Dirty disc errors on the Xbox 360 haven't been that uncommon for me. Normally, I try again and they go away. I've occasionally lost a little progress in a game, but it's nothing to get (too) worked up over. So when that happened during a pivotal scene in Assassin's Creed II, I just gritted my teeth, took a deep breath, and tried again.

The same thing. And again. And again.

After the jump, I'll tell you what I've been doing all day instead of updating Fidgit.

I'm not exaggerating when I say I've lost count of the number of dead Xbox 360s I've had to deal with. I've had to get my debug system replaced a few times. I've dealt with my Little Brother's dead 360. But my own 360 has been replaced going on, I think, eight times now. At any rate, it's well into the double digits when you tally up the number of times I've had to deal with 1-800-4MYXBOX. I should put those guys on speed dial.

It's been mostly red rings of death, but also some GPU failures. This latest one is new to me. It not only killed my Xbox 360, but it took with it three games by scratching grooves into the bottom of the disc that prevent data being read correctly. This results in dirty disc errors, but the only thing "dirty" is Microsoft's quality control. R.I.P. Assassin's Creed II, Modern Warfare 2, and Borderlands. They all look like phonograph records now, with perfectly circular scratches on the bottom of the disc that, I presume, can cause disc read errors. In the case of Assassin's Creed II, I can't get past that pivotal point. I can't install the game to the hard drive. I'm effectively shut down with a dirty disc error instead of...well, I don't want to give that part of the game away.

So after only twenty minutes on the phone with my old friends at 1-800-4MYXBOX, it turns out the cost to fix this error will be $99 if I hang up and deal with it online. It'll be an extra $20 to handle it over the phone. Outsourcing isn't as cheap as it's made out to be.

As for the damaged games, since none of them was published by Microsoft, I was told to deal with the retailer. So I called Gamestop and was informed they'll only replace defective discs if they were defective when the game was opened. Alternatively, they do offer a Gameplay Guarantee program when you buy a game so that it's covered for a year from the date of purchase. So that's what that's for! Not that it'll help me now.

So here I am with an Xbox 360 that slowly destroys games, a repair bill, and three copies of recent games that a retailer will not replace, that cannot be traded in, and that the Xbox 360 thinks are dirty.

The cost of a Gameplay Guarantee for each new Xbox 360 game? $3
The cost of repairing the Xbox 360? $99
The cost of doing it over the phone? $20
The cost of replacing the damaged games? About $180
Booting up my PS3? Priceless.