Great post Chrispy but I have a couple of corrections/additions.
Xbox Live Gold is technically $60/year, not $50. Yes, there are deals all the time but the MSRP is $60.
As far as social apps and such, PSN does have MLBTV and NHL GameCenter, well before Xbox ever had them. I'm not even sure Xbox has NHL yet?
With online gaming, I haven't played CoD in a few months but when I did I didn't have any lag on PS3 and I don't really see any in Bf3, which is a much more massiveely scaled game in general. I also know I hear my wife complain about lag in CoDon 360 fairly regularly so I don't think it's fair to say that Xbox is the clear winner there.
So let me get this straight.
No one wins the security battle because a bunch of people are hacking live accounts and basically using the credit card on file to run up MS points in games like Fifa. No information is stolen just a credit card is run up and its pretty easy to reverse the charges and get things back to normal. I've helped 3 people with this issue now, twigg of course somehow had a hard time when it happened to him. I wonder why?.
I'm not really sure what you're trying to say here but if you think that I'm the only Xbox user that had significant problems getting their account back, points back, etc you are completely wrong. It took over three montsh to get everything back completely and their are some people that it took much longer. There are articles on Kotaku, Joystiq, Giant Bomb, etc that outline all of the issues and how long it took to fix. So trying to sweep it under the rug like it's a small problem is ludicrous.
In my issue it wasn't as simple as you try to make it to be. My account was completely compromised and points were stolen. I was actually lucky that they didn't use my card to buy more points. Instead they just drained my account of all the points I had...twice. It was around $80 worth of points, which isn't the end of the world, but it's nothing to sneeze at. And because MS's security and investigations department is so convoluted and useless it's a fucking NIGHTMARE to het any resolution. Hell, I might still be dealing with the problem if I hadn't been so persistent with calls.
So if you're implying I'm some special case and I'm just an idiot and that's whay I went through so much trouble, fuck off.