I got an Xbox Series X at launch, and it arrived broken. The hardware turned on and could connect to the Internet to download and play games and perform the other basic functions, but something was wrong with the power settings. The console wouldn’t go to sleep, instead only shutting all the way down, couldn’t be turned on with a controller, only by pressing the button on the front of the machine itself, and, worst of all, was unable to ‘dim’ the screen temporarily, instead turning fully off after 10 minutes of inactivity. This was in addition to the universal Xbox issues around quick resume and other functionality, some of which remain problematic even 4 months later.

Having to rely on the power button on the console was a mild inconvenience, but not being able to ‘sleep’ the console was very frustrating because it meant that I couldn’t just set a game to download and turn it off, or rely on the automatic overnight updates for games, so I sometimes had to wait for games to patch when I turned the machine on to play something. The inability to dim was a serious problem, because I have a tendency to pause my console during interruptions and leave it on while I attend to a phone call or an email that needs to be answered or whatever. I lost a fair amount of game progress to this, since I’d suspend a game, go write an email response, and then return to find my console had turned itself off and the quick resume feature had failed, meaning that any unsaved material had been lost. Booting the console up from being fully off and then having to load a game from a fresh start with the knowledge that I’d lost 15 minutes or so of progress was never a fun experience.

I eventually learned to work around these problems. Turning the console on by pressing the button quickly became habit and a non-issue. Setting the screen dim function to half an hour instead of 10 minutes gave me enough time to deal with most interruptions, and get back to either resume my play or at least wiggle the sticks and wake the game before the console turned itself off. I made sure to check for updates and downloads whenever I turned the console on to stream video (or if I just hadn’t used it for a few days), so that I rarely had to wait for patches before playing. All of this was worth it to play games in 9^th gen fidelity, and especially with the improved loading times from the SSD. I checked online and saw that a few other people were having similar problems and while it was possible that it was some kind of hardware issue related to the power supply, it seemed to be a software glitch in the new console’s firmware, and one I hoped would be fixed via update. So rather than sending my Xbox Series X back I decided to wait. I knew I had a year under warranty and while during normal times I would have gone through the repair process, I didn’t want to take an unnecessary trip to the post office or burden workers for an exchange that wasn’t strictly necessary.

But let’s be honest, a lot of it was laziness. I didn’t want to go through the hassle of calling the automated phone system, setting up the repair, packaging the console, sending it in, probably having to either redownload everything or transfer it all to an external before sending it in and then transfer it back, etc… It was just easier to deal with the inconveniences of the broken power setting than to actually go through with a warranty repair, even though those inconveniences were significant.

So instead I looked forward to each firmware update in the hopes that it would fix my problem, and was let down each time, testing the updated console by turning it off and trying to wake it with the controller, to no avail each time. It was like every few weeks there would be a new Christmas morning and each time I would rush excitedly to my stocking only to discover it stuffed with coal. Or I’d imagine that’s what it was like. As a Jew I never really got stuff for Christmas anyway, and my parents were environmentally conscious so they would never have given me coal. But Microsoft seemed intent on making up for that lack of childhood disappointments by leaving my issues unpatched!

That all changed with the most recent patch. I did my normal thing of turning the console off and pressing the button on the controller, expecting nothing to happen, only to find that the console actually turned on. Hallelujah! It was like Hannukah in March! I turned my screen dim to 10 minutes and switched the setting to have the console sleep instead of turn off, and over the last week or so I’ve found that all of those issues are resolved. My Xbox now works pretty much as intended, remaining quick resume issues excepted.

So, as it turns out, laziness won the day. By doing nothing I got to use my Xbox without interruption and it now works as intended. It’s like a brand new system. Santa has finally come to my house. Now I can use the Xbox Series X to its full potential by playing the hottest new releases, like Ice Age: Scrat’s Nutty Adventure (and yes I really have played that game on my Xbox Series X because I am a broken human being.)

My first console was the NES back in the mid 80s so I’m still a little suspicious of the fact that modern consoles can have their functionality fundamentally changed or fixed via patch, and it’s clear that neither console was fully ready to launch back in November, but it’s nice to have an Xbox that doesn’t shut off on its own without having had to send it in for repair. Sometimes it pays to be lazy!

That's good!