TheBigFatJ on 17 October 2007
Hardware Quality -- Admittedly, I had a DVD fail and had to have a new unit. They sent me a new unit with the new "fixes" to the GPU and such. If Microsoft hadn't owned up to the growing hardware problem I would say they deserve a 4 or 5 out of 10, but with the new fixes, I'd give it a 8/10 or so but only because they have extended the warranty for 3 years so I'm balancing out the risk of future failure with the fact that I'm good for 3 years...
Those 'fixes' aren't 'fixes', they're bandaids. People still get failures with them with depressing frequency.
Additionally, Microsoft only offers a 3 year warranty for the RROD failure mode. Had your DVD-rom failed after 1 year (which is very common), you'd have been out of luck and Microsoft would have refused to help you unless you payed them over $100. Fact.
So don't consider the hardware quality issue resolved. MS has taken some steps, out of necessity, to mitigate their class-action lawsuit risk, but they haven't 'fixed' their single biggest problem yet and there are various other quality issues floating around with the 360 such as high DVD-rom failure rate, scratched disc rates, etc. Further, their customer service is far worse than either Nintendo's or Sony's, and since Microsoft doesn't typically repair your console and send it back (but rather gives you a refurb of someone else's failure) there's no reason they can't advance ship other than the fact that their repair volumes are too high to make it reasonable to do so.
To give you an idea of how long it might take vs the competition, Sony and Nintendo will have you up and running within a week almost all of the time whereas with Microsoft you'll be reasonably fortunate to have your repaired Xbox 360 within a month from the phone call to the arrival. I'd even say you're somewhat fortunate if they send you a coffin on the first request. It's beyond outrageous. Further, a lot of people are reporting getting a refurb that fails within weeks and have to wait *another* month to get a fresh refurb.
