now that I actually got the date right, I just wanted to say Happy Thanksgiving! Have a great one! :)

Some Random Girl said...

i heard that it might not be as great!

Mrs McCrory said...

I actually really like our X BoX 360. We have the need for speed game for it and it isn't slow or anything. I was bummed that we had to fork out $400 for it but it is what I expect. The PS3 though is not supposed to be that great.

Mrs McCrory said...

I really like our xbox 360. We have the need for speed game for it and really enjoy it. it isn't slow for us at all. Only thing that sucked was the price tag of the thing. I heard the PS3 isn't supposed to be that great though.