Now that everyone is worried about sales figures of consoles a thought came to me.  With the Red Ring of death for the 350 and the yellow light of death for the PS3 I believe it is safe to say that more consoles broke last gen than any other.  I personally only had to deal with the yellow light on my PS3.  This is where my question comes into play.  Can we actually say that X amount of system were sold when the fact it a lot of that number is due to people rebuying the same console over and over?   

I personally know someone is a die hard MS player and went through 4 360's during it's console lifespan.  

I personally have had four 360's and one PS3. The reason for RROD was because MS rushed the R&D of the 360 to get a years head start on Sony and woo third party over to them. They wouldn't have had a proper case if they hadn't set themselves apart. This is why once RROD happened they were forced to extend the warranty to three years.

This is true 

Very true, I have no experience with ps3 but most my friends are 360 owners and almost all of them bought a second console because of red ring of death. One of them went through at least three 360s meanwhile everyone I know who bought a wii still has it in working condition. Not attacking the Xbox as I own one but the red ring is absolute bullshit, I personally think they were made to do that to drive sales.

Thank god so far this Gen both sides PS4 and X1 (I would say Nintendo normally makes a solid console as far as durability) seem to have only limited issues which i expect

Think my bro went through SEVEN XBoxes (christ knows how).

I was lucky but I brought into the generation late as when it was released I was a hardcore WoW player.

I have 2 XBoxes, neither broke, I sold one as I was still playing WoW then a year or two later got another.

My first PS3 was when the slim was released, I paid for a cover plan but never had a YLOD, but the Disc drive did die, and was sent away for repair. Came back lasted about a year then died again. Next time it was sent away I sold it to brother, and bought a new one with bigger HDD (that one never broke) the one that was sent away though came back still broke and went back again, this time coming back working.

There is more too it than just broken console. In reality we never will know the exacts when there is also the casual gamer who may buy 1 game.

Other factors:
PS3 = bluray player for lots of people. It was even marketed that way and given away as one if you purchased a HD TV. Also FIFA game box.
360 = media player / NFL game box.

Then you also got hardcore collectors who buy every limited edition console they can. i.e. I have about 6 3DS consoles atm. I know someone who is more hardcore and bought about 25 from across the world.

My guess is games like GTA, and console exclusive sales wise make up about 40-60% of the active core gaming base. So if you 2x to 3x those sales you can get a rough idea of actual gamers.

Hell look at this forum where people talk about number of games they own. Most on here own 40+ games. Some as high as 400+ games.

Sales on this site indicate 833million games sold on PS3 for the 83million consoles. So that is an average of approx 10 per user. Now if most CORE games are as high as they indicate, then clearly there is a lot of consoles out there that are not used primarily as gaming machines to get that average down to 10.

RROD was the worst plague in gaming history and it could've been prevented. MS rushed the launch of the 360 knowing R&D wasn't complete. Sony's yellow light of death was around 10% which is normal for hardware. At one time RROD

54.2 % worldwide, while the Wii had 6% and Sony had 10.6% which for technology is normal. Microsoft knowingly rushed production.

http://consumerist.com/2009/08/17/xbox-360-failure-rate-is-542-percent-game-informer-finds/

RROD was reported to be over 60% in the UK in 2009 of all Xboxes.

http://www.qj.net/qjnet/xbox-360/survey-says-60-of-uk-xbox-360s-have-rroded.html

Even a 10% repurchase rate would've helped MS fend off Sony. MS didn't immediately jump on RROG until it got pretty bad. 

I'm pretty sure the RROD somewhat inflated the sales of the 360 a little bit. It's easily the biggest fuck up in video game history. I still cannot wrap my head around the fact that those things had a failure rate of OVER FIFTY PERCENT! It was like a fucking time bomb. "Let's see how long this one lasts. ARE YOU FEELING LUCKY TODAY?"

But the YLOD, I don't know. It really wasn't that common. In fact, I'm willing to guess those disc reading problems (I think) that plagued early PS2s were more common.

How do you know if they all rebuy a new console?