Jasper!

As promised (to myself, not you, dear blogreader), I bought an Xbox 360 in January 2009. Given my needy house and ten-month-old daughter, it was perhaps not the smartest purchase. On the other hand, I made this stupid purchase as smartly as possible. First, as none of you know, the Xbox "Jasper" chipset recently debuted. It is supposed to solve the console's dreaded Red Ring of Death (see illustration). This so-called RROD is an indicator that the console has broken, and means you have to send it back to Microsoft for a time-consuming fix. This is by all accounts an extremely common problem. Microsoft spent a billion or so extending the 360's warranty to three years in an effort to bolster consumer confidence. It is a testament to this machine's awesomeness that people continue to buy it like crazy despite the horrible reliability rate. (Anecdotal evidence: my friend Jason Bowders, who is the biggest gamer I know, bought a 360 at launch and is currently on his third!)

Thank Zeus that Jasper came along just as I was getting ready to buy. Because there were pressures in both directions (i.e., buy and not-buy), and the existence of Jasper alleviated one of the not-buy pressures, tipping the balance toward buy.

Pressures to buy: 1) I love videogames and the 360 is the best console out there; 2) I had told myself last year when I "gave up" videogames (see previous posts describing my failures) that I would for sure buy a 360 in January '09; 3) My friend Dave Reis bought a 360 partially because I told him I would buy one, then he was diagnosed with two -- not one, but two! -- types of cancer.

Pressures to not-buy: 1) I'm a cheap bastard and the $200.00 price point is deceptive (see below); 2) Barb hates videogames and hates that I play them; 3) The 360 is an unreliable piece of crap and Microsoft sucks.

I read about Jasper and planned an elaborate strategy for making sure that I got one of the new, supposedly-reliable Jaspers and not the old-stock crapola Falcon. But, as often happens these days, plans went awry, twisted by the baby imperative, and I ended up just going to GameStop in the Lloyd Center and buying whatever random Xbox 360 Arcade they handed me. Fortune favored me, though, and I ended up with a Jasper.

Add to the bill two games (both with the idea of playing online with friends -- oddly enough, this whole Xbox thing is driven by social pressures). Cost: two bills for the box, fifty for game one, sixty for game two = $310.00. As my old pal Simon called Peter might say: "Fuck a duck!"

And that's just the beginning. Because the Arcade doesn't come with a hard drive. But you really need one to play online. Normally the 60Gb hard drive costs $100.00 (highway-fucking-robbery). But I found a refurbished 20Gb bundled with a refurbished controller for $40. (A new controller is $50!). Then I bought a 13-month Xbox Live membership for $30 (normally $50). Now our total cost for the $200 game system is $380.00.

That's a lot of money.

But it's also a bargain, since many of the suckers out there just buy the 360 Pro for $300 (includes 60Gb hard drive), then buy a new extra controller ($50) and a year of Xbox Live ($50) plus the two games, and they pay $510.00.

Here's the verdict: the games are crazy fun. The Xbox Live service is incredibly smooth and polished; I can't believe how easy it is to play online. The regular online gaming (in the game Call of Duty 4) isn't to my taste -- it's too hard, too competitve, and too random; but the other game I bought, Left 4 Dead, is my absolute ideal multiplayer game. It's as if the designers tapped into my dreams (well, nightmares -- we're talking zombie apocalypse here) and turned them into massively successful entertainment.

As Barb and I keep finding ourselves saying, the future is now.