Oh, the sadness. My PS2 appears to be broken. That means no more Guitar Hero or Rock Band. Gah.

I wish I’d known it was on its last legs before I bought those five new games and two guitars. Buying a new system hurts the wallet, of course, but the fact that I’ll have to buy all this GH stuff again just makes it worse. I can’t be *too* upset; the thing was 8 or 9 years old, I think, so it had a good long run. But still.

Here’s what it does: Every disc I put in, I get a disc error. Doesn’t matter what disc it is.

I read some troubleshooting tips online, and tried some of them: (a) used the vacuum to try sucking the dust out of the insides, (b) used a compressed air can to blow where sucking didn’t work, (c) I put the PS2 in the optional vertical position, as it supposedly reads discs better that way, and (d) "played" a lens-cleaning disc. All to no avail. The lens-cleaning disc probably didn’t actually even do anything since I couldn’t get the PS2 to play it (the instructions seem to indicate that "playing" the disc somehow activates the cleaning function, so getting the read error on that probably prevented it from doing anything useful).

So, any advice on either fixing the PS2 or on purchasing a new system? I’d considered buying a Wii after playing one over the Xmas holidays, so I thought about getting one of those. However, the research I’ve done seems to indicate that the Xbox360 is the best platform for playing GH and Rock Band, thanks to its networking capabilities that allow you to buy additional tracks at an online store, and play with your friends remotely.