They started becoming less prevalent throughout 2008, as manufacturers got better at working with RoHS-compliant solder and die shrinks meant less heat. Howeve

They started becoming less prevalent throughout 2008, as manufacturers got better at working with RoHS-compliant solder and die shrinks meant less heat. However, the failure rate for the early models was only 25%. An astronomically high number for any consumer electronic and 10x that of the Nintendo Wii, but still a minority of consoles. Plenty of people got "bad" consoles in 2006, 2007 and didn't have a failure until 2009 or 2010. There were also plenty of "refurbished" consoles floating around game stores and ebay for years that would eventually fail again.