Where it hurts is Microsoft's supposed push into more mainstream gaming. Moms are the ones watching the Today show and if they think the console is a problem and the kiddies are screaming for a new one this Christmas, guess what happens?
That said, I agree that MS sat on this way too long. They knew they were having a higher rate of failures than they should have and they knew a year ago. They should have aggressively diagnosed the problem and put a definitive fix in place immediately up to and including a "voluntary" recall or something to get the units fixed. They also could have done some different things like getting a BUNCH of consoles fixed properly -- both DVD drives and motherboard heat issues and do a SWAP IN THE MAIL. Give the owner two options: 1, send yours in and we will repair or replace and you'll see one in a couple of weeks OR 2, give us a credit card number, we will charge your card for a replacement unit and ship it to you immediately and give you 30 days to return the defective one. That way gamers could keep playing.
Instead, they handled this whole thing about as poorly as they could and the 3 year extension will prove as or more costly than fixing it quickly in the first place.
I guess we'll see how it plays out in the LR but I think people are seriously underestimating the damage that the whole hardware fiasco is going to cause.
Don't get me wrong, though, I love my 360, but the hardware failures are a real downer.
I hate trolls.
Systems I currently own: 360, PS3, Wii, DS Lite (2)
Systems I've owned: PS2, PS1, Dreamcast, Saturn, 3DO, Genesis, Gamecube, N64, SNES, NES, GBA, GB, C64, Amiga, Atari 2600 and 5200, Sega Game Gear, Vectrex, Intellivision, Pong. Yes, Pong.
