It has nothing to do with complexity of hardware or relative performance, and has a lot to do with the number of moving parts, energy consumption/heat production, and heat dissipation. Hardware is constantly becoming more complicated and powerful as time goes on, and it is also becoming (generally speaking) more reliable. The problem with the HD consoles is they consume far more energy than previous consoles, which gets converted into heat, and the ability for these systems to eliminate this heat is greatly reduced over time as their fans break down or get clogged with dust (and other airborne particles).

The Wii is so reliable because (besides the disc drive) it has no moving parts to fail; and even if you filled the system with insulation it is unlikely that the system would get warm enough to cause a significant risk of over-heating.

lol i remember last gen if my PS2 broke i was fucked. 

Now if my 360 RROD's then im fine, but if they Trey's break im fucked.

30% of 42% is still higher than the PS3/Wii failure rates.  Granted I think you can fake a RROD, so I suppose that is moot.

But still it is some incredible spin to say that per one hundred people

12.6 people out of 42 had to pay for their 360 repair
8 out of 8 for PS3
1 out of 1 for Wii

And somehow make that a positive for 360.

Every single model of PS2 last generation had crap lasers that were prone to a early demise, did Sony ever extend the warranty to cover all the people they shafted with a unreliable console? 

Three words: not a chance

Actual doing something when you could sit back and force customers to fight tooth and nail to get a replacment is commendable.  Perhaps if Sony had been forced to product recall all the first year launch PS2's for exhibiting a systemic fault then a precident would have been set that Microsoft would have had to release a reliable console.  You cannot cry foul about Microsoft and then defend Sony.

The 360's failure rate is well known but those are some pretty damning PS3 numbers imo. They ought to get their shit together, I hate it when stuff breaks. Especially expensive stuff.

Granted the PS2 had a higher than acceptable failure rate (I had 1 break on me myself), but the unfortunate truth is that the 360's failure rate is/was much higher and forced Mircosoft to take action. If they didn't they'd be looking at masses of lawsuits. Sony got away with it because it was on the border of what's acceptable/unacceptable.

The other thing to remember is that PS2 sold ridiculous amounts so the number of people who had failed PS2s would have been very high even with an acceptable failure rate. The PS3 probably has a similar failure rate to PS2 but because less people have PS3s and the news of 360 failure rate being ridiculously high, no one seems to care.

You sound like you've had the worst luck when it comes to electronics. You sure you're not carrying some bizzare EMP device with you?

How did ATI screw up? They just supply the chip. It's Microsofts job to ensure that it is cooled appropriately.

The PS3 failure rate is climbing now too, the lasers have started failing at an alarming rate now.  Rather annoyingly the main fault with a PS3 laser is just dry solder joints because of how garbage lead free solder is, a reflow usually fixes them so its not down to shoddy components this generation but the solder they're forced to use.  Lead free solder is the bane of this generation for reliability and I cannot see how its better for the economy using it as more items are being thrown away than ever as they fail quicker than they used to because of it.  The PS2 failure rate was comparable to the 360, there really isn't much doubt regarding that.

I honestly thought PS3 wouldve had the most failure rate of the 3 at the start of this gen since it had newer tech in it.