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Ok so my friend offered me his 360 for $50, it seems close to broken but i get the 360, controllers, battery packs that kinda work, and the cords to plug it in. The things I don't get are a hard drive and a mic, also the 360 needs it's faceplate off to read the disc and smacked a couple times just to open the disc tray sometimes, none at all. What should I do? help a gamer in need!

Sounds like you'd end up having to invest much more in it down the road only for it to break down. I'd first call up Microsoft and ask them how much it costs to renew a warranty because I assume he's owned it for more than a year if its in that kind of condition and was never sent in to be repaired.

If you don't want to go through extreme expense and waiting several weeks for it to be repaired, I'd advise you hold off for now. The economy is heading for another recession. Stores and websites are going to have insane deals. Black Friday & Christmas sales last year were unbelievable. Toys R Us had buy 1 game, get another for $5 last year. Amazon just had a deal last month for a new XBOX 4GB with Kinect for $300 plus a $100 gift card which can go towards getting games, accessories or hard drive. And you could always sell the Kinect for like $100 on eBay or Craigslist if you don't want it. These deals come back every few weeks and I know they'll definitely be around for the holidays. Amazon constantly has great deals and discounts, I advise you look there over any other place. Buying new gets you a free 1 month gold subscription, free trials of everything like Hulu and Netflix, and 12 months to have the system repaired or replaced if anything goes wrong.

Only get the dude really needs the money razz