You've got to love the fanboys

AC>"The PS3 falls down in all these areas more so than the 360 - it's noisier, bigger and actually has a higher failure rate than the new Falcon chipset based 360s yet it's doing okay in Japan (albeit not as well as the Wii) so I'm not sure why you're churning out this FUD."

That is the funniest thing I've read, ever!! Genius.

Ian>"The important point is that the 360 is in a clear second place and has no chance of losing that any time soon with the PS3 being so far behind however it's never of course going to catch up the Wii now either. We're far enough on in the game to tell the outcome of this console war, all hope is gone for the 360 in Japan, but similarly all hope is gone for the PS3 internationally."

Interesting. Especially when you consider the PS3 is already 1m ahead of where the 360 was after 65 weeks, EA predicts the PS3 to significantly outsell the 360 worldwide in 2008, especially in Europe (Europe? Remember us? We are a two and a half times bigger market than the "centre of the universe" USA), blu-ray has won the HD format war, and all the major system sellers on PS3 (Gran Turismo, Metal Gear, Final Fantasy...) are due this year. Seems strange that "all hope is gone for the PS3 internationally"...

@AC

Post proof or retract.

Falcon systems sport an identical internal design with a slightly revised motherboard. The 65nm CPU reduces the overall heat output, however since the real heat producer in the system is the GPU still kicking away at 90nm, the whole Falcon deal is a little bit of a mis-direct. True they put in a new heat sink, however since the placement of the GPU hasn't really improved and nor has the airflow, all they are doing is shifting a bit more heat to somewhere else in the casing. They (Falcon based 360s) still fail, and according to the Microsoft insiders who've spoken on the subject recently; Falcon based systems suffer RROD at about 10% of all systems per year.

PS3 has a failure rate below 1%, whether you're talking about the original launch 20/60GB units, the first revision 80GB units (60GB in Europe) or the most recent 40GB units. There is no evidence anywhere to suggest anything to the contrary.

Numerous comments by Xbox360 owners have been made here and on virtually every other news/comment site, blog and forum about just how incredibly noisy the 360 is in operation. I dare say you could get about a 100% hit rate searching for posts on Xbox forums with people complaining about the noise that the thing makes, Falcon or not.

The point about the separate power supply isn't whether the overall volume of the 360 unit plus PSU equals the volume of the PS3. The point made was regarding having the endless number of additional cables and boxes flapping about. You know, wall to PSU, PSU to console. Console to controller. Console to TV, console to Net, console to second controller, and of course console to HD-DVD. Oh, wait forgot one - HD-DVD to wall(power), isn't that HD-DVD drive externally powered? I also hear it's a tad noisy too.

If you can point to a validated link that shows the PS3 having a higher failure rate than the Xbox, do it, or retract.

The point about Burnout Paradise online, dear and anonymous FUDster, is that a lot of mainstream gamers buy on price. So they perhaps choose the cost conscious XBox360, or someone else does when buying a gift. Then they buy Burnout Paradise, or a member of their family gets it for them, or perhaps even a friend. Cool, they think and boot it up, only to find that their efforts to go online with their newly minted XBL ready system can't play their game online, even with that $50 a year subscription.

All of this was a point made about the fact that the Xbox Arcade pack was being launched in Japan. A country with notoriously small homes and quality conscious consumers. Therefore comments regarding the space efficiency and tidiness of the console are quite appropriate. As are comments regarding it's reliability and operational noise level. The point about Burnout Paradise relates to the simple fact that the Arcade system comes with a paltry 256MB of Flash, which is titchy by any measure. The Arcade pack is sold on the strengths of XBox Live, the Arcade aspect in particular, and yet there is an immensely popular current game that can't go online because Microseft elected not to put an HDD in their unit, even a cheap 20GB unit would have done the job. Hell, the original Xbox had a HDD in every unit, why take a step back with the 360? Oh, yea, that way the cost could be shaved even further allowing it to launch at the low price point.

Course I could point out the cost of the HD-DVD peripheral, wireless controllers, wireless networking and hard disc, which of course has to be a MS one, and not simply a generic 2.5-inch SATA laptop drive. Yep, that $100 saving on the base console sure looks like a good investment, especially as you have to throw in that $50 XBL subscription to play online. Now, who has the mosre expensive system?

What a surprise....

I am frankly shocked to find that another story about consoles has degraded into another fanboi debate. I'd never have expected that!

Re:@ Be advised - outright false

Well, the "arcade" is aimed at the low-end of the console market, in fact more to compete with Nintendo than Sony given that they are undercutting the Wii in price.

As for the number of games, well if you want to quote numbers, there's more online and single player games for PC than all three consoles lumpred together (if you count older ones as well) and also more PC's in the world than all three consoles put together. I'm not a PC fanboi (used to be maybe 5 years ago) but am just pointing out that shouting about vague numbers (without actually giving any factual ones) is pointless willy waving.

And no....don't anyone start comparing PC's and consoles.......

As for size, it's also a false comparison as the "arcade" does not have the same amount of components as a fully featured 360 or PS3.

Overall though, it's a good addition to the range for those who JUST want a gaming console/DVD player without the need for media facilities/storage (realistically you'd need a wireless card or wired NAS box to play any media as you can't store it locally - unless your PC is next to your console, in which case it's pointless anyway).