I believe it has to be with how well you take care of the Retro Duo Portable 2. My friend and I got both of ours, new, at the same time. We liked the features. Mine still works to this day and his broke. I have his as he was hoping a shop I go to could fix it, but they refused to work on repairs saying it wasn't worth their time. He would jam the SNES adapter the wrong way etc. I don't doubt they are finicky, but I would guess a lot of people just don't take care of them or I just got extremely lucky with the one I bought.