XBLA Texas Hold 'em to be free for 48 hours [update 2]

I've had nearly zero problems with my 360, and I've been using it a lot since launch day.

It froze up and needed rebooting about five times since November, a small number when you consider I've played 130 hours of Oblivion alone, played through Full Auto, Quake 4, Condemned, Call of Duty, half of Perfect Dark Zero, Both difficulty levels of GRAW, half of PGR3, Prey, Fight Night Round 3, and sampled at least a level or two of most of the titles released so far. I'm working past 17 hours of Dead Rising right now.

I've also watched dozens of DVDs, put about 40 cds worth of music on the hard drive, and downloaded a whole bunch of demos, etc.

In other words, I've being using this machine constantly for one thing or another for close to ten months and enjoying it very much. The few friends I have localy who've bought the machine have likewise had trouble free ownership.

I'm sure the majority of complaints voiced here and elsewhere are legit, and I know I'd be pissed off in a big way if my machine craps out the week before Gears of War hits stores. The few cases of multiple console replacements sound especialy demoralizing, but support seems to be uniformly well spoken of. Microsoft appears to be getting machines back into the hands of its customers as quickly as they can, which is all that one could really ask for when the worst happens.

My PS1/PS2 experinces weren't that bad either, but DVD playback in the PS2 was awful. I avoid it myself, and when I worked in retail in 2001, I had to start asking customers returning defective DVDs if they were trying to play them on a PS2 (not so hot!). My PS1 gave me a bout a uear of faithful service before I had to turn it upside down to get it to play games. I never bothered to try out Sony's customer service with repairs since both machines continued to work (albeit in a half-assed way).

People who are saying that bad 360s hvae to have a higher defective rate than 3% should look at the math. Out of, oh, let's say 5,000,000 360s sold, a 3% defective rate would be 150,000. If only half of these people made irate posts online, that would be 75,000. Imagine for a moment if this post had 75,000 comments. It would look huge! But even this large number is within accepted industry norms (which means there may be 150,000 Wii and 150,000 PS3 posts after the first 5 million units of those consoles are sold).

Oh yeah, that free Teaxas Holdem is a sweet deal!

I'm right there with Chimp. I've played my 360 nearly every day since launch and have had to restart it manually maybe four times, three of them when it froze during loading on Oblivion. The other time was during matchmaking in Hearts (a bug that's been patched.)

Thing works brilliantly, despite being bought on launch day. (Of course, I'm one of the ones who bought MS's two-year warranty, so of course mine works.) Of the half-dozen or so people I know with 360s, only one has sent his back. And it was because the DVD tray was rattling, not because of freezes/crashes/the usual stuff people complain about.

My guess is you're just unlucky Boots. It's understandable if you feel like M/s's products are crap after what you've been through.

FWIW, I've owned a Coleco Vision, NES, SNES, Xbox and 360. Never had any problems with anything but the NES and constant controller breakage on the Coleco Vision (this may have had something to do with me being a little kid.)

People hate whining in general. Especially when it comes to gambling.