On July 9th of this year, I made a huge decision. A decision that would both haunt me, yet give me ultimately pleasure in the end (please don’t take that out of context, I do not have sex with my Xbox).

It was the day I traded up to the Xbox 360 Slim. Unfortunately I hadn’t been inside the Wiltern Theater in LA for the E3 Microsoft Press Conference to get one for free, but I had found a way to trade my existing system in as well as a few accessories to get the cost at or around eighty bucks. Read on to hear my “What The Eff”.

It was a hot and sweaty day (record scratch) - sorry, I thought all stories needed to start out this way. This also has to do with my ongoing fascination with gay porn Star Trek stories. C’mon! They’re just funny! Anyway, I digress.

I had read online about the new bundle coming out called the Xbox 360 Slim after Microsoft unveiled it on the stage at E3. Awesome! 250GB internal hard drive, built in wi-fi, and a new updated sleek design of the Xbox 360 had me salivating to get my hands on it. I really didn’t need it though. My current Jasper board 360 had done me well. All of my game saves, content, music and movies had all just trudged along ever-so-nicely. But it wasn’t sexy. The 360 S was, and it would look oh-so-good in my gaming cabinet.

I had talked about it and talked about it, up until the point my girlfriend just flat-out said, “So when are we going to game store?” She knew me. She knew me better than I know myself (South Park reference achievement unlocked). I had already made up my mind to do the upgrade. She knew that.

The bundle stated it came with a black headset. That’s great. My white wireless headset would fetch a good price at the game store, so I decided to trade that in as well to cut down on the out of pocket cost. I made the trade-in, take my glorious new box home on the 9th of July, and proceed to hook it all up. That’s cool, I’ll just suffer through a few weeks with the shitty headset until the new black headset goes on sale. Shouldn’t be too long right? Wrong.

This is where my “What The Eff” moment happened. I open up all of my newly wrapped goodies and see a black headset in there, only it’s not the one I originally thought. We hear about new packaging deals all the time at Loot Ninja where once before they offered it as a stand alone accessory and now they include it in the box. Oh no. Not here. I thought they were going to start including the wireless headset in with the unit now? That would be awesome. But the headset I got was the lame ass cheap telemarketer headset with the wraparound mic that people just throw away. No big deal right? I’ll just go online and buy one of the newly fangled black accessories they are coming out with to accompany the new Slim. Wrong again. Pre-order? Nope.

Microsoft has listed it’s black wireless headset on it’s accessory site a week after they revealed the new Xbox Slim on E3 2010 week. Believe me, I looked. That was the middle of June. We’re going into September now, and retailers still haven’t gotten their hands on the new headset (much less listed it on their sites as coming soon).

I, on the other hand, have had to suffer through an entire month of gaming with a cheaply made headset that sucks bawls and makes me think of the Taiwanese boy in the sweatshop who made it. I feel bad. I really don’t want to hurt the boys feelings by throwing away his work, but then again I don’t want to suffer anymore with this crappy headset. I’m sure both my and the boy’s suffering levels are probably the same.

I’ve looked into Tritton, Turtle Beach, or even Astro gaming headsets. All pricey, all over the top (for my uses anyway). I already have a PS3 bluetooth headset so this would only need to be for the 360. That’s too much money and fiddling and reorganizing my gaming cabinet to accommodate a new wire and headset setup. Not to mention all of the new wires going everywhere. But what to do though?

I’ve waited for over a month now, continuing to check my normal channels to find one of the elusive black Xbox 360 wireless headsets. Best Buy, GameStop, Fry’s, Target, Wal-Mart, all of the big websites continue to not even show when or IF they will get these in. I continue to go back to the Microsoft website and there it is. Sitting there slapping me in the face with its huge black microphone dick. It flat out stares me down, almost mocking me. I gaze at it’s luminescent 2D glow, sitting there online just showing me it’s curves and how comfortable it will fit on my ear. I can’t have it yet, and who knows when I will. Maybe with the Xbox 720 comes out? We’ll see.

Come on Microsoft, what the eff? Where in the hell is your black wireless headset?