My Xbox 360 is reliable...

It drives me a little nuts that people who know nothing about the Xbox 360 try to negatively comment about it. Supposedly, it overheats, crashes, has intrusive updates, and has no good games on it. This couldn't be further from the truth.

As I've said before, I understand as I was previously a Sony fanboy. I unknowingly didn't like gaming anymore because the PS2 wasn't providing me the entertainment I could have had with the other consoles. This realization came once I made the step to buy the other consoles, and I was gaming regularly again.

Now the tables have turned, I really try not to bash the PS3 as we know very little about it. However, as human nature, I cross my dislike of Sony and its products in general with reality and the PS3 on occasion. If I catch myself, I reword any comments that I post. The fact is, I still like some games provided only to the Playstation brand, so I know eventually there will be a PS3 in my living room.

To the point, my Xbox 360 has been the best device to grace my living room. I have not had a single crash. Problems I did have were specifically with Quake 4 and Perfect Dark Zero. I think twice through campaign mode in Quake 4 the game locked up and I had to restart the Xbox. With PDZ, it had a couple of weird bugs and also froze twice during campaign mode. However, Tiger Woods, Condemned, Full Auto, and Dead or Alive 4 have been played several hours each without a problem. Same goes with the games I play on Xbox Live Arcade.

With heat, the system does run slightly hot. This should be no surprise as the processor is a tri-core 3.2Ghz. Even 2.5Ghz P4 with Hyperthreading get extremely hot. Just look at the heatsink they have. However, I think the heat issue is more on the power supply. The power supply just needs to be in open space; mine is out of the way behind the entertainment center. Maybe putting it inside an entertainment center with little airflow or by a heating vent is a problem.

As far as updates, there have only been a couple, and they have not been intrusive whatsoever. Sure, I've had to wait a little bit before playing but generally not more than a couple of minutes. It's nothing like the PSP where games won't work on older firmware versions.

Talking games, I've only truly been disappointed with Perfect Dark Zero. I owned it for about a week, didn't bother getting through campaign mode and got bored. Quake 4 I played online a few rounds, but the campaign mode was the highlight; same for Call of Duty 2. Tiger Woods PGA has got the household playing together on many occasions and has been very entertaining. Full Auto is soon to follow, although I don't think it will have the entertainment value of Burnout Revenge (the Xbox version was already a blast).

There's my remarks against common negative 360 comments. My system is from launch day, and I've been really happy with it. The only bad thing is having to give my old Xbox to my girlfriend in exchange. But that has nothing to do with the 360.