Its good, it also forced Sony to Drop their prices fast to $400, All Sony fans should thank Microsoft for that at least. With out them, Sony would price gouge everyone even to this day.

even then I wouldn't have bought a ps3.. price, price, price.

good. This allowed them to drive 3rd parties to focus all multiplatforms development on their platform. This enables the 360 to have the better overall experience, at least in the beginning. Now that devs are getting better with the PS3 the differences are much less noticeable, if any.

Also, I don't think the RRoD has really hurt the 360's sales much anyways. Most general people who are buying systems know don't even know about it or if they have heard of some issue, they just didn't care.

I think MS also believes it was still the best option and that will be proven when they push out their next system first as well.

More good than harm. With ease of development on the 360, and relative difficulty on the PS3 (at least as all the 3rd party developers keep saying), it gave them a chance of at least competing this generation.

If they had come out side by side with sony, I think they would have been relegated to a distant third again. They haven't made the best use of that year headstart, and RROD definitely hurt, but it has kept them in the game thanks to Sony's mistakes.

I think if they had delayed say 6 months and fixed RROD they would have been better off. They still would have had a head start and the brand wouldn't have the bad quality image it has now.

The big question for me is will these quality concerns follow the Xbox brand into the next generation. I know I'll be waiting a while before considering buying a next gen Xbox.

It has done good for Microsoft's market positioning but the more important questions for us, the consumers, is whether one or several RRoD's is worth having games a year earlier. Just because the console releases later doesn't mean that developers don't get dev kits at the same time they did in reality. We just would have had more games at launch and they would have been more polished. Therefore I would have to say no, it's not worth it for us. (unless you're a fanboy and enjoy bragging about a sales lead.)

Overall more harm because things could have actually been better in the gaming industry as a whole.  If the 360 were launched a year later, third party developers would have been more concentrated on developing for last gen.  The advantage here is that it would have allowed for those developers to be more financially ready for this gen by raking in more profits from last gen software sales.  Also Microsoft would have still produced the original Xbox which would have also help 3rd party developers profit from a could have been growing original Xbox userbase.  Development costs have always risen from one gen to the next so the more financially ready they are the better.  Also, numerous developers have voiced that it's easier to develop for the PS3 as the lead platform and then port over to the 360 instead of the other way around.  This probably could have helped developers spend less time and money when developing multi-platform games for both the PS3 and 360.  Eventhough the PS3 is harder to develop for than the 360, it would have served them better in the long run than having a harder time porting to the PS3 with sometimes lesser results.  At the very least, developing for both platforms simutaneouly would have still been better.  And not knowing the outcome of the 360 a year prior to the release of the Wii and PS3, might have forced more 3rd party on board with the Wii with similar games if not the same titles.  And maybe if Microsoft had another year to solidify their hardware, the RROD probably would not have been an issue.

In essence:

1) 3rd parties would have been more financially stable from last gen investments.

2) Better resulting games from PS3 development to 360 ports.

3) More variety in Wii titles.

4) Near non-existant 360 hardware issues like the Wii and 360.

Good post. So now we have two people looking at the situation from the consumer's perspective.

I dont think RROD did anything. The wii was an unexpected monster.

Maybe that's because it's ultimately about the consumer and not the worship of a company...