Straps and towels, my oh my!

Earlier today I finally got my replacement Wii Remote straps from Nintendo. I ordered them on the 22nd of December - a week after the replacement program was announced - and it took Nintendo almost three weeks to even ship them, after which they arrived pretty promptly, in a small padded envelope, most of which contained a big flyer about the proper and safe use of Wiimotes. Given that they included such a stern warning, I wonder if I am now on some sort of Nintendo "dangerous customer" list, lumped in there with all the people whose straps actually did break due to excessive hand waving.

It's interesting that I "honestly" (i.e. "stupidly") ordered replacements only for the two Wiimotes I have (hoping that future units I get will already have the newer straps, and foolishly ignoring the temptation to get extras just to attach to random things around the house). I ordered two, and got two - more then three weeks later. That's apparently the experience of half the people who ordered replacements. According to a thread on Cheap Ass Gamer, the other half got anywhere between two to three extra orders shipped to them and within days of ordering. I wonder if all those people were getting the straps the other half were waiting for.

At the same time, apart from maiming and killing their friends and loved ones (large-screen HDTV sets), Wii owners don't really seem to be complaining about any other major defects. The PS3 has now apparently shipped (although probably not sold) over 2 million units, and those folks aren't heard frequently mentioning hardware issues either.

The Xbox 360 is a different story however. After Microsoft's somewhat late vote of confidence in their own hardware, whereby they extended the default warranty from the laughable 90 days to the more common one year, people are now using towels of all things to fix their still breaking 360 consoles. Towels! Come on, Microsoft, a year after launch, and the thing is still having these issues? Since not all the Xbox 360 consoles seem affected by defects, is there just no quality control at all? People seem to be shipping these things back and forth between repair centers one year after launch, while the other two new consoles seem to be built quite a bit better right out of the gate.

Has Microsoft become the new Sony, producing crap hardware that breaks within the first year? Has Sony become the new, I guess Nintendo, with solid hardware build quality? And has Nintendo become the new killer console maker?