Quality as a Four-Letter Word

This is my equipment: a faulty Xbox 360 that will not sync wireless controllers and a new guitar controller with exactly the same problem as the one I had sent back. It leaves me wondering whether Microsoft and EA are simply opening returns, plugging them in to see if the light comes on and then pushing them right back out the door as repaired.

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You raise some good points, but I mostly just say you're paranoid.

The big difference between a retail shop that takes in old consoles that have long outlived the warranty that says they still work and the mystical repair shop that we all send these broken toys to is that the repair shop is made solely to fix any and everything that comes through their door. It's not a retail outlet, so they don't have to worry about the bottom line and maybe fluffing a little bit every other week so they can keep their job.

I doubt very much that Microsoft spent a billion dollars to set up a three year warranty on every 360 sold just so you can send it in to people who give it as through a testing as a retail outlet does when it's got a break between customers.

Though I'm not too sure about EA, but I'm willing to bet that that's mostly just inexperience in the way of the guitar controller and not something as sinister as making a profit off of deliberately defective hardware.

It could also be that the 360 is so fragile and unreliable, everytime you open it to "repair" something that went wrong, you take the risk of breaking something else instead, or just reassembling that sensitive machine in a way which she may not like.

Buy Amstrad, it's some seriously solid stuff.

Please note that it's Microsoft that are doing this, and not Nintendo or Sony. The Japanese have a reputation for reliable goods, such as the Wii, PS3 and even cars made by Toyota. My PSX broke once in the five years I had it, my PS2 never broke and had about 5 minor disc read errors, nothing has ever gone wrong with my PS3 or PSP. My GameCube still works perfectly as well, as does my DS even though I've carelessly dropped it on the floor several times. My Xbox has been wavering towards breaking for a while, and I'm not even going to contemplate buying a 360 until they start producing them with the Falcon chipsets and even then only if the falcon chipsets are less faulty than the current ones.

I ony have one thing to say to this:
Don't buy crap!

Because of all the negative publicity, I have no intention of ever buying an XBOX360, even though thit has some cool features and games.

It does seem annoying... Look at computers... They can run various programs by various programmers in various formats both expected and unexpected from various sources, be it an external harddrive, CD, DVD, Floppy (Old School), and yet run just fine... Yet, somehow, the XBOX360 can't handle running the video game disks made to the exact specifications of the XBOX360 system.

Though, I guess I have to agree with ShmenonPie, I've been a gamer for 13+ years, and never heard of anything half as big happening on rare occasion on the NES, SNES, N64, PSX, PS2, Sega, etc....

As for the guitar, also worth complaining about. It is a controller that, by design, is MEANT for harsh playing conditions... It should be able to handle overly-speedy reactions from the player, I've seen people play the hardest levels on the harshest difficulties, and that puts some major wear on those controllers... If I remember correctly, they cost $30+, so asking them to create a sturdy controller that lasts months, let alone hours, shouldn't be too much.

This is what happens when you rush something to market out of fear of the 900 lb gorilla in the corner (Sony). Microsoft knew that their console was not reliable. They knew there would be a lot of problems. They also knew that they had to get a head start on the PS3 because of how well the system would scale into the future. They jumped the shark to get it to market so it could gain traction before Sony and Nintendo released their machines resulting in a market share about the size of the one the Sega Saturn had during the 32 bit generation. I previously owned a 360 that I purchased on day one. Strangely, while everyone else was experiencing shortages, at least two Meijer stores in Bay City and Saginaw Michigan had them in stock on the second day after release.

My 360 lasted until the following March. MS was prompt and I received a new console within a couple of weeks which I sold immediately as I knew of three people myself with the same problem, and that was four months in. I have since focused on PC gaming until the PS3 is more affordable as I am sold on their quality. I purchased a PS1 on day one and it bricked in 2002 after my dog tripped over the controller card causing it to fall about two feet to a hard wood floor. My PS2 which was also purchased on day one (without wait at Sears in State College, PA, well not really, I waited twenty minutes for the store to open) is still alive and kicking.