Before the Xbox 360 slithered its way into the homes and hearts of hardcore gamers, the console experience was like a technological Eden, where we knew nothing of sin or shoddy console design. Now that we've eaten of the chill white apple with its impossible to resist Ring of Light, we're stuck in the Hell of Eleven Xboxes, wondering why God hath forsaken us. At least, that seems to be Peter Moore's estimation of our collective thought processes.

Talking to GameDaily.biz at E3, the soon to depart corporate VP of Microsoft's interactive entertainment biz said that critics "need to do their homework and look at some of the hardware product failures that this industry has seen in the past 30 years that maybe have not got as much publicity." He added that "if people say that previous consoles have all been perfect and not had failure rates, then they need to go get a history lesson."

Now, I majored in Computer Science in college, Peter, so my knowledge of console electronics history may be thinner than J Allard's hair, but what history has taught us is that the NES, Sega CD, PlayStation, Dreamcast and PlayStation 2 all had their share of well-reported issues. Hell, I even lost a GameCube to disc read errors, something that would probably have been more widespread if anyone had bothered to turn the thing on long enough.

That said, in my 25 years of following video games, I've personally never seen a hardware fiasco of such epic proportions.

I believe future history—when we ultimately know the real story behind the Xbox 360's manufacturing reliability woes—will tell a memorable story of poor design, shoddy manufacturing, lame excuses and tardy resolutions. It'll be a real page turner.

But, hey, I'm not Michael Pachter and I can't actually see the future with my third eye.

Moore: Critics of 360 Hardware 'Need a History Lesson' [GameDaily]