The red circle of death claimed my XBox 360 this weekend. I'm now without a console for the best part of a month and £84 out of pocket. This has happened to so many consoles its ridiculous, microsoft have cocked up and sold a defective product and now I have to pay over a third of the consoles original value just to get it fixed. Would they rather I didn't bother and took my custom elsewhere? They were providing free repairs up until January this year, why did they stop, did they think the problem was over or was it getting too expensive too fix them all? Once again a consumer gets shafted. What with the price of the console, accessories and repairs I've spent as much as I would have done on a PS3. Up to 33% of all XBox 360 units sold end up with a fault, this is unacceptable in the face of PS3 and the Wii's 1% failure rate. I've had no complaints with my system until now, but my confidence is now waning. I feel that I have been penalised for something that is not my fault and I shouldn't be made to pay for Microsofts mistakes.

Just got Homeworld 2 and despite it being 3 years old I thought it was fantastic. After the disapointment of Star Wars: Empire at War this was the icing on the cake of despair with that game. Why couldn't the makers of that game have taken a look at Homeworld before spewing out the basic and uninspiring game that was EaW. Homeworld 2 was good, but mix that gameplay with Star Destroyers and X-Wings and a Death Star churning out Tie Fighters and Empire at War could have been brilliant.

Sequels seem to be the life blood of the computer games industry at the moment. Given the huge production costs involved when making a game studios are unwilling to take risks on new untested products. Basically if they get something that works they run with it until someone collapses. I'm not saying this is always a bad thing, I myself am looking forward to Halo 3 amongst others, but sometimes I think if they're going to make a series of games that are almost exactly the same as their predecessors why not simply remake or re-release old games? Case in point, the recent release of the Baldurs Gate series on DVD ROM was an excellent idea which should be done more often, its got me re-playing a game thats almost 8 years old but still holds up today. There are hundreds of games out there that are still fantastic, and in some cases better than some games being released today. I dont understand why A) No one has ever bettered the fantastic Star Wars: Tie Fighter and B) It is being allowed to dissapear into obscurity with people having to modify their PC's Just to play it.The excellent gameplay mechanics are still there, with a graphical overhaul modern audiences would flock to play it, plus its money for old rope for the games companies.They could release old titles in a best of range or something to that effect, and the proceeds could go towards keeping them financially stable whilst making newer games. Its strange how the industry lets old titles fade away. The space combat simulator genre was progressively dumbed down and got worse to the point where nobody makes games in that particular genre anymore and as a result the great old games suffer the fate of their inferior descendants. So come on gamers, there are many fantastic titles out there that some of us will never be able to play again unless the games companies get their fingers out and release these games for a modern market. After all its more money to screw out of us, I wouldn't think they would have a problem with that.