So my 360 arrived back from the repair shop last week. And I still haven’t powered it up. I’m nervous. A little while ago, after posting my 360 woes, I got a note from buttonmashing.com reader Cyriel. In part, his email reads:
I also had my 360 die on me a couple of weeks ago, got it back 2 days ago.. not bad.. only 7 days. I went to play my arcade games. They worked fine….when I was online… if I logged off Live they all turned to trial versions. My wife has a gamertag that she bought stuff with as well and she doesn’t seem to have access to any of her games on or offline. She doesn’t have access to any of the games I bought at all either.
I called Microsoft and was on the phone with them for 2 hours making 2 new silver accounts to which they will supposedly deposit some microsoft points to purchase my games back for this xbox… my wife had to do the same. BUT they are not going to add ALL the points electronically, only some, for the rest they will call me with a 25 character code that I need to enter in as if I am redeeming a points card…..what????!!
I don’t have a ton of purchased content on my system, but I’m still worried something is going to go awry and I’ll be stuck with less of a machine than what I sent in. What a pain.
I know some of you readers have sent in your Boxes to have them repaired. Any similar horror stories? Or was it just plug and play? (Yeah, right. Like anything Microsoft has done was ever plug-and-play. Zing!)
When you purchase something over live two things happen.
1) it is tied to your gamertag. That way you can bring your profile to a friends house and download an already purchased piece of content and play it there. On any other profile it becomes trial.
2) it is tied to the serial number of the box. This is so other profile’s on your specific 360 can also play that paid for content.
If you have a different 360 after the repair process(as in my case) then well it them behaves like you signing in with your profile on a friends machine. This is true even if you kept your original hard drive with all the content still on there since as stated in #2 the console serial # no longer matches. At this point you are basically hosed if you don’t log in with the same exact profile that said content was purchased under.
Solution: Call support (at least 5 times) and eventually they will give you codes to give you the equivalent points needed to repurchase all the content (which will then associate that purchased content with your new serial #).
So you see check your serial #. If it’s a different machine you are already hosed so you might as well turn it on and play with it.
For me since I only have one profile in the household that really uses the 360 I haven’t had the incentive to go through the hassle of support to go get those points back (about $70 worth for me). I’m almost always signed into live so it doesn’t affect me much.
Either way go fire up that 360 (and buy earth defense force 2017 – FANTASTIC game!!!) and have fun.
Oh and you if you do go the support call route you might want to wait a month to make sure your refurb 360 lasts. Otherwise you get to do it all over again.
My problem was I rented a movie that I didn’t get to watch and it was no longer available on Live.
Tech kept crediting me back points. It only took four phone calls.
My “other” problem is that I got my original system back but the tray will not open when the unit is vertical by pressing the button and will open 50/50 when I use the dashboard.
The drive also spins loudly like it’s over-revving the disk when I eject it. That and it only does this on games, not DVDs.
Meh.
I’m pretty sure I sent my 360 to MS sometime in early 2006. About February, I believe. The refurb unit they sent me is still working without a problem. I too have the issue with the XBLA games only being full copies if I’m connected to LIVE. I haven’t gone through the effort of correcting this issue yet, like arogan described.
I’ll also keep my fingers crossed for you. I’m hoping that you will be in my boat and have a good refurb unit, and not one of the horror stories I’ve heard about on the IGN forums. You know, the ones where someone sends in their 360 four or five times before they get a working one.
Thanks for the heads up and tips. It sounds like you got the short end of the stick, agentgray. I should have some time tomorrow to finally fire it up. I’m thinking of leaving it out of the TV stand this time. I may even try the 7-day survivor again with Dead Rising!