Yup, my Xbox 360 died.  About a month ago.  Didn’t notice?  Didn’t hear me complain.  That’s because I had a plan.  A master plan.

A super-duper master plan.

Find out what the hell I’m talking about, after the jump!

For months, my DVD drive wouldn’t work right.  It would constantly not open when I pressed the eject button.  It wouldn’t close either. Also, without fail, if I turned the system on and immediately went into a game, after about ten minutes into the game, the system would inexplicably attempt to open the disc drive.  Without pressing the eject button.  Weird.

I knew it’s time would come.  Thank god I bought a trusty warranty from Microcenter when I initially purchased the system back in November of 2006.  For a measly $30 bucks.

So first I called Xbox.  Turns out that my warranty had expired and I am not making this up, the day earlier.  One freaking day.  So, I turned to my trusty warranty.

I called the warranty people the next Sunday, when I got back into town and was directed to my local Microcenter to exchange the item.  Upon arrival, two year old in tow, I was told that I couldn’t exchange the Xbox because the Warranty people didn’t work on Sunday, even  though I had just talked to them on the phone. At this point I was getting a little bit pissed.  I had just talked to the warranty people… WTF?

Undaunted, I tracked down the general manager, Glen, with whom I had known from my coverage of the Halo 3 launch.  Glen, being the kick ass manager he is, took care of me and processed the transaction so I wouldn’t have to go home empty-handed.

The manager even told me that they were discontinuing their all encompassing warranty, because the company that handled it was losing their arse on it because of all of the xbox returns.

Anyway, my warranty allowed me to exchange my broken xbox for a new one.  Luckily, the only premiums they had were bundled with Marvel Alliance and Forza 2.  I was even able to keep my old hard drive too.

Score.

So now, I have Forza 2, Marvel Alliance (Again) and a new premium with the HDMI port.

Thanks Microcenter!