Wonderful and pleasant way to look at it! 

I swear I always think my Phat PS3 is going to die.

When I had a phat360 I also thought it would die and as soon as the phat 360 had its first freeze I sold it and bought a slim. Im not so nervous anymore but still a bit  :(

After my phat PS2 died (disk read error) and the news about the RROD and YLOD....  Sony and Microsoft products make me nervous... (my PS2 slim is the only Sony consoles that doesnt because its made to last)

On the other hand I am completely fine with my WiiU even when I find out that it is running for 3 days non stop because my 2 year old nephew (who came for a visit) tuned it on without me noticing. 
(maybe because even today my NES is working and my sister dropped my Gamecube from the table and it still works. It landed on one of its corners Its not a cube anymore because it now has 10 instead of 8 corners.)

I once worried about my Wii. It sometimes sounds like its vibrating when a disk is inside. But then I hacked it and no need to use the drive anymore. problem solved.

The xbox one we have in the office at work died yesterday evening, would boot up briefly, logo on kinect and console would illuminate then there would be a quiet 'pop' and it would then shut off, we stripped it down (our US machine cannot be exchanged in japan) and found it to be a defective aluminum capacitor located under where the hard drive housing sits, waiting on a replacement we ordered to see if it can be fixed.

Modern tech, it will never be flawless.

You have an Xbox one in yout office?

Had, our tech departments taken it to replace the suspected failed capacitor as since we are located in japan sending it back to US xbox distiro for replacement/repair is too much downtime, but prior to that yes, you kind of have these things when you work as a games developer.

Not saying there is some serious issue. Yet .04% was just an initial estimate and there sure seemed to be a huge amount of twitter complaints (and seem to be continuing). This is just initial couple of days. What about after a few weeks or months of usage. Especially if according to some complaints some issues are related to heat.

That's no real gauge of actual numbers though, if we believed every claim of RROD back in the day then more consoles would have got RROD than have been sold to date, i suspect twitter will be awash with "dead xbox ones" in a weeks time, in exactly the same way.

thats the thing about giving someone anonymity and a voice at the same time, it will, invariably, be abused.

I think a perfectly realistic expectation for a new system launch is 3-5% (which is totally acceptable with any new hardware) which would equate to around 30,000-50,000 units of the 1,000,000 sold. Far more than the 0.4% figure Sony mention pre launch. But 30-50k is still quite a bit of angry users to blast Twitter, Facebook, Youtube and gaming forums. Most people who do have a working system are enjoying it.

It definitely does suck when you get a dud system. I had a dead 360 on launch and I went through 3 more before getting a PS3 and Xbox 360S with no issues.

But you need to take into account a couple things:

1. Its too early to know for sure.
2. Social media has EXPLODED over the last 5 years and everyone who works in customer service knows you are going to tell 10 people about a bad experience and only 1 about a great experience.

I do hope that the issues are small and I am confident any gremlins will get worked out in a few months time. As of now my PS4 has been working perfectly since launch day and I have got about 40 hours on it the last 5 days and 5 friends of mine have PS4s ( 2 from Amazon) and have no issues either.

Interesting that  a single cap (not at the power fets) can bring the house down. Usually it doesn't smell like roses either when a cap blows up, too..

If it was related to the power loop I doubt it would be powering on at all.