GameCube and Xbox were a lot more advanced than the PS2, but had far fewer problems..... I would bet the only reason the Wii has more problems than GameCube is it is being produced a bejesus lot faster than any console before.

The PS3 is more "bleeding edge" than the X360 yet it has a much better track record for not failing.... admitedly there is at least one good reason why PS3 is much better than previous Sony consoles, and that is the less stretched production as they are not in so much demand like PS1/2 and Wii were/are.... but that can only account for so much, so the PS3 is obviously built quite well (I would have said very well had you asked 6 months ago)

Again I agree the Wii uses older tech so there is less need to cut corners on cheap parts during the production. On the other hand I still have heard of several Wii's needing to go in for cleaning (especially after SSBB came out as it was the first dual layered disc for the system). Nintendo stepped up immediately to take care of the problem immediately for free even for systems out of warranty.

The 360 has had a miserable failure rate. Every person I know of including myself who has had the system from before Halo 3 (practically everyone who jumped in during the first 2 years) has had their system RRoD once. But MS acknowledged the problem and has fixed all of those under warranty with very little hassle. And they seem to have fixed the issue on newer revisions.

I have heard of a few PS3's breaking with disc read errors and also from system updates but by no means has it been an epidemic (like the 360) as you may have implied. In fact I would even argue that the PS3 is more reliable then the Wii. I only personally know of one person that had to get theirs replaced (had the extended warranty from Best Buy). The biggest problem with the PS3 is that if it does break out of the warranty you are S.O.L. and will have to pay for the repair yourself as Sony doesn't do the customer friendly thing and take care of problems out of the "original warranty".

I know 3 people who had their Wii die on them but I know only like 6 people with wii's in my gaming clan there are over 50 PS3s and about 5-8 had them break on them, out of 2 with a 360 both had their console broken once

I was suggesting more of a combination of issues more than one thing.  There are always exceptions.  For whatever the reason, failure rates are higher over the past 2 generations than in previous ones.  I own a 2600, 5200, NES, SNES, GENISIS, N64, PS2, GCN, PS3 and Wii.  None of the old ones failed on me, and I know about the problems with the PS2 last gen.

Sure it may be anecdotal evidence, but it is no less valid than the "I've got X friends with Wii....." posts that are currently populating this thread.

I don't know anyone (IRL) who has had a Wii or PS3 die. Where are you getting these statements from.

I'm on my second PS3, after the BD drive went in my first one after only 7 weeks.

I'm also on my second Wii, my first one would not read disks when I got it home and my second has intermittent and very persistent disc read errors as well as black artifacts on the screen. I've tried different TVs and cables with no luck, I figure it's just a matter of time before I have to get it repaired.

its called more complex hardware = more failure.

Nintendo platforms are known to be almost indestructible and last for a really long time in general by %, they make solid hardware for the most part.

Two reasons:

1- Nintendo built the Wii specifically with low power consumption in mind (they said so in one of their roundtables with Iwata). That goes a long way towards making the console reliable.

2- The Wii is an updated Gamecube, so it's likely that Nintendo has used a lot of the chips the Gamecube had. These chips are proven to be reliable after years of Gamecube manufacturing.

That's not true. There's plenty of complex hardware out there which has a very low rate of failure... spaceships, supercomputers...