I'm so sure that the PS3's price isn't going to drop before GTA IV that I'm willing to make a ban bet for a week with anyone in this forum.

The accident at GDC destroyed my hopes...

But I agree that you will miss a lot of good games if you don't buy X360 this generation but this can also be said about the PS3.

Really?  I don't think it was ever confirmed that it was new hardware at GDC.  Nobody is arguing that the old systems don't have problems, but some people seem to believe if they pick up a new one at retail now that it will have the same failure rate and so far based on reports that doesn't seem to be the case.

Still, I find it funny that all over the world, tons of PS3s and 360s are breaking down on a daily basis, but my 23-year-old NES is still working absolutely 100% perfectly. As is my original GameBoy. And every other Nintendo sysytem since.

 But didn't MS said before that they will try to fix the problem like a year ago?

I have the feeling they say that the new X360's are more reliable but in fact are the same like the others.

Oh well time will tell :).

You're way overestimating the value of a 360 price drop. The 360 is already freakin' cheap in the US: $280. That's $30 more than the Wii, and at that price the demand is only a fraction of the Wii. Even if the 360 becomes cheaper than the Wii, and I hope it does, it won't get the same level of success in the long term.

Not even close.

They've said it several times. As far as we can tell, the new units still have a remarkably high failure rate (probably about 30%). That may be improved over the old units, but time will tell what the failure rates really are since failure rates are measured in failures over expected lifetimes, or at least failures over a year.

If MS could get the failure rate down to about 20%, or 10 times as many failures as Sony or Nintendo get, it would be "good enough" I think. 

The Arcade SKU is that price and it's the least wanted SKU because it lacks a harddrive and is generally considered "gimped" by many people looking for an HD console. And where was anyone talking about the Wii? Why did you even bring it up? It makes absolutely no sense considering the discussion was about the two HD consoles and consoles reaching lower price points.

Also show us proof that the new units have a remarkably high failure rate. I'm really curious because I was just looking at a thread on NeoGAF about RROD 360s and it's still remarkably quiet when it comes to Falcon hardware systems. "As far as we can tell", what kind of proof is that?

I'm so glad no console this generation is going anywhere ^_^

No matter which is your platform of choice, you certainly won't feel left out of games.