if it is doing so much harm then how could 360 be on pace to easily pass xbox in all major territories despite the fact that it is at a much higher price and they aren't selling it at a huge loss like they were with the xbox to compete with the ps2.

The 360 greatly benefited because it's now getting nearly all the games the PS2 used to have as exclusives from 3rd parties (multi or not), and the major difference is they are getting them at the same time not a year later. Most of the PS3 exclusives now are 1st/2nd party or are binded by money, you could say the same thing for 360 exclusives, but that is a huge improvement over what happened last gen.

Tough but good question. Its hard to assume that if it had released later the RROD would have been fixed. Based on taking the safe road and assuming the worst (that the RROD would have happened anyway just at a later time) I think getting the console out sooner brought the 360 into the public eye.

Now even if the 360 did not have the RROD and released closer to to the PS3 and Wii then I don't think it would have done as well. Let's face it, where would the marketing tactics be? The face of the 360 was the shooterbox and it still wouldn't have gotten rid of that image and therfore people would be willing to buy the PS3 even more especially touting is superiority even though it was blown way out of proportion.

Releasing it one year earlier allowed people to see what MS had to offer the market and it got a lot of exposure. MS took an image hit with the RROD but it didn't stop the entire advantage that MS had with the headstart. Fast forward to now and MS has the largest and most diverse game library. (opinion, not a fact necessarily) 

The headstart gave MS more of an advantage than a disadvantage and lets face it. If it was for the RROD the console race would be a fair amount different as far as hardware sales. The places (1st, 2nd, 3rd,) would be the same but the 360 would have sold a fair amount more of hardware. And for the Nintendo fans: Am I saying without the RROD the 360 would have outsold the Wii? That would be a hell no :P The Wii is the sales god this gen.

It would have been dead by now without it...Or it could well have been if there weren't so many PS3 messups.

It clearly did more good than bad, at least in US and to a lesser extent countries like UK.

Way good

As others have said, it definitely did more good than harm. Think about what the situation would have been in the public eye if a new Playstation and a new Xbox came out at the same time--very similar consoles with very similar games, but one's a Playstation. Xbox=no go in this situation.

I think it did more good than harm, because the 360 a lot of the games that I wanted to play.

good. By releasing earlier, they have achieved way more dev support then they would have received if they waited to launch at the same time. Instead of games being X360/PS3, more would be PS3 exclusive. I think Dev support would have been much close to how Wii dev support started out.

I think that alone was worth whatever hardware problems would have been avoided by waiting (who knows, they might have still had RRoD)

definitely good. If it had released at the same time as the PS3, I doubt a fair number of 360 owners would have even considered it.

I'm pretty convinced that if the R-rod stuff wasn't an issue for Microsoft internally as early as holiday 2006 it would have dropped price sooner (probably when Wii & PS3 launched in the USA). With a price drop then, followed by another in August 2007 and then this year, 360 would probably be cheaper than Wii and PS3 may have dipped under 60k for a few months in 2007 and struggled to hit 200k this year. In terms of 360 vs. Wii the battle would have been more protracted and I think Sony would have had alot more issues.