First things first, this question comes from frustrated personal experience. I get that am 1 person, and this would be considered anecdotal evidence by some. But, I have owned all three Microsoft consoles, and all of them have failed at some point. Two of them dying in-gen. The Red Ring of Death is well known from how widespread an issue it was. Yet, upon the briefest of Google searches mentioning the problems I suffered with the other 2 show that I was not alone there either. I have a working ColecoVision, Intellivision, and TRS-80 Color Computer 2 from the early 80's that still work. I still have the very same working NES that I logged thousands of hours on in the early 90's. Yet, not one of my originally purchased Microsoft consoles is currently working. Here is the fate each one suffered:
Original XBox:
After a few years the Power Button would start up the console, but stopped responding to power down pushes. Eventually, the Power Button failed completely and the console would not start up either. I already had the 360 when this issue surfaced, so it wasn't an "in-gen" death for me. But, I don't think I got the original Xbox until the summer of 2003, so it was only a few years old at the time. It was disappointing since I was obviously still using it with my friends. Raw 2 was our favorite wrestling game back then. I looked up the issue on the web and there are numerous posts from people with original XBox's complaining about not being able to turn the system off or the button not working entirely. So, it doesn't seem to have been that rare of a problem.
XBox 360:
Red Ring of Death. This one was so widespread and well known that I don't think it requires any explanation on my part. I actually got hit with this twice, since I had also bought a 360 for my younger brother and that one was struck down by the RROD as well. I later upgraded to the Xbox 360 slim console and still am able to use that. But my first 360 died "in-gen".
XBox One:
I got an XBox One a year after launch for Christmas 2014. Sometime this year, I went to turn the system on and... nothing. Doesn't power up at all. The power brick illuminates to yellow if only plugged into the electrical outlet. But, once also connected to the system, it goes completely dead. I looked this up as well, and just like with my original XBox issue, many other people have mentioned their XBox One's not powering up as well. In fact, there appears to be an entire cottage industry on Amazon for 3rd Party Replacement Power Bricks.
So, what the hell? Microsoft entered the console market in 2001. As a consumer of the XBox brand, I have had all three of their consoles fail in less than 5 years of use. 2 of them died before their successor was even on the market. Either that's extremely bad luck on my part, or Microsoft is just plain bad at making reliable hardware. Considering the number of consoles I have purchased over the years, and how many of them still work to this day, I'm leaning toward the latter at this point. Has any one else had a similar track record with Microsoft across all three of their entries?
