Mot recent Firmware cock-up`s have been:

Sony`s: freezing Uncharted, inability to synch up controllers with consoles and game crashes.

MS: After NXE launched, Some HDMI equipped 360`s lost all audio.

My Brother in law and a friend of mine both had Blu-ray drive failures on their 60G Model PS3`s within 6 months of buying them. The 250G HDD i had put in my 40G model PS3 had bad sectors and had to be replaced. As Hardware gets more and more complicated, More to go wrong-More heat generated and has to be gotten rid of.

IF anything has really wound me up this generation, it`s the Shoddy Firmware updates from BOTH MS and Sony that ave effected games and Hardware. That? I find ridiculous-That they`d release untested code just for a few misc updates/new features to an OS, is just laughable.

Speaking as a 360 and PS3 owner:

In my time video gaming, i went through ( In no particular order):-

Numerous Tape decks for my Atari 800XL and 2 800 Xl machines.Chips blew.
1 Atari ST-Again, chip failure.
1 Sega game gear-screen failed.
1 Commodore C64-Power pack melted, as they were prone to do.
1 Game Cube-kept resetting once it was warm.
1 Saturn, for same reason.
5 Dreamcast`s-All fell foul of the DC reset
3 Playstations-Plastic lens holder warped.Laser burnt out etc.

Been a bloody pain in the backside, but still gaming.

As for Jasper chipset? It reduced problem, not removed it.

Also, it`s like some cheap joke:

Q.How many chipset`s does it take for MS to build a reliable 360 console?

A. Even they don`t know-they are still working on it.

Quote:

'Excuse us while we go uberdorky for a moment. We've all heard about the Xbox 360 chipsets Xenon (90nm CPU, 90nm GPU), Zephyr (HDMI and cooling), Falcon (65nm CPU) and rumored Jasper (not out yet, 65nm CPU, 65nm GPU). Now a new rumor has it that two new chipsets could be coming called "Opus" and "Valhalla." Here's the skinny:

The Opus chipset is actually a bit strange. Featuring a 65nm CPU and a 90nm GPU, the Opus seems like a step back because it's merely intended to fit in the original Xenon Xbox 360 cases. With the Opus, all those RRoD systems can be, in some small way, recycled. This chipset will probably be reserved for refurbished systems only.

That means the Valhalla would be the next chipset of choice since it combines the CPU and GPU onto one 65nm chip. Requiring even less cooling that we'd see in the Jasper chipset, the Valhalla could be the Holy Grail for Microsoft to make some serious cash on the console business. And it could happen either in late 2009 or 2010.'

Hopefully MS and any other manufacturer will learn some lessons for the next generation of hardware.

Your welcome.May branch out into movies. There`s a ship and and Iceberg in Titanic...Hope i`ve not ruined it.

I`ll pass.Would`nt want to double post.