Peter Dille: “With the Xbox 360 you’ve got an inconsistent design, some have a hard drive, some don’t, and none of them have Blu-Ray, and the HD-DVD will be out of business in a matter of months. Is this a 10 year product?”

He then goes on to rail on MS’s current quality control issues. Hey, Peter – people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. You remember the PS2 and its quality control issues? Doesn’t seem so.

But re: “inconsistent design” – at least people understand the difference between buying a hard drive or not. That’s reasonably clear. I think it was a stupid decision to not standardize the presence of a hard drive, sure. But the PS3’s some-units-have-hardware-backwards-compatibility-some don’t is a lot more “inconsistent,” and a lot harder for consumers to grasp.

Your notion of a “10 year product cycle” has rested pretty heavily on the concept of backwards compatibility. Kaz Hirai, in numerous older interviews talks about the fact that your library extends to the next Playstation console as being part of their 10 year plan. Not so much anymore, eh?

Oh – and from A_B’s comment in the last “Some Idiot From Sony Said Something Stupid” post, dropping the price on the 60 gig then phasing it out is just poor.