I haven't personally had any problems with reliability. If anything, the PS2 had more hardware issues. Reading all of the gaming blogs, nothing ever seems to come up about PS3 failure rates, whereas the PS2 had its share. It was the console with the most problems until the Xbox 360, which took the crown and then some.

Maybe they're having issues with the backwards-compatibility? I haven't even tried any PS2 games on my system, as I never owned a PS2. Still, I thought the compatibility was in the high 90s, percentage-wise, as it actually had PS2 hardware built-in until the new 40 gig models came out.

Anyway, my PS3 has been rock-solid so far, so who knows.