If you actively use the system (not me, only when I travel) or have kids that use it a lot, I think it makes a lot of sense to get a warranty beyond 1 year.

I don't get the warranty's for anything.

The way I look at it, I buy a good bit of electronics (game consoles, dvd players, cd players, mp3 players, digital cameras etc.).

I'm sure one of them will break eventually. However, I imagine that when it does the cost of fixing or replacing it will be less than the cost of purchasing warranties for everything.

Plus, a 1 year warranty is more than enough. If it's a lemon it will break before that. If it lasts a year you should be good to go. If it's for a kid, just show them how to use it and to not press the touch screen too hard etc. and tell them that if they break it by abusing it, they're not getting another one.

Or just buy all your stuff with a credit card (like American Express Starwood) that has warranty extender built in. I buy all of my electronics with my Amex so when my ipod dies 2 months out of warranty (like it just did) I just call Amex and they refund me the full amount. Very nice! It doubles the manufacturers warranty up to 1 year.

I'm just waiting for Castlevania DS.

How long has it been since you've stepped into a best buy? They've been doing that for quite sometime now.

If anyone wants Mario 64 and the metroid demo Costco has some packs that include a silver system with the metroid demo and mario 64. It also includes some extra styluses and screen protector. It was $150 after instant rebate.

Only if you are a security nut. I'm going to go technical here, bear with me. This only pertains to product failure, not a child shoving their candy bar in a cd-rom drive...


In engineering/manufactoring there is a term to describe lifetime use, MTBF. MTBF means Mean Time Between Failure. Every "thing" has a MTBF, and from that you can predict average lifetime use of a product.

The MTBF goes through 3 "stages" known as the bathtub curve, Infant Mortality, Normal Life, and End of Life. A warranty is meant to protect the product through its Infant Mortality stage, not its useful life stage. If a product makes it past this stage it usually will work as long as it was engineered to. The interesting part is this, when Nintendo/Sony/MS/etc. launches a system they may not know the MTBF from actual testing of the complete unit, however they can reliably calculate it from the MTBF from each component used in creating the system. This is historically accurate to do, so as long as your components have been tested you can forcast your own product lifecycle without testing it.


In regards to Nintendo specifically, business sense indicates one of two options in why Nintendo warranties are longer then the industry average. Either Nintendo historically has offered longer warranties in order to "intice" buyers and then paying for that warranty coverage later, or they know their product is better built and can effectively offer a longer warranty without a significant increase in cost. Experience for myself indicates the later. I have never seen Nintendo use their longer warrany as a direct marketing move, nor have I seen significant Nintendo product failure.

Most electronics are designed to last at least 5 years. If they survive their infant mortality, they usually meet that goal and longer. So unless you are buying coverage for idiot (kid) insurance, buying an extended warranty for product failure is a ripoff and should be avoided. Of course everyone has their different reasons, just don't let product failure be your reason. My final word is that places like Best Buy and the sort are starting to get more stingy on what they cover, and idiot insurance is starting to be taken off the table in terms of acceptable service.

edit: graph added

You seem to know a lot about product failure. Is there a source for finding out the specific graphs for specific products. Like for instance how long a camcorder should last and if it is worth buying the extended warranty. I always say no to them but know there are certain products that invariably have a much shorter life span then others.

Internally an organization will often have the MTBF calculated for their product, but these are usually not publicly known. However, if you are really determined to learn about what you are buying you can usually identify key components in the hardware, and these components often have MTBF data available as they supply many different companies.

Example: In a camcorder the lens is obviously an important component, if you can identify who makes it you may be able to research the MTBF characteristics of said component. Usually, not always, you can determine a quality good vs average or poor good by select components. In other words, your Canon camcorder is not likely to have a crappy recording mechanism if the Lens is really good. Manufactures attempt to build goods with similar MTBF in attempt to generate predictable cost analysis and life expectancies.

Final note, consumer goods that are expensive are not necessarily going to last longer (have a higher MTBF). There are many factors that go into the price of the unit. Marketing, materials, engineering costs, manufacturing costs, etc. Many consumers buy a more expensive device because they often associate cost with quality, this is not always the case and is a whole other discussion as well.

Just a heads up. Best Buy is offering this deal again and the online coupon is still good...