Umm... I know Micorsoft's support for these problems is a frst class act, but am I alone in thinking that this random FUBAR-ification shouldnt be anywhere near as commonplace as it is? That's the reason i never got a 360, 16 of 20 people i personally know with 360's have had multiple RRoD's, even with 2 of them using the 360 Elite, which supposedly fixed all hardware issues. :S
Not all of the Elites were on the revised board that solved the problems.
As to why this all happened...I'm sure it has something to do with Microsoft rushing to release a year earlier than the competition. They were taking a page from Sony's PS2 playbook but launching first and trying to dominate the market. It sort of worked except the Wii came from left field where nobody was looking. Unfortunately I think they didn't do their testing and they have waaaay over the normal failure rate for the hardware.
Still I've quite enjoyed my 360. Its a very functional console and the software side is (almost ironically) quite good these days. Sony has the 360 matched in pretty much every category and beats them in a few others but they didn't get to launch first and their console still costs significantly more in most markets.
The one thing I have to say I like better about the 360 is the controller...its not better in every way but I find ergonomically the 360 controller is quite a bit better.
