I think you need to put this into perspective. What this appears to me is people are looking for the next RROD on the Xbox. What I would say to anyone looking to purchase a 360 is that make sure it is one of the new ones which if you are buying at retail and not off a friend or Ebay it will most likely be.
I suspect that failures of the new units are very small but it does not take many to break a story on failure for the 360. That is the RROD legacy that it has yet to overcome. The problems the 360 has now I would venture are no worse and probably better than those for the PS3.
The 360 is cheaper even a HDD model do not let the PS3 crowd confuse the issue by introducing all its features then declaring the is 360 more expensive it is not.
If you want to go online and play multi player then yes you will need Gold. You do not have to pay it all in one go and you can stop paying it anytime you like. I have 2 machines one has Gold the other Silver, tbh I play so few games online that I probably should drop the gold account.
If you require a wireless solution may a suggest you investigate home plugs. They are far more robust and very simple to setup, although not wireless they are damn close. I switched to them for all my needs at home and have no radio related issues and get perferct throughput and low latency.
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I suspect that failures of the new units are very small but it does not take many to break a story on failure for the 360. That is the RROD legacy that it has yet to overcome. The problems the 360 has now I would venture are no worse and probably better than those for the PS3.
The 360 is cheaper even a HDD model do not let the PS3 crowd confuse the issue by introducing all its features then declaring the is 360 more expensive it is not.
If you want to go online and play multi player then yes you will need Gold. You do not have to pay it all in one go and you can stop paying it anytime you like. I have 2 machines one has Gold the other Silver, tbh I play so few games online that I probably should drop the gold account.
If you require a wireless solution may a suggest you investigate home plugs. They are far more robust and very simple to setup, although not wireless they are damn close. I switched to them for all my needs at home and have no radio related issues and get perferct throughput and low latency.