I’ve had gaming consoles going back to the original 8bit NES (and we had an old Pong system in the 70’s that my dad bought) and I don’t remember any ever having issues on the level the 360 has had.  Yeah, eventually (after several years) the NES and Coleco systems both suffered from oddities where you had to do things like blow in the cartridge slot and/or cartridge itself… click the NES game up and down a bunch of times to get it to lock properly, or you’d suffer graphics glitches.  However, they continued to work long past the time the next gen consoles came out and still worked by the time they were retired.  

Even now I have the 3 current consoles: a 360, a PS3 and a
Wii.  I haven’t had a single problem with the PS3 nor the Wii, but the
360 has been a pain.  My first 360 died (the well known heat/graphics
issue) just after it was a year old (and I hadn’t read about the
extension of warranty to 3 years that had just happened) and wasn’t
thrilled about the idea of paying for a fix that was damn near the cost
of a new console anyway.  I followed some of the online ideas for
fixing the problem… and failed miserably, bricking the thing (yay). 
Yes, I was a part of that ultimate failure, but the system was already
dorked and basically useless and would’ve cost a ton to fix.   I ended
up buying the low end system then.. one good side effect of the
swappable HDD I guess.

Late last year I bought an Elite model
for 2 reasons.. 1. the HDMI connection (upgrading TV soon).  2. the
120Gig HDD and 3. I bought 2 Rock Band kits and figured I could use the
one to take the 2nd kit to family gatherings and such without having to
unhook my setup (have done this a couple times.. been a blast).  

Well
last weekend my Elite ate it.  No RROD or anything, but the DVD drive
seems to haved died.  I was playing through Portal on The Orange Box
again, and about 2/3 of the way through it, it hung.. the drive started
making a grinding noise, and that was it.. from then on it won’t read
any discs at all.  I either get the “Cannot read disc” error, or other
things like the disc bar sticks on “reading…”   I’m pissed.. these
consoles aren’t exactly cheap, and for 2 out of 3 to fail on me is
beyond sad.  There are widespread problems out there with overall
failure rates on them too, so I know it’s not just me.   Even the HD-DVD playback hasn’t exactly been very good either (boy am I glad Blu-ray won the HD disc format war). 

So I’m on my “backup” 360 console.. meanwhile my PS3 runs perfectly..
damn near every day (I use it as my defacto DVD player now too).

I filled out the support forms online and they’re supposed to be
sending me a box to ship in the busted Elite to fix it, and it’s on
warranty too, so it should be free.  I’ll follow-up with how that goes
(I’m betting it’ll take awhile).

Update (3/18): The return box finally showed up a week later, I dropped it off at a local UPS Store on 3/4… 2 weeks later and the online status still shows “Repair Status: Device Received at Service Center.”  Whee.  Hopefully I’ll get it back, or at least an update, sometime this month.