Or the flip side, if you want to go that way. Higher reliability allows you to offer a longer warranty, attracting either higher prices or more customers.
This is part of how Japan made themselves mainstream car sellers in the US. They calculated that the cars had to be more reliable, because in the early days without a lot of infrastructure, recalls would be very expensive. So they made the cars reliable. Allowing them to offer longer warranties.
I just bought a two year old Toyota, after driving a Honda that I bought new for 25 years.
The practice still makes no real long-term sense though. What do you do after `warranty_period` expires and no one wants to buy your products anymore?
For something like a car or a Microwave this is not the case, but this is why the profit margin on a Microwave is closer to 50% than 5%
For example, take a look at the financials [1] for Black & Decker, a manufacturer of tools. For the quarter ending 4/4/2015, they had gross revenue of 2.6 billion. Less cost of goods sold, they have a gross profit of almost 1 billion, or about 61% gross margin. But then observe all of the numerous expenses and taxes they have, which causes their final Net Income (aka net profit) to drop to 162 million, or a net margin of about 9%.
9% can be considered an outstanding rate of return in this industry. If you could come up with a way to build a manufacturing company with such a return, you could have your own IPO.
[1] https://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE%3ASWK&fstype=ii&ei=-Am...
Also, with regard to the gp specific point about the discussion being in regard to a gaming console: they want the product to last as long as possible. Each additional function unit in existence counts toward their installed base and increases the attractiveness for third party developers.