I have had good experience with the first two generations of Sony's consoles (those things have thousands of hours on them and still are good) and the third generation was OK (after three years of hard use the first needed a 40 dollar fix, two years later it finally bit the bullet). Can't speak for the current generation of consoles, they all look so blah.
Their audio equipment is still nice. Their 80ish dollar headphones are still nicer then headphones four times the price of others.
I am going with my comparisons with the wii remote compared to kinect in part because the former was far, far more popular. The closest to market penetration for that type of peripheral, and even then it eventually fizzled out. For the next generations of devices to compete they have to address the problems it had.
Everyone always talks about good experiences with the PS2. I always wonder if they had the earliest models, which were supposedly very sturdy (from what I hear).
I didn't have the earliest models. I had much later ones (which were junk) and then the Slimlines (which were super junk).
I went through TEN of these accursed things. That's right. TEN of them. Yes, I know, you'd think I'd have stopped after the first few died, but I tend to be obsessive, stubborn, and refuse to lose easily.
I had one particular unit that constantly had a stapler sitting on it. Why did it have a stapler sitting on it? Because it didn't function if the stapler wasn't sitting on it. If I couldn't find the stapler, I'd use a boot instead.
Among a variety of other idiotic issues.
After number 10 though, which I totally obliterated after my patience totally snapped, I dumped the idea, got rid of ALL of the games, and have refused to touch another one since.
If I recall correctly, the remains of that one ended up in a small lake. I was not in a good mood that day.