Xbox DRM and the Red Ring of Death

manekineko2 writes "In the latest case warning of the perils of investing in DRM'd media, an owner of an Xbox 360 reports that after his Xbox suffered the infamous Red Ring of Death, it was replaced by a new system with a different serial number. Upon receiving his replacement, he found that he could only access the media he had purchased from a specific account. He also received the run-around for months from customer service before his case was escalated, only to be informed that there is no ETA for a resolution, there is no way to receive status updates on the process, and there is no compensation that will be granted. Given claims that the Xbox 360 defect rate is as high as 1 in 3, has anyone on Slashdot gone through this as well after getting their system exchanged?" Update: 02/14 17:11 GMT by Z : An emailing user noted that the original summary was not very accurate; rephrased to be more in-line with the situation.

Re:It worked for me...

[Anonymous Coward]

I regularly take my hard drive and pop it in to seperate machines and it works fine with all of my content. Saved games, and XBLA purchases. Maybe there is more to the story? Anybody with an Xbox 360 and a friend who has one too can prove for themselves that this story is most likely some crazy incident that would never happen to the general public or just complete bullshit.

Re:Ummm

[nickj6282]

Yeah, they didn't do this for me. I called this weekend because my son couldn't play the games I downloaded from my gamertag on the 360 before it was replaced. I spent an hour on the phone and the final resolution was for them to transfer the content license from the old console to the new one. This required me to fax them the exchange receipt from Best Buy and now I'm on day 3 of the 30 day wait for them to do this.

I'm not confident that this will ever get done, but luckily I have some recourse. Firstly I do have an Xbox Live Gold account, and from personal experience I know that the reps will bend over backward to keep you on the gold account if you call and cancel. I'm thinking that if needed, I can call to cancel and get them to give me enough freebie points to redownload all my stuff (not that I should have to, mind you).

Barring that, all my MS points were purchased on a debit MasterCard issued by a small community credit union that actually cares about it's clients. All I need to do is sit down and fill out a form saying that I didn't get what I paid for when I bought those points, and 24 hours later the cash is back in my account and MS gets hit with the chargeback. It's ugly, but it might be necessary. Mind you, I won't do this unless I've exhausted all other options and made Microsoft well aware of my intent before actually doing it.

Personally, I think that the games should work as long as the account in question is present on the Xbox they are to be played on. That way if I log in to my friend's Xbox and re-download Geometry Wars, he can play it as long as my account is resident on his system. Once I remove the memory card holding my account or recover the account to a different Xbox, the game is rendered unplayable. If MS doesn't want to do that, then how about the option to self-transfer the license a-la the iTunes method of invalidating the license on the old console. Let users do this once every 6 months to a year. That way if someone upgrades from an Arcade to a Pro or Elite or whatever, they can know that their games will work.

Not just DRM

[Anonymous Coward]

DRM was only the beginning.

If you replace your old Xbox360 console with a new one you will not be able to use your new console to its full capacity with your old account. Games like Halo 3 will refuse to download content to your new Xbox360 using your old account full stop.

Neither will you be able to play some video content unless you go online every single time.
We have all been used to games consoles being closed proprietary systems but Microsoft policies much surely set a new low point. This goes well beyond DRM.

Re:OR, just keep your silver account.

[Nitar]

In your specific case, it may not be inaccessible. However, in my case it is. If you have other people using your 360 with their own gamertags, only the gamertag that PURCHASED the content from the XBox Marketplace is allowed to use it. Also, it only works if you are connected to the internet on your 360.

Unfortunately, I purchased many of the arcade games for my kids, who have their own gamertags. Now they can no longer play the titles.

This is a HUGE problem in my opinion, and I've been screwed over by Microsoft regarding this issue since August, 2007. I have called them on multiple occasions, and they have even called me once. Unfortunately every single interaction results in them saying that it will be fixed, but that they have no idea when.

This can also be translated to: Screw you, we took your money and we don't have to do anything to help you now.

I really like the games on the 360, but stuff like this is very very frustrating. There seems to be no recourse that can be taken in order to get your points refunded, or the games reactivated on the console. I've spent a decent amount of money on downloadable content... maybe $150 - $200. Maybe they just don't want to bother, but I sure won't be buying any more until the problem is fixed.

If anyone HAS had success with this, I'd really like to know how you went about getting the problem resolved.