Who is more the fool?

I hate the term fanboy. It applies to a small fraction of very vocal people. I have never been so supportive of any one hardware manufacturer that I ignore the rest. I have been a proud owner of Atari, Nintendo, Sega, Sony and Microsoft consoles. I never picked them up because I was in love with the hardware or in an way felt loyal to it; it has always been about the software. Games, in my opinion, are always the root of my decisions. I bought a 360 to play Oblivion and eventually Halo3. I was fortunate to be able to buy Twilight Princess and play it without buying the console, for which I'm glad because there has yet to be anything worth playing for me. Metroid 3 and Mario Galaxy have me intrigued but until they're out, I will remain Wii-less. There are zero games out or coming in the foreseeable future (which aren't coming out on the 360 as well) that are enticing me to drop $600 on the PS3.

Kotaku points us to an posting on the Motley Fool, an investment website, which warns against Microsoft's potential to maintain a positive investor relationship due to perceived hardware issues.

As an investor, I can't help but worry that my experience with Microsoft consumer products is not out of the ordinary. Not only are repairs an expensive waste of shareholder capital, but they risk alienating potential customers and crimping future growth. In effect, it doesn't matter if the rate of Xbotch failure is as low as Microsoft reportedly contends, because the perceived rate of failure is what matters to consumers. People trust what they hear. And if they hear enough from irate Xbotch or Zune customers, they aren't going to open up the wallet.

While agree that this image is hurting Microsoft and the Xbox brand, I can't help but see a flaw in the statement that the author himself is neglecting. Yes, he has had a problem with his 360. Unfortunately everyone seems to know someone who has fell victim to the ring-of-death. On the other hand, I know a lot of people that have a 360 and only one person has had similar issues described here. I once received the Error 74 message, but it occurred after transporting the system across the state and the hard drive was jostled loose. I once scratched a disc, but again, it was my fault.

If people report their console dies and then the message boards jump all over it causing the major blogs and websites to report it, yes it seems like every one's console is dying. There are nearly 11 million 360 sold and they are not coming back in the numbers that warrant the perceived rate of failure. I think it takes a bit of common sense to take a step back and try to give some rational thought to the subject. Who is more foolish: those that regurgitate what they hear or those that blindly follow them when they speak. If investors start jumping ship because fanboys have shaped Microsoft's hardware reputation, we have a much larger problem than a few rings-of-death.