Incomplete Gamer

OK, so the Xbox 360 power brick is an easy target and The Incomplete Gamer has taken its fair share of cheap shots. Who cares that it’s big? So your Granny had to move out of the third bedroom and find a place of her own. She’s 80 for crying out loud, she should have moved out of home a long time ago!

Rather than continue to heckle the Xbox 360 power brick from afar, we thought we’d get up close and personal with the big black behemoth and provide our readers with an exclusive, inside-look at the power brick.

(A) Hamster in a wheel. There’s a few different versions of the Hamster in the Wheel (Microsoft Patent pending), depending on your power brick’s country of origin. Believed to provide additional low levels of power, to ensure regular, constant, precise power supply is maintained at all times. This particular component is likely to become as much of an issue on the Xbox 360 mod scene as the last generation Xbox DVD drives were. Now the question won’t be – do you have a Thompson, a Phillips or a Samsung drive? – but whether you have a Mexican hamster or a Chinese one. Word on the street is the Mexican hamsters, not surprisingly, have a habit of sleeping during the afternoon hours. If your 360 is prone to lock-ups after lunch, check power brick for ‘country of origin’ information.

“I thought it was kind of heavy…”

(B) Microsoft’s Operation Trojan Horse. So you probably already know about Microsoft’s grand plan to become the most important part of your lounge. Getting you to buy the Xbox 360 was the easy part. And the way they did the hard-sell on the console’s high definition capabilities almost guarantees you’ll be hooking up this sucker to the shiny new HD-ready TV in your living room. Still, the canny folks at Microsoft are leaving nothing to chance. What if you hook up your new Xbox 360 to the telly in your bedroom or the study? This is when Operation Trojan Horse kicks into gear. Inside each power brick is a very small Microsoft employee. OK, OK, you’ve seen the power brick…he’s probably not that small, I’m just exaggerating again. Anyway, the possibly-very-small Microsoft employee, (let’s call him Trojan, for the sake of keeping this simple) is responsible for ensuring the Xbox 360 does indeed become the central most important component in the lounge room. That’s why, when you woke up the other day, the Xbox 360 was gone from your bedroom and was instead plugged into the HD telly in the lounge room. And you thought your flat mate had been playing with it. It was in fact Trojan, who had slipped, stealth-like out of the power brick, and carried your new shiny console down to the lounge. Trojan has other duties, of course. Who do you think feeds the hamster?

(C) Food stores (See points a & b above). Enough food for the hamster and the very small Microsoft Employee. Note: Naturally, food supplies will vary depending on whether you have a Mexican or Chinese hamster and the exact size of your very small Microsoft employee.

(D) A copy of Microsoft Explorer on Memory Stick Duo (What…the hamster and the tiny Microsoft employee you believe, but you draw the line at Microsoft using a Sony proprietary storage medium – why else did you think the price of memory sticks had fallen so dramatically?) Of course the copy of Microsoft Explorer serves no function at all, old habits die hard and MS just couldn’t resist packing it in with the power brick.