Magazine Game Informer surveyed 5000 readers to determine failure rates and satisfaction with the repair process for the three current generation consoles. The results show that the Xbox 360 is suffering a staggering number of hardware failures. Of the respondents, 360 owners reported that 54.2% of their consoles had failed. Those sent in for repairs had a second failure rate of 41.2%. Xbox owners were also the least satisfied with the service they received with only 37.7% reporting a good experience. 3.6% of 360 owners said they would never buy a Microsoft console again due to the high failure rate. The Wii and PS3 faired significantly better, having failure rates of 10.6% and 6.8% respectively. In terms of customer satisfaction, the Wii and PS3 were almost even with 56.1% and 51.1%.

I think the numbers do seem quite high though I suspect they're including as "failures" anything that requires the console to be repaired including worn out fans, hard drives, and optical drives instead of just catastrophic failures such as the 360's infamous Red Ring of Death. This would explain why the Wii's rates are so low since it has the fewest moving parts. This news doesn't bode will for Microsoft though, who has been battling serious hardware issues with the 360 since day one. We can only assume that sales may have been better had these issues not existed to begin with. One has to admire the resilience, or stupidity depending on how you see it, of 360 owners. Many keep coming back to the system due to its strong library of games while Sony has failed to take advantage of consumer dissatisfaction with the problems by not aggressively building their library and marketing the PS3.

Source: IGN