Quoted from kermit24:
I have said this before. If you have a Spike game, please play it early in its life. The vast majority of failures I have seen with node boards have been early life (think 0-500 plays) failures. If you encounter an early failure relatively close to the build date, Stern / Distributor will take care of you. Three years later not so much. So play your game.
Logic would support this statement (I agree, many defects are component manufacturing defects which will reveal themselves early), but do we really know to which extent this applies to Spike games? Spike has been around maybe 5 years. The poster above with the GB indicated there are cases of older games breaking down. For instance, fatigue fractures on solder joints could increase gradually over time making older games more susceptible to breakdown.