Your old Super Nintendo didnt have any of the things that break on your Playstation or Xbox.
Reading data from the Super Mario cartridge requires no moving parts, only electrical signals. When your Xbox or Playstation reads a CD and is writing to a hard drive, there are MANY tiny moving parts that can break a lot.
The Xbox and Playstation also have hundreds of more computer "brains" and wires, and more complicated programs. It has more things that can break.
These new technologies generate a lot of heat and it is stuffed as tightly as possible. Overheating is bad for the components, and so it leads to breakage.
The true reason is due to planned obsolescence and lower quality manufacturing.
ReplyDeleteIt indeed has a lot more to do with planned obsolescence than anything else. This is the reason most of the things you make/craft yourself will tend to last one hell of a longer time than mostly any manufactured item.
ReplyDeleteIt's just more worthwhile economically to make snazzy, attractive but quick-to-break products than quality ones, no matter what the big companies want you to believe. What's sad is that this — corporate greed — is responsible for a lot of the pollution this planet is plagued with.
A small number of sociopaths poisoning the masses...
For those interested, this video is pretty informative on the topic : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FoHhwl27Hs4&feature=related