In my 25+ years of gaming I have now suffered something that has never happened to me before. I got the RED LIGHT of DEATH. I still have my original working NES from the 1980s for **** sake. And my Super Nintendo, and my N64, and my Gamecube, and my Playstation, and PS2. None of them has ever quit on me. But my PS3 has become a casualty after just 3 years of use. Now from what I've read on the Internet I've apparently had a pretty good run since this current gen of consoles seem to have a bit of an overheating problem (especially the XBOX).

But I spent like $500 on this damn system not including all the games and accessories. That was just buying the original system. Luckily the price has come down a bit since I bought the one that is now gracing the bottom of my trash bin. So tomorrow I get to trapse down to Best Buy and get myself a new PS3 (even though I can't really afford it). I contemplated sending it in for possible repair but since I'd be looking atlikely anywhere up to and beyond 3 months of down time and $150+ for the repairs I figure it was just better to cut my losses and shell out the $250 on a new one. I also hate that this new one won't be backward comptabile but I haven't really gone back to my PS2 library since I bought a PS3 anyway, but that doesn't mean I don't want to be able to.

One of the worst things that happened out of it all was that my copy of Uncharted 3 was in the drive when this horrible travesty went down. I was half a step away from smashing the thing up against the wall at this point anyway, but I eventually calmed down enough to take a screwdriver to the box. Let me just tell you it is a real beotch to take one of these things apart. Sony seriously doesn't want you f***ing with their tech. So I busted the "This voids your warranty" seal (LOL, like it wasn't long past anyway) and proceeded to unintentionally break flimsy plastic and remove screws to get to the Blu-ray drive. Mind you I had already tried all the "Try this before sending your unit back to Sony" solutions and I still got the RED LIGHT of DEATH every time. Long story short (little late for that) I finally managed to get my disc out scratch free and removed the HDD just for good measure (not that I'll likely be able to do anything with it without some additional capital investment).

So I've lost all my save data and game files. I should be able to get back all my downloaded content from PSN but it's still going to be a real pain in the a$$ to get everything set back up. It is a truly sad day and I've got a wasted evening, a headache, and tomorrow a lighter wallet (actually more credit card debt) to show for it all. So in this case I've got to say: "Thanks a lot Sony." You can imagine me with both middle fingers extended at this point. I'm not even surewhat makes me more mad, the fact that my system died or the fact that I'm so ready to get up and by another one.