I'm not convinced. We all knew well before the 360 was released that ATI was developing the GPU - it was the precursor to the DX10 chips you can buy today, ferchristssake.

Besides which, plenty of anecdotal evidence (along with the cheap and cheerful fixes we've seen since launch) suggests that the problem isn't just that the GPU pumps out heat (they all do) but that the heatsink was simply inadequate for the purpose, and the way it was mounted to the motherboard exacerbated an already unstable situation.

I don't know who it was at Microsoft that decided to put the GPU right under the DVD-ROM (with a tiny heatsink when all common knowledge suggests the GPU is going to run damn hot), but whoever it was had either never looked at a modern video card or was under significant pressure from upstairs to maintain a form factor. I'm going to go with the latter, and I think seeing the relative size (and cooling arrangement) of the PS3 shows this.

While Sony might have missed plenty of boats early on this round, they figured right that your problem isn't going to be the CPU or other subsystems - the thing that's going to cook innards is the bit that does a huge chunk of the work. Thus you get the massive heatsink arrangement and the big-ass fan.

I enjoy playing my 360, but I can't deny the fact they messed this shit up somewhere in the design phase.