The failure rate significantly dropped after the Falcon -based board was released to something along the lines of 15%.  The Jasper-based Xbox 360's did even better dropping it below 10%.  Both of these were the original Xbox 360 design, not the Xbox 360 S.

Microsoft may not have published numbers, but a repair facility that Microsoft used did. 

MS will defintely make sure not to have a repeat, I'm betting the hardware quality is going to be very good.

Regardless, I have learned to always wait when buying new hardware, no matter which company

Nope. It happened more than once although spread out across several months. Like I said before, this is a new laptop so I'm not worried there is something major wrong with it.  But it is alarming since I've never really gotten a blue screen on windows 7 or even vista. I actually have the time to research this right now and it seems to be some Kernel Power error. Sounds like I might have a faulty battery, but these blue screens don't happen while my computer is in use, they usually happen when I put it in sleep mode. 

Maybe that's because you don't know that many people with a PS3. The PS2 Slim optical drive was known to be crappy though, but it usually stopped working for people who abused it with pirated games. Pirated games in the long term were bad for the lens.

Statistically the Playstation's failure rate is nothing compared to the 360. Either way this means nothing. Next gen, the X1 might be better than the PS4 (in terms or hardware failures) or vice-versa. Who the hell knows..

Are those the HDMI model 360's? Yea, 10% and 15% aren't bad, but it's not good either and the HDMI model 360's didn't release until 2008 I believe, that's 3 years and what 16 million consoles in?

Plus, what's worse is MS extended the warrenty on 360's for RRoD problems, and even if you had an extended warrenty from someone else, you had to ship to MS. MS would then replace your console with a "fixed" console someone else sent in. Problem is, these consoles aren't always fixed, and they are still original models with high fairlure rates.

I speak from experience, I had to ship my 360 out and get it replaced twice, and I had to specifically ask for a new one to replace my console with. That replacement console still broke, but thankfully, a good floor manager from Best Buy replaced my console with an HDMI 360 after my 3rd 360 broke.

P.S. What was the actual fail rate for original 360's? What about PS3/Wii? I read PS3's are about 2.5% and Wii is <0.2%.

No, September of 2007 was when officially the Falcon-based HDMI models launched.  The Zephyr-based HDMI models launched in April of 2007, however Zephyr-based 360's didn't adequately resolve the heat problem and still had the larger 90nm GPU and CPU.  10% is actually considered within the industry average.  The PS3 is now worse than the Xbox 360. 

Again, initially they refurbished the motherboards by removing the 90nm CPU and replacing it with a 65nm CPU, installing a larger heatsink on the GPU, and securing it to the mainboard.  While some of the refurbished boards didn't last, these refurbished boards were viable.  That is to say, they worked just as well as a brand new board, which for the non-HDMI models was functionally the same as a refurbished board.

My original Xbox 360 (Jan/06) failed with the RRoD 2 3/4 years after it was purchased.  It was replaced, and within 90 days the DVD failed.  I repeated this sequence every three months, with the exception of two 6 month periods and one year where life prevented me from using the console until I went through 8 consoles because of a DVD failure.  The final straw, for Microsoft, was my last console.  I sent them pictures, I explained everything, they sent me a console and within 90 days it failed.  Through my persistence and their analysis, come to find out a patch, when applied in the wrong order, had a detrimental affect on the DVD drive.  Subsequently, Microsoft provided a retro-active warranty on the DVD drive for anyone who had a specific problem, had it repaired, and paid for it, as well as changing the installation order for patches.

While I feel your pain regarding refurbished units, in my opinion, they were fine.  The worst thing I ran into was a bad rear USB port.  It worked, but it was just loose.  But the majority of the units I came across looked new, and were in great condition.  One of them I desperately tried to keep, because it was so quiet and had one of the smoothest operating DVD drives I'd ever ran across -- before it failed. 

I don't believe the PS3 is that low.  It may have been that low initially, but after about two years of operation, the YLOD on the original BC PS3's started to rear it's ugly head.  In 2009 Game Informer did a survey of 5,000 and found that 10.6% of those surveyed PS3 owners had a hardware failure.  This might be slightly inflated, because Game Informer didn't distinguish between people having a problem, getting it repaired, and having another problem with the repaired unit.  Subsequently, their Xbox 360 number is extremely high.  I don't believe people who had a PS3, a hardware failure, and got it repaired had a signficant number of repeated problems.  Speaking from experience, certainly the Xbox 360 circumstance was not that way.

It would have been nice if the Game Informer article specified people who had an initial problem on a system they purchased, vs people who had a problem with each console.  I think the Xbox 360 rate would have dropped to one that was inline with other figures being reported, e.g. 33%.  By the way, the PS3 figures also match up to those provided by a repair service Square Trade, while the Xbox 360 figures don't. 

http://www.gamegrep.com/news/24032-hardware_failure_rates_for_the_wii_360_and_ps3/

http://www.gamespot.com/news/xbox-360-failure-rate-237-ps3-10-wii-27-study-6216691 
 
Again, currently the Xbox 360 S enjoys a failure rate below that of the PS3.  That isn't to say Xbox 360's don't still fail, they do, but they're now well within industry averages.

And people forget that Xbox 1 was more reliable then PS2. 360 was an anomaly for all we know.

That really depends.  At one point the PS3's failure rate was 40%.  Granted, that was only in Europe and only applied to a batch of consoles, but in a given space and time the PS3's failure rate was an high as 40%.  It's still consistently 10%, where as the Xbox 360's failure rate is lower. 

The Xbox 360's high failure rate is attributed to those Xbox 360s that had the Xenon/Zephyr boards sold through 2007.  After that, the failure rate steadily fell.  With the Jasper boards, that failure rate fell to about 1%.

The Durango processor has a massive heat sink and a massive fan.  My guess is that Microsoft made sure this go-around that not only was the device going to run as cool as possible, but any failures were going to be heavily investigated to ensure they were/are resolved before manufacturing.  Engineers weren't oblivious to the Xbox 360's problem, they just believed it would work itself out as manufacturing improved.  That was a misunderstanding of the problem.  I get the feeling they are more willing to aggressively pursue any issues now rather than have to deal with problems later so as to not repeat the debacle of the RRoD.

The PS3's failure rate has never been 40%. You can't take one batch and say it applies to the whole console. That is like saying "at one point the 360's failure rate was 100%" because in the given space of "my house" the 360 broke.

And the 360 has never had a lower failure rate than the PS3. Have you seen this? http://www.polygon.com/2013/5/25/4365392/microsoft-shooting-to-sell-25-million-more-xbox-360-units That is Microsoft saying they expect to get another 12.5 million sales from replacements. That means if they think every single person whose 360 breaks buys a new one, the 360 has a failure rate of 16% (and I doubt they think that everyone buys a replacement).

So it had nothing to do with the fact that the PS2 sold over 140m and the Xbox barely 30m? 5 PS2's failing would be 1 Xbox failing...