I feel like I'm a crotchety old man who's about to rant about how things "used to be", but it must be done -- what has become of the durable and dependable consoles we used to buy? My Genesis still works like a dream, as does both mine and my wife's NES -- though I bought that super-pimp Generation NEX so that I wouldn't have to blow in cartridges anymore. Hell, my Atari 2600 still works everytime I dig it out for a little Joust.
What are the chances you will be able to pull out your Playstation 3 or Xbox 360 in twenty years for a little gaming? Slim to none. These systems are dying on people mere years after release -- the 360 quite possibly being the worst piece of junk ever produced in the video game realm. If it weren't for Microsoft's vault of money to appease the masses of red-ringed 360 owners, the system would have failed after the first year.
My launch PSP just crapped out on me. It freezes almost immediately after being turned on, and then restarts itself. I spent a good hour trying to use my precious few seconds before it froze to make a mad dash for the system settings so I could reset them to the default. It didn't help.
I have yet to purchase anything other then a Wii, because of a lack of expendable income. I assumed I would always have my PSP to stay somewhat up to date with current games, and was almost excited within the last few months because of the flood of digital content appearing on PSN. Now I'm glad that I had to return two 16gb memory stick pro duos to Amazon because they were fake (another issue I could rant about, but I digress).
Where will we be left several console generations from now when we want to get some retro-gaming goodness? Will there be any working PS3, 360, or PSP left? Will we have to have them repaired every single time we pull them out of the closet? I doubt that Sony or Microsoft will continue to even repair them, so a whole cottage industry will have to spring up around repairing this generation of shoddy consoles.
As soon as enough time has passed for backwards compatability of these systems to be forgotten, a whole crop of companies will either have fill the void, or we'll be left with giant paper weights. All because, in the increasingly mainstream game industry, a bunch of crap was rushed out to market so that they could beat or keep up with the competition. Way to keep the consumer in mind, guys.
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My 360 I bought a year after it launched, and it's slowly been giving me more and more signs that it is about to give out (disk read errors, permanent half-ring, etc) My friend's 360 that he's had almost as long and it's recently started to freeze while booting up.
My launch wii is still working great, although I can't say it's really been used all that much. My brother's launch wii has been repaired by Nintendo twice.
Maybe it's because I don't own a PS3 and as such don't really follow PS3 news, but I thought they had a pretty solid hardware track record? PS2's seemed to eventually give out with steadily weakening lasers, but from what I've heard so far, I thought PS3's were pretty solid.
However my PSP and DS (and subsequent DS Lite) have never given me any problems. I managed to luck out and get a launch PSP with no dead pixels, even.
I think a lot of the reliability has to do with the way consoles have evolved. I work in IT and we buy servers with several redundant components, but the ones that consistently give out are hard drives and power supplies. Hard drives are the only real component with any real moving parts any more, and a power supply is so susceptible to heat.
If you think about it, all the consoles that you cherish in your memory as ultra reliable didn't have ANY moving parts (no disk drives or hard drives), and didn't require any serious power requirements, which ultimately reduces the overall wear and tear on them.
Quit bringing logic into this.
PS3s are much more solid, but I've heard some reports of breaking systems, and since its less common they charge you to repair, unlike Microsofts 3-year window. I don't think you can call the PS2 a quality product either, though I've had no problems with mine.
Obviously with new technology, there are more things to break, but the arms race between companies certainly doesn't help things. Nobody can claim that the 360 wasn't rushed out waaaaay before it should have been. With all the new technology, they should be extra careful to put these things out.
Still, how long has the PSP been out? 4 years? I'm super pissed that it's useless now after only 4 years. SO LET ME HAVE MY RANT! 4 years is fucking ridiculous for a $250 purchase!
Well, Microsoft's warranty is 1 year on any problems, and an additional 2 years for RROD and the E74, which are the two they've taken a PR beating over. The problems I've been having with mine wouldn't be covered, though even my 3 year warranty is up in January. That hardware was absolutely rushed to market, but I still feel they've done a reasonably good job taking care of their customers while trying to fix their image.
My PSP is a lot like my Wii though, in terms of level of usage. It's spent a lot of time being stored in a box, so I'm totally at terms with it being an outlier.
I think about this every time I play snes. I will be able to show my kids what a snes is, but not an xbox 360
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