If you\'ve been watching the news wires instead of playing your Xbox 360, or if you\'ve been watching the news wires bitterly disappointed that you didn\'t get your Xbox 360, you might have noticed a lot of talk about defective Xbox 360 units.

Don\'t panic. At least not yet.

While it\'s true that first-run game systems tend to have a greater error rate than second run systems, mainly because companies figure out how to refine their manufacturing procedures, keep in mind that error rates - by default - tend to be over-reported during a system launch.

Simply put, no matter how stable a system is, when a great number of hardcore players line-up on the same day to buy a new system, every system crash makes it into the news. Reports of systems crashing, of going poof into the night, or flashing red show up on hardcore gaming forums with greater frequency than would traditionally be expected by the general population buying the system, because launch days are driven by a skewed demographic.

• People that purchase game systems on launch day are almost by definition hardcore gamers. Anyone you find in a line for three hours that\'s not there because of a boyfriend or girlfriend, they\'re hardcore.
  
  
• Websites like EvilAvatar.com, Kotaku.com, and Voodoo Extreme are sites frequented almost exclusively by the hardcore.
  
  
• As large numbers of hardcore gamers queue up to buy and then report on the forums their experiences with the system, reports of defective units almost always appear on forums during a system launch.
  
  
• In short, what we\'re seeing with the Xbox 360 error rate in the first day after launch is most likely a result of selective over-reporting.

This is not to say that reports of system errors are invalid; anyone that\'s got a bad unit right now will certainly take me up on this issue. However, we\'d recommend that you hesitate before you go tell your friends about the flaws of the Xbox 360. Until we see actual numbers on returns and repairs, we won\'t know if there\'s anything wrong with the Xbox 360 that\'s out of the ordinary, more than is considered normal for a home console.

Everything up to this point is word-of-mouth, and a statistically biased mouth at that.