Lifespan Of Games Systems?

[Lord_Turkey]

I'm not talking about the time it takes until that system is forgotten and abandoned by their maker although that'd be quite an interesting topic in itself.

I was just pondering about eagle5953's slimmed down original Xbox design - which removes the DVD drive in favour of playing games from the internal harddrive and how long the set up would last with 'fair use' everyday.

I know lasers on newer systems tend to be the major reason for a console death but how are older systems doing? with their lack of complicated parts.

No laser or hard drive can last indefinatly right? So just pondering how long these consoles will last without replacement parts.

I've seen on wikipedia about a 1990 gameboy that has managed to survive a napalm attack but thats kind of taking it to an extreme extent.

[nevermind1534]

Not indefinitely. Capacitors eventually degrade and/or leak, but those can be replaced.

[Taiben]

Well Atari 2600 and the like are what 30 years now? And some of the first gen stuff is 35. The chips themselves seem to be pretty tough and caps and fuses and stuff can always get replaced.

[jjhammerstein]

Resistors will eventually go, the plastic will erode, and the copper will aquire a patina. After about 1000 years, you'd have a metal skeleton that could play games. Cool!