But i' m in the same boat as you, never had a console ' die on me' . But i' ve only ever owned Nintendo consoles so that might explain things.
My NES, and SNES both died. My Nintendo 64 gimped up for a month until I cleaned it a bunch. My gameboy color broke too, never had a GC. My turbo-graffix works still. My Sega genesis works, and my Sega Saturn with a big crack in it still works, and my GameGear still works as well, wherever it is.
My PS1 still works, my ps2 broke when I tried to mod it, one friend had a disc read error for a while, while another friends launch unit still works. My xbox broke once, but I think it was because my brother left it running on the carpet which I' ve heard really screws with em(my cousin;s friend wrecked 3 this way). Never had a 360, but my roomates got the ring of death, under warranty at least. So far the ps3 is fine, only time will tell how it holds up.
Now that I write all that out, I realise how much these things can go wrong. Still, I' ve had comps do a lot worse. So far my Sega and Sony products have worked out best, and the first Xbox probably woulda kept on going if it hadn' t been left on the carpet.