On Friday 12th December my second Microsoft Xbox360 packed in after once again getting an E74 video error, lower right quadrant GPU error (I’m still yet to encounter the 3RROD – common… apparently). The error reared its ugly head after I had begun playing Fallout 3 which had run absolutely flawlessly until a shootout over the wastelands where the video display simply went tits up. The only way I can describe it is by way of comparison – a comparison to many hollywood movies where computers receive a virus only for the screen to jump around with purple and green all over the place. If I’m being honest, I originally thought it was something in the game, but the realization quickly dawned that this was not the case, but after turning the console off and back on it became apparent that the console had passed.

Annoyingly that puts me on my 3rd Xbox360 and 3rd Playstation 3, 6 true next gen consoles in 3 years… not good.

The annoying thing was that I had a friend staying over that night, bringing his console and we were going to get some co-operative Rainbow Six Vegas 2 completed, sadly the death of my console took place 10 minutes before he arrived.

The console itself was over 12 months old (14 to be precise) from it’s manufacture date, so it sadly was no longer covered for a hardware failure outside of the 3RRoD. I also have no money to purchase another one and with Xmas coming it really wasn’t the best news. This is where my awesome friend came to my rescue (again), Catherine, who managed to get my console swapped in at GAME for a new model. This trade took place on Wednesday 17th and I’m happy to say, works beautifully. Sadly it wasn’t a new Jasper model which was really disappointing, but I will probably buy a new console next year anyway.

This is why, for those wondering, why I haven’t been seen on Xbox Live for the last week. Thankfully everything was rectified before Xmas, another week and it would have been hell.