People forget that the Xbox 1 was an extremely reliable piece of hardware. Yes the 360 had it's initial problems. But now RROD is not as common as before. Certainly from the reports of this year it's failiure rate of new machines is inline with the other 2. They made the right choice concerning marketshare.

Yeah, the technicians actually admitted (Telegraph '08) that the console was released a year early, hence all the technical problems.

no one will ever know lol

Yes it was rushed - I agree with most people here. And yes, it was a good business decision. They didnt really have a choice. I think that MS knew they would be blown out of the water if they had released Xbox a year later (although might have had a better quality console). MS seem more interested in taking Sony out of the game rather than putting out a quality product (ie. who in their right mind would buy a console they knew had a 50/50 chance of bricking?). Why are they not trying to put out Nintendo? They afterall are easily beating both. And I also agree with the multiplatform gaming point. It makes both consoles the same - whats good about that? The winners there of course are the developers.

Yes...yes it was. But if they didn't rush it, they would be dead last right now.

Listen to this man, cos he speaks the truth.

The hardware quality of the first batch should reveal as much. They really didn't have much choice though, I think RRoD cost them less than being in dead last again would have done!

If the Xbox360 delayed a year and added the HD-DVD built in, wouldnt the launch price be reletivily high, similar to the PS3?  So wouldnt that have affected 360 sales negativily since at time the Playstation brand was alot bigger?   Console specs pretty much Exactly the same to a point but sales would surely be different.

It was rushed but it ultimately dealt a hammer blow to SONY who were pants round ankles with the PS3 production.

As a strategy the beat the competition to market tactic worked.

Unfortunately the RROD may well be the result. Still failure rates are now acceptable and the home fixes for those out of warranty also seem to be ok.

An interesting aside.....

Apparently the best thing about the XBOX for devs is the unified mem architecture. This supposedly makes the machine super versatile.

Did you know the whole thing was suposedly upgraded to include this architecture at the last minute due to paranoia about how much memory the PS3 would ship with.

I guess coal under pressure can make diamonds.

It had to be. The PS3 would've eaten the 360 alive in one bite in a fair fight. I actually planned on quitting gaming when I saw the 360 launch. They had Tony Hawk, Gun, Kameo (great game, btw), and Perfect Dark Zero. I wasn't impressed at all. "So, this is it? The seventh gen?"

They rushed the thing to market, but the smartest thing they did was make it upgradeable. I just wish the hardware were tested more properly.