You are right, it's always unfair to generalise and what I'm saying about US consumers is just a tendency some portion of them might have.

Hopefully Microsoft realizes its billion dollar blunder, and ensures the next Xbox is in that

Basically this.  That's probably why the ps3 figure is on the upswing in 2009.  The 60gbs especially are pretty unreliable, it's just that they managed to hang on for a few years before dying.

The high point in 2010 isn't the new slims dying.  It's older fats.

It's good that both consoles seem to be pretty damn reliable at this point.  Hopefully this won't be an issue next gen.

there are more sony and nintendo defenders on this site and everywhere else

Everytime someone mentions 360 failure rates I counter it with "Well how many SLIM 360's have failed?"" and outside of one or two instances I read on multiple forums throughout the years where either the DVD drive stops working or the powerbrick itself is bad out of the box? I've read nothing in terms of big failures.

I can pretty much guarantee you though any pre-Jasper 360 systems has a high chance of failing depending on how much you use it.I use my 360 50+ hours a week and while it took four years for my original to break it ended up breaking.

Xbox fanboys are the worst. They ignore the fact that they pay for online and that the united states is the only country Xbox outsells sony.I have been with Sony since its inception. I have bought all 3 systems of playstation. I love the fact that the same ppl who bought ps1 and ps2 have jumped ship to greedy microsoft with the xbox.Microsoft is a greedy corporation. They put out bad xbox's(red rings of death)to get a head start over sony for years and did not care about there customers .Yet Xbox fanboys will talk smack about ppl who stay loyal to sony.Sony has free online and has strived for great products.I will not just jump ship after enjoying such great games over the 16 year Playstation cycle.For this im a Sonyfanboy. Next time a women or man cheats or backstabs thats an xbox fan. You will see how greedy microsoft is with windows 8 and all the crap there gonna try and squeeze out of everyones market shares.

Quote: Microsoft is a greedy corporation. They put out bad Xbox's (red rings of death)to get a head start over Sony for years and did not care about there customers.

jayman1 you are wrong, As this July marks the 5-year anniversary of Microsoft's incredible extended warranty programme for Xbox 360 owners. Microsoft wrote off $1.05 billion in acknowledgement of the fact they were going to have to accept a huge volume of returns.

Sony fans are so cute when they're angry, aren't they? 

Yeah, it really sucks that M$ fans have to pay a little extra (what amounts to a mere $5/month at full price) to get better online multiplayer and content than Sony, and to not have to worry about their entire online service going down for weeks at a time.

By the way... what about all the original Nintendo / SEGA fans that jumped ship over to greedy Sony back in the mid-late 90s?  Or did gaming start in 1995 with the launch of the PSX?

Anyway, back on topic: the reason M$ was successful this gen was that, despite cutting corners on the hardware, they gave consumers a great console experience with a robust online infrastructure, and great content and support from 3rd parties thanks to their easy to program architecture compared to the PS3.

This is what caused developers who were previously just fine releasing games only on Sony systems to have second thoughts about doing the same thing this generation, especially with the ever increasing development costs. And the gaming industry is all the better for it.

The RROD failure rate sucked, but so did all the other various problems like unable to read discs, dvd reading glitch.