Its still a beta. Come on.

Yes, it currently kinda sucks. Yes, its pretty boring. Yes, Sony has yet to deliver what they promised, like video sharing. But its not as if were looking at the final product.

And for what Home currently is -- its amazing.

Most gamers are accustomed to Xbox Live. So, if you were a dev team at Sony, and you were tasked with creating a community that blew Live out of the water... what would you come up with? How about a 3 dimensional interactive world?

Im disappointed in Home for the same reasons as a lot of people. But I cant deny its a cool idea, and has a lot of potential. Until then, its still very much an unfinished product.

Now that the 360 has dropped in price what you get for your buck is a bit more fair. I bought at launch, and I can easily say at that time it was a ripoff.

I have all three current gen systems. This is my M.O.; brand loyalty is stupid, it's competition that drives innovation in gaming. Out of all three I favor the ps3 even though it lacks a strong library. That will eventually change.

Here's why I consider the 360 to be a mediocre piece of technology:

I've had to endure the RRoD four times over three systems. That's shameful considering I don't play for 8 hours every day. My system is well ventilated, kept free of dust and adult maintained. There's simply no excuse for such a high failure rate.

The WiFi adapter is $100, slightly less if you find it used. Sorry, but this should have been included.

5.1 Dolby Pro Logic is the best audio the 360 has to offer. Wow! Pro Logic II !! What is this, 1997?

The addition of hdmi was nice, but it seems tacked on. The colors are nowhere near as vivid compared to the ps3. Same game, same tv, identical cables, the 360 (while it still looks very good and hdmi does look better than component) does not look as good in my opinion.

No browser.

The HD is locked down, so you can't freely import and export media.

The HD is expensive! And strictly MS property. At least the ps3 will allow you to change your HD yourself and at a fraction of the cost.

Xbox Live... is a bit of a pain in the ass. I'd be happier with it if it didn't have ads all over the place -- I mean, it is a service we're all paying for, the customer should have some control over what they're forced to look at. I also don't like that they use a shady point system instead of just cash. Other than that, Live has their act together pretty nicely, but I can't pretend it doesn't have it's share of glitches, freezes and morons.

So I consider the hardware itself to be average. It does what it does fairly well, and it's very much a user-friendly system. However, it's already dated and combined with it's failure rate I would say that the best feature right now is that it's relatively inexpensive.