Easily explained by the flood of rumors and stories surrounding the XBox - failure rates, HD drive price cut, console price cuts, MGS4, and upcoming release of Halo 3.

I'd have thought there are plenty of people waiting for a 360 price drop (following the PS3 announcement), and this just reflects that.

Can't see 360 sales suddenly exploding on a $50 price cut though.

yeah to be honest this thread is pointless...considering that the Wii is being driven by casual audience...casual people wont go online to check on the Wii or 360....O_O

It's not entirely pointless. While I agree that this does not signal "the end" for Wii, it does show a noteworthy increase in Xbox 360 interest.

Is it all because of the reliability issues? Well, none of the first two pages of results for a Google search of "Xbox 360" returns anything about warranty, repairs, or RROD, and that was far and away the most popular search term according to the article.

I suspect that a $50 price drop would have a decent effect - it's not as big as it could be, but I'm willing to bet there are a decent number of would-be customers just waiting for a drop.

Congratulations! You didn't read. 

Oh come on, what a joke of statistic. 70% difference in searches for price drops? Try 17.5% if you actually add the two different search terms.

Its too easy to lie with statistics. If you are going to bold something to make a point, at least make sure it isn't a lie.

"There are three types of lies - lies, damn lies, and statistics." - Mark Twain

To clarify this: Searches can be executed in many ways. For example, "Red Ring of Death" may be the number one search, but because it was not tagged with "Xbox 360" they didn't record it. They only recorded searches tagged with Xbox and 360 along with the other words. I'm pretty sure most people wouldn't bother tagging "Red Rings of Death" with "Xbox 360" because most people know it will yield results. Same with other search for example: "360 warranty extension." This would not register either. Nor would, "Nintendo console," "Sony console," "PS3," "Nintendo System," ect.

I'm not saying this doesn't show something of interest, but it's a pretty big leap to accept this as gospel considering the variety of searches executed on the internet. Also, I went ahead and checked out the sources for the search data. Interestingly, they gather it from your ISPs, and they do not have contractual agreements with ALL ISPs. So people with AOL may be searching for 360s and they get that data, but people with Comcast may search for nothing but PS3 and there goes the statistic. With such a tiny percentage difference, little things like this build up to make this sort of statistic next to worthless.

I have a feeling internet searches for Michael Vick climbed dramtically this week. But that doesn't mean his jerseys will be selling any better.

 Damn it. I swear, this is the line that popped into my head when I read the Kotaku story on this. 

I was at GameStop today, and just as we started talking about faulty Xbox 360s, some old guy comes waltzing in with a RROD'd box.



Meanwhile, at Yahoo.com...