Can anyone provide REAL figures for what sales occur monthly that are to replace a dead device?  It would be really interesting to know what is a replacement and what is a sale to a new customer/new place for a console.

No. Just look at the failure rate for each console. Do not quote me on this but it is something like this.

2006-2008 X360 30% failure rate
2009-present 14% failure rate

PS3 12-16% failure rate

Wii 8% failure rate.

I remmber seeing numbers like that somewhere before but that isn't exact as Im going off of memory.

While investigating the report by Strategy Analytics stating that the PlayStation 3 had an active user base of 43.4 million users (out of 47.9 total PS3's sold worldwide) and the Xbox 360 has an active user base of 42.9 million users (out of 50 worldwide), Alexander Hinkley of The Examiner came across a startling revelation: the Xbox 360 only has a 6% higher failure rate than the PlayStation 3.

Hinkley wrote: Looking at these numbers then, we can deduce that 83.5% of all Xbox 360's ever sold are considered "active" (therefore 16.5% of them have been broken or otherwise gone missing). On the other hand, 89.7% of all PS3's sold are currently active (meaning

This is older but like I said its not a big difference. The RRoD fiasco is a small percentage of 70m+ consoles

It seems to indicate that the reputation built by the Xbox 360's Red Ring of Death issues have given the impression that the high failure rate still exists; the Xbox 360 S was built specifically to kill those issues with a cooler chips, better ventilation, and such. It seems that the only issue right now for the Xbox 360 in terms of failure rate is perception.

Don't kid yourself...many thousands of 360s died due to RROD. I lost 3 myself alone. (the last one kicked it about 3 months ago after 200 billion hours of use...the video started going and then it RROD'd on me.

Not what I'm stating.  The RRoD was 30% failure rate on early models but it has been lowered since then.  2006-2008 their was what 20-30 360's sold.  That means 50 million has been sold since they have fixed the problem.

P.S. thousands is a small percentage of 70m......

a 6% difference in failure rate is not that big.  YLoD has had many issues as well.  Nintendo is the only console that has a relatively low number.

Nintendo was really about to leverage the simplicity of the Wii into such a low failure rate but can you imagine the same given the WIIU?  I see those controllers getting abused to crap.

The controllers will probably sell pretty well because of so many people will break them, but they are built pretty sturdy as well.  Their is a video on youtube of a guy testing it's durability by dropping it on concrete multiple times.