Sega and Nintendo are pretty much the only companies who know how to make durable systems. My Megadrive is still kicking, although a few buttons on my controllers stopped working after a decade or so (and now I've got two new reconditioned Megadrive controllers from Japan at 500 Yen a piece); and all of my Saturn controllers still work like a charm. Even though the first few generations of XBox hardware (and indeed, controllers) were apalling, I'd have to say that so far my XBox (which I purchased early last year) looks to have a promising lifespan. And on the NES, I had a friend whose cartridge drive was a bit faulty around 1992, he had to blow on the cartridges and the drives to get them to work sometimes, but given how long the machine's been around, and how old it is, it's understandable...