Thanksgiving: a time for reflecting on those things that we are thankful for, a time for delicious feasts, and a time for one's family to complain about the launch of the Microsoft Xbox 360.  At least, if you're part of my family, and this leads to what Microsoft may have to do first thing Monday morning.  During dinner two family members were talking about going to one of the early pre-dawn sales at Target, to which I just sarcastically injected "Good, you can be first in line for the Xbox riots," and continued chewing on turkey.  I didn't expect what happened next.  Everybody at the meal - old, young, men, women - chimed in spontaneously on the matter.

"Oh, I heard those Xboxes don't work; they're all broken!"

"I heard people are being shot in front of the stores for those Xboxes!"

"And they're so expensive!  They won't let you buy just the Xbox itself!"

This group of people (none of whom are game players and none of whom follow game industry news intensely) had this image of the Xbox 360 being an expensive broken thief-magnet.  This public image may be the hurdle that Microsoft has to jump even higher to clear than reacting to malfunctioning power units and console shortages.  If a group of average folks across several demographics at Thanksgiving all have this idea that the Xbox is more trouble than it's worth, how many other non-gaming folks out there have fallen into an anti-Xbox sentiment?