But it's that mentality of disposable history which we as consumers should not be tolerating. What happens when you feel like going back to play a beloved favorite and your system is unusable? We can't rely on backwards compatibility. Do we buy it again when it shows up on a future console's store or series collection? And that's provided it even receives a port in any way; many of the hidden gems of the xbox are stranded there by way of console exclusivity. Want to play Otogi, JSRF, or Shenmue II? Damn shame. Expiration dates like this inherently limit consumer freedom, something which should not be encouraged.

What makes you so certain it will fail in exactly 8 years? Just curious. I have all my game on an external drive so my hard drive is basically used for startup. Plus, I still have my original 360 and that thing is still kicking.

http://www.extremetech.com/computing/170748-how-long-do-hard-drives-actually-live-for I'm using a figure of 8 years because a console's HDD probably doesn't see as much use as the computer HDDs used in these experiments, though I admit that 8 is an arbitrary number I got from doubling the 50% failure rate reported after 4 years. [url=http://consumerist.com/2009/08/17/xbox-360-failure-rate-is-542-percent-game-informer-finds/]Your 360 is an anomaly.[/url]

True but all those drives tested were also running 24/7 for years. That's a lot longer than the average player. Even if we say the Xbox is on 6 hours a day, that's a fourth. And with external drives, the wear and tear will drop the usage of the internal drive dramatically. I'm also an optimist though. With the mistakes this gen has made, I'd be surprised if Sony and Microsoft didn't support backwards compatibility for next gen.