Rolf Ebeling
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Jul 20, 2007 02:30 PM
The HAL 9000 computer from Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey"
At Newsweek HQ, most of our colleagues are either boomers in name
or boomers in spirit, which means there haven't been many serious
gamers among our ranks. But from the increasing number of game-related
conversations we've had with our office mates, it's clear that this is
starting to change. Our de facto Xbox 360 correspondent Rolf Ebeling,
who in his day job is the creative director for Newsweek.com, posted
here last month about his brief playtime with the Halo 3 multiplayer beta, sandwiched between the obligations--and joy--of raising his new daughter. In today's entry, he reflects on how his affection for his Xbox 360 has been tested in recent weeks.
My first Xbox 360--that's right, my first Xbox 360--died just two
weeks after I received it as a surprise for my wedding anniversary last
summer (my wife still gets Hall of Fame status for that gift idea.) One
minute it was humming along nicely as I parachuted into position on
Bridge Too Far in Battlefield 2: Modern Combat, the next it froze up
and stared me down with its HAL 9000-esque eye burning three-quarters red--the dreaded "ring of death"
came to visit. I somewhat sheepishly brought it back to my local Best
Buy, secretly afraid--after a night of Googling message boards--that
I'd suffocated it in our TV cabinet and melted its innards to mush. The
salesperson at the returns desk barely looked up as I gingerly pushed
the repackaged unit across the counter. "So have you been getting a lot
of returns on these?" I ventured after the silence became
uncomfortable. "Uh-huh," she said, eyebrows raised, "good luck with
this one," pushing a new unit back across the counter. I left quickly.
Truth be told, the Xbox consoles are the first Microsoft products
I've truly loved, and the only PC-based products I've spent money
on--otherwise, my household is all Apple. It felt like Redmond had
gotten it right with the first Xbox: solid-if-chunky industrial design;
smooth and bug-free operating system; genre-defining games like Halo, and Xbox Live--the
lifeblood of my nightly gaming. Miraculously, Microsoft had become the
underdog I rooted for: they even wooed me away from my PlayStation 2
after only a year.
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