i have a 360 but never much cared for the original xbox. while i'm sure many people disagree, i think that one the of biggest reasons that ms has gained my respect is that it has proven that it can go head to head with sony. they are the dominant company anymore. don't get me wrong, the ps3 is a great system with great games, but i think that competition from the 360 has only made both consoles great. the best thing in the world for gamers is competition between companies. it leads to much higher quality in just about everything. of course there is the wii which surprised the hell out of me with it's larger audience appeal.

Gaming is not for the poor.
Everyone knows that.

If you want to escape reality at an affordable price, go read a book.

Hell yes, gots to respect the MS. Being able to play your own music over games on the original xbox rocked, being able to stream music whenever you want through the 360 + zune seriously is super badass! I was one of the first players of xbox live, loved it.. unreal championship got me addicted hardcore (was a PC gamer for online before that), and now XBL keeps giving, with XBLA I've played some of the most enjoyable games (puzzle crack, FF crystal defenders, age of booty, geometry wars, freakin SONIC and TMNT!, lits goes on!). Not to mention the standard games library itself. Also with xbox we got the super long wires + breakaway cables (how smart was that!?). Xbox is still the only console i've ever seen a get-together with, 4 systems, 4 tvs, 1 small ass apartment, 16 halo addicts. Now with 360, badass wireless controllers, excellent chat pad, sweeeeeet wireless headsets. Yes, we respects the MS much.

It goees up and down for me personally. MS have made a lot of good moves but for every one of them I could think of an example where they've screwed up and done something lame:

-2007 and 2010 are amazing for the 360, 2008 & 2009 weren't that brilliant.

-The online service is great but it's £40 a year.

-The console isn't expensive but I've had 3 of them break on me.

-They had a better library than the PS3 some years back but now their 1st party division is weaker than ever.

-They got downloadable movies on their console way before Sony but the hard drives are so overpriced.

Thats actually a very good point.

Somewhat.

+They built a good cheap very durable HD console.

+They are constantly updating Xbox Live.

+They got the best games on XBox 360.

+They taken care of there customers.

- The first batch of 360 were built defective

- Xbox live is $50 a year

- Over priced accessories.

The xbox 360 wireless adapter is dual band, so if you want to compare apples to apples, verify linksys dual band adapter prices. It's pretty much the same.

The only respect I have for microsoft is the intelli optical mouse which is still the best gaming mouse to date after so many years, other than that, I already sold my 360 and I'm in the IT field so I fucking hate their OS( for very good and valid reasons) which is what the foundation of the company is so that pretty much answers that.

I stop respecting Microsoft a long time ago.

Yeah they have my respect.

My 360 broke after 26 months of gaming and they replaced it in 10 working days no problems.

They owned up to the problem a little late in the day but well done them. Many companies would have just ignored the problem.