At least Microsoft have owned up to the fault and are fixing it - even offering an extended warranty and giving people newer consoles in return! As opposed to Sony who flat deny any issues.
lol, took them about 18 months and lots and lots of consoles to go wrong with the same problem before they were 'forced' to though, they denied it for a very long time with about half of consoles breaking with the same problem!
Then rather than fix the problem they just extended the warranty for that particular problem knowing it would happen to most people, hardly a good way of handling it.
If it was a car they would have had to fix the problem and recall them all to fix and make sure it didn't happen.
Mine died (with a shed load of ther people) after an update, MS denied there was a problem with the update but they pulled the update that night and then released it again a day later with the exact same identity code and denied they had changed anything and removed it, talk about a cover up.
I don't know any of my friends who have had an issue with a ps3, and my launch console has never missed a beat, but everyone i know with a 360 has had it replaced at least once, myself included.