I have very very serious doubts about the validity of this "poll" myself. Unless a private company goes into the manufacturing/repair facility and does a blind audit, I really don't believe it. Basically, I think we're looking at very skewed poll data here. There is no way that any of those three are that high.

Also, it should be mentioned--I got a copy of Game Informer today at Gamestop because I applied for a card there. In the beginning of the magazine, the first thing I read was a reader railing the magazine for being so pro-Xbox 360 and being unnecessarily critical of the PS3.

Thank god my 360 hasn't RROD for more than a year now... Elite's don't RROD much I guess. Last time I owned arcade it was like hell for me. Then I decided to ditch this shit, but then I got an elite from my uncle. I got a total of 3 RROD'd 360s and my 4th is holding on like a fortress.

Seriously... It's like my 360 has passed it's rebellious stage.

Microsoft has responded to the survey (not denying it's true)

http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/43724/98/

And here is the thread talking about it:

http://www.vgchartz.com/forum/thread.php?id=83835

A quote from the TG article that was taken from the discussion regarding the poll.

"I'm on my fifth 360 now. Like others have said, I can't believe that there is not a higher failure rate for the 360. Everyone that I play with online have had at least 1 if not 2 RRODS," noted PMB. "The other 45.8 percent must be consoles that are used about an hour a week to have not have failed yet. The original Xbox wasn't much better IMAO. I had like 4 of those. Lets just face facts that Microsoft makes some crappy hardware. As far as being a loyal customer, I would buy a different console if they offered the same online experience and games that are available on the 360."

When you have a poster like this that is quite blatantly a Sony fanboy posting in the discussion it's not hard to question the validity of the poll.  It's universally accepted that the Xbox was the second most reliable console last generation behind the Gamecube with the PS2 a long long way behind so this guy is telling a lie with his statement on it's build quality.  Secondly even if we were to just accept in his experience the original xbox was terrible, why can he not say how many consoles he went through exactly?  I'm pretty sure I could remember if I had 4 consoles or not, the statement "like 4" shows he just pulled a number out of his ass that sounded bad enough.  All my original xbox's still work and my friends did too until they got boxed up and given I work in a big console repair center I'm pretty safe in my analysis of the situation.

I don't know why I bothered highlighting this but it just amused me they actually quoted it.  For the record the pro 360 guy (fanboy potentially) who stated the failure rate at 16% for the original 360's is also blatantly talking out of his ass too.