The End of Xbox LIVE as I know it

Today was a sad day. Yesterday and today the power went out, but it was kinda fun. Yesterday I drew a comic for REPriiSENT! which is up, and that was really cool. But the sad part was that I loaded up Halo 2 about three or four times, and "I failed to load the map", not just "the map", all the maps!

I even redownloaded the bonus maps and I still couldn't load the map. Now, I knew that I was going to stop playing LIVE in February and I would stop the service from being renewed, but I still wanted to see what it was like to play on Xbox LIVE during Christmas Vacation. I knew it was going to end but I wanted to get some final games in and I wanted to be in control of when it ended, not have it ripped out of my hands at a random time by the aging of my XBOX.

It was sad, I sent a party invite to all my friends saying that my Xbox failed to load all maps after multiple reboots, and that if anyone wanted to say goodbye they could join my party. I wish I could say that a bunch of people joined, we talked, we laughed, remembered the good times and cried, but that was not the case.

After trying all the maps one more time, I sent a final good-bye message to all my friends on LIVE, and I told them my email address. I hope that they somehow randomly scroll all the way down their friends list (since I won't be online), get the message and that they email me because I am going to miss them a lot!

Being stubborn as I am, I tried something I hadn't tried in a long time, I got out FORZA, a game that was supposed to be awesome with all its realistic and customizingness, the only problem is that it would freeze on my XBOX so I never truly got to experience if that was really true. So, I got it out, and I joined a party in FORZA, and the game was about to start when, yep you guessed it, FORZA froza!

So here's the recap:

• I was planning on playing Halo 2 for just one or two more months before canceling the LIVE subscription to prevent it from auto-renewing.
• The XBOX can barely load the menus of games, which means I no longer see actual gameplay
• I have no more reason to have XBOX LIVE... Wait! I pretty much have no more reason to own this XBOX at all!
• So the plan is to cancel the account, sell it (the Xbox) to a company and let the poor souls know that they must replace the disc-drive!

Ironic: there is so much centered around a little laser being able to read the grooves of a disc properly.

My five-month forecast? Nintendo here I come!

http://repriisent.blogspot.com