Does the 360 really have a terrible reputation right now? I rarely hear about RRoD problems anymore in the sphere these days.

I still like the 360 (games) over the wii and ps3, but console itself is still plagued with problems; most recently related to the latest xbox live update

MS still seems to care more about meeting the shipping date than it does about quality

If they cared about meeting the shipping date, Vista would have been way worse than it is.

I bought my unit on boxing day 2007, so just over a year now I've had my 360 and no RRoD problems so far knock on wood

Out of all my 100+ friends on xbox live, I can only recall 2 having the problem (or at least telling people they had the problem). They had older units (early 2007 ish) and MS fixed it within a couple weeks - for another friend who had 2 faulty units they just gave him a new elite and apologized for his problems.

The new units are a lot more reliable.

I wouldn't say the Xbox 360 has a terrible reputation. It's crushing the PS3 in unit sales, plus Xbox Live Arcade is monetizing like crazy. It does have quality issues (I'm on my 3rd) but Microsoft handles them so well, and the box is so great, that it doesn't seem to matter at all.

In terms of reliability, the Xbox 360 does have a terrible reputation. Everyone who owns any console knows what "RRoD" means - Can you tell me what the failure response for a PS3 or a Wii is?

Reliability is not what most people look for when buying a console, so I don't think it hurts their sales terribly; but all of these problems cannot be good for Microsoft's bottom line.

I'm on my second 360, and other than the terrible phone support, their RMA process is decent. But when I bought my 360 I knew that this might happen because of all the other reports of RRoD out in the wild.

I work at a video game company with lots of video game geeks. I can say honestly that my coworkers have had more problems with Wii's failing in the last year than Xboxes.

Yeah, but at the same time, you don't hear about that. Memes didn't form around that. So the Xbox's reputation is worse than the Wii's - very possibly unfairly so, but that's how reputation works.

It's not unfair, the Xbox was a hell of a lot worse for a while there. The vast majority of the initial batch ended up bricked. They might be better now, but I expect if Wii has the large scale problems Xbox did you'll hear about it.

But you bought one. Why is that? Everyone I know who knows about the RRoD issue buys one anyway. People who don't know don't seem to care about consoles. It's curious to me.

I bought one too, and I knew about the issue. PS3 was too expensive for my blood and I prefer XBox games over Wii games. I also knew that MS wasn't being an ass with returns. Mine has held up so far though, so I don't know firsthand.

They buy them because they're really an awesome console. Microsoft has been the leader in online connectivity since the original.

This is exactly the answer. I wanted a gaming console, and the 360 is the one with all the games. I have a Wii as well, but it only gets turned on when my parents are over and want to bowl.

Xbox live is pretty nice as well; I'm not a huge fan of the "New Xbox Experience", but I can appreciate that they've put a lot of effort into it.

I have a Wii too, and I buy a few games like Mario Kart or Zelda that are exclusively for it. But any game that's on both systems, such as Rock Band, I purchase on the Xbox. The high def graphics alone are enough to ensure that.

I'm not a fan of the new experience either in one respect: if you're going to force me to choose an avatar (which is annoying) at least make a creator as good as Nintendo's. I find myself unable to make reasonable approximations of anyone I actually know. Also I don't care for where it starts you out now, on that little shopping area. Other than that I find it generally a more efficient navigation system.

Also, Worms on XBL Arcade cost $5 and is my favorite game ever.

I'd like to add into the mix of console debate, as a Nintendo fanboy, that their "purchase games online" strategy fell really sadly flat. Back when it launched, the promise of an unlimited back library was really incredible. People thought it was a new era for gaming. Then the Wii Library (or whatever it's called) turned out to be pay-per-game, and they released games slowly (despite the games being basic emulator roms), and they were angling it as a counter to the XBox Live Arcade. Original content versus oldies which are free online.

The Wii has a lot of potential. I think that the control scheme is second-to-none, and that after Mario Galaxy (which showed just how effective it was) we ought to have seen a proliferation of good third-party add-ons. As it is, Nintendo is carrying the console itself, but it's proven itself fallible. It's still the single best game developer in the world, and its design team is head-and-shoulders above the competition. But the rest of the company isn't quite as top-notch, and it shows, and it unfortunately means Nintendo's ridiculous advantage over Sony and Microsoft is being entirely wasted.

I have wondered why that back catalog isn't much larger. You would think it would be trivial for them to slap every game they made on there, plus license entire catalogs from other companies, given that they're just roms.

Their online gameplay was half-baked from the start. The day I got my Wii (2 days after it launched) I also bought Madden, only to end up pissed when I realized there was no online connectivity. It took forever for that stuff to actually work, though I will say that now that it's there, and unlike Xbox it's free, it's pretty nice.

Beating the PS3 doesn't say much though.

If only a better manufacturer entered the hardcore console market. Apple? Google? Anyone? Having a choice of 2 just sucks.

Has there ever really been more than 2? It's a tremendously tough market to succeed in. It's seriously impressive that Microsoft has been able to get into 2nd place for 2 straight generations now, and this time third place isn't even close to them.

Not to mention, what more could you want in a console? Both seem to be able to provide games all the horsepower they need to do whatever developers can dream up at this point. They're tremendously extensible platforms. The Xbox 360 even uses USB ports, meaning you can develop whatever hardware you want for it with ease, as Rock Band and company have.

I would say that the state of console gaming now has less to do with them than the game developers.

I recently made the choice - PS3 or Xbox. I bought the Xbox. My main reason though was that I just didn't want a useless bluray player for the extra cost.

I just wish sony and ms would do gaming, and do it well rather than foray into "taking over the living room", videos, media etc etc.

Agreed about extensibility etc though, the xbox seems to have got that one right. Guitar hero was one reason I bought my xbox.

I still feel slightly dirty having things with "microsoft" written on them in the house though :/

Maybe with the next playstation they'll just go back to making a good games console instead of trying to push bluray.

Shame sega and atari fell so early on though.

Just realized I'm writing in weird disconnected sentences - I'll never make a blogger.

You know, I use my Xbox every day, but usually not for games. I canceled cable, and now download all of the shows I like via Bittorrent (through RSS, so they come in automatically) and stream them. I use PCs in my other rooms (especially the exercise room) so all of my content is accessible anywhere. I'll also use the Xbox to spin tunes when we have people over or I'm cleaning or whatnot. So yeah, I love the media streaming features.

I also occasionally watch the MSNBC in the Media Center part, but man is that an awful experience. It's really buggy at times, and I have an insanely fast internet connection. I can't imagine what it's like for the average user.

That's a really neat feature of the 360. I think it's an excellent media center.

At the same time, I agree with the ancestral poster: I wish that Microsoft and Sony held more reverence for gaming. I say this as somebody who wants to be a game developer: right now, gaming is easily the most disregarded artistic medium. Most games are sequels or spin-offs or rip-offs, have been for two generations. There are some games that rise to the top - the Katamari series and Shadow of the Colossus both showed, on a mediocre system, just how hilarious/moving a good game can be - but even most of the top-name games are awful. The writing and character graphics of Fallout 3 made me cringe on quick glance.

Part of it is that games have become a generic commodity. You have the shooter genre, the RPG genre, the sports genre, the racing genre, and games compete to be the best of each every generation, and it's always the same groups competing. You don't have this treatment of a game as an art form.

Unlike movies where you start off in theaters, unlike TV shows which start off as incremental releases, with games the release is the release and that's the only release. Games lose their mysticism an hour after they've launched. It's terribly demeaning of the entire medium, the way things stand right now. And it hurts both the developers and the consumers to have games treated so matter-of-fact. It kills something that ought to be magical.

My wife and I are just about to cancel our cable in favor of Netflix (both DVD and streaming) + the odd Bittorrent to fill in the gaps while TV gets its act together. Saving $50 a month pays back an XBox 360 pretty quick (plus I asked for cash this Christmas to defray this expense).

I've been gunning to cancel cable for about two years now, without blowing a wad to do it (ideally I want to come out ahead within a year); early adopters who don't want to spend a ton should start looking at what they actually use the TV for, consider what they watch and where they can find it, and start running the math. Now if I could just get some sort of decent fiber-based internet...

You won't miss cable unless you're a sports fan. The Stanley Cup finals are pretty much the only time I'll find myself looking for somewhere to watch live TV.

I don't even bother with Netflix. You can download any new releases, often before you can find the DVDs (especially during Oscar season, when all of those screeners end up leaked) and full seasons of any TV shows. You do usually miss out on the commentary though if you're into that.

At the risk of sounding like a quaint, out-of-touch old man, I would actually prefer that it be at least mostly fully legal. If everybody freeloads, nobody makes Futurama or Pixar movies. As much as I believe in, love, and participate in open source software, I believe the forces that enable open source software scale poorly to other fields.

>All of their "flagship" products have a terrible reputation right now

You're ignoring Office, SQL Server, Exchange, .NET, and SharePoint, among others. Your list of 3 "flagship" products is quite selective.

I should have said consumer products. I should have also included Internet Explorer on my list.