Iâ..ve been an avid gamer since childhood. In my day Commodore 64 and Colecovision were king. I still get nightmares of being in Beyond Castle Wolfenstein and getting caught by Hitlerâ..s henchmen, my psychologist says I am making good progress in therapy and should make a full recovery over the next 10 or 15 years. The games of those times were simple, easy to play for the most part, and a ton of fun.

Now we enter a new era â.. the digital revolution where computers are approaching human intelligence and CGI graphics are replacing the need for real actors. With that comes (you guessed it), BETTER games. Hence this past Christmas I received a shining new XBOX 360 from Santa. This was my first true dedicated gaming consol since my high school days of Sega Genesis. I hooked up this system to my 7.1 state of the art surround system in my theater room quicker than a group of turkey vultures flock to fresh kill.

I was marveled by the graphics of Halo 2, Star Trek Legacy and NHL hockey. Wow what a quantum leap in graphics, sound and gameplay I thought. At first I was a bit intimidated by all of the buttons on the controller but after a few days, my hand / eye coordination greatly improved and I was actually beating gamers via online battles of Star Trek Legacy. Imagine that. I was at the command of the starship Defiant, hurling quantum torpedoes at any ship that registered red crosshairs on my screen. Hulls were buckling and nacelles were flying off all around me. Over the course of the next couple of months, my gaming reputation online was becoming respectable. I was networked with other geek gameplayers like myself where we would meet at specific times online to battle it out. It quickly became my escape from reality and release of daily tensions of running the top AV website online. Could it be I found true love from a little white box with shiny green lights? Read on to find out that my newfound love was bitter sweet.

Everything was great barring a few graphic issues with Star Trek Legacy that every owner experienced but the company Bethsoft denied. I could live with that, I thought. That is until I started experiencing game freezes in the middle of my battles. Thinking it was Legacy related, I tried other games and soon found the same problem. I tried all of Xboxâ..s recommendations (clear HD cache, create new gamer profile, etc). To no end my problem was not fixable and only got worse with time. I then saw complaints on various forums (including Audioholics.com) about XBOX 360 owners whose units would fail after 3 months of usage. I was on my third month and prior to this experience, I thought nothing about the fact that Microsoft extended everyones warranty an extra year at no cost to the owners. What a hell of a company to be so niceâ.¦. or so I thought.

It turned out there seems to be a major design flaw with the XBOX 360 gaming system with its ability to operate reliably. But over time, due to cheap parts usage and poor layout, these little dream systems can break down due to excessive heat wrecking havoc on sensitive parts. My system quickly became as useful as a bicycle is to a fish.

I called Microsoft to inform them of my misfortune. They didnâ..t even question it, as if it was normal for this to happen after a prescribed amount of time. They issued me a return authorization and are now shipping a box for me to return my core system for repair. It seems Scottyâ..s proverb â..the more they complicate the plumbing, the easier it is for the drain to get stuffed upâ. rings true for complicated gaming systems like the XBOX 360. ? If you love something and set it free, true love will return to you or so they say. I suppose I will find out if this is true in two weeks. Stay tunedâ.¦

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