IMO, not as good as people make it seem. We had great games, but lots of development went to pretty images and big worlds, instead of better AI, or interesting game mechanics. As people have pointed out, they are making consoles into mini PC's, which is horrible. We had the birth of indies which is awesome, but more dependence to PC like features (updates, installments, updates of updates, OS updates, DLC, etc). Some of them are good, but we can't depend on them. Last but not least, a HUGE increase in game quality (which is amazing) BUT, tons and tons and tons and TONS of sequels. Overall it was a good gen for the big 3, but I'm starting to dislike every third party, and the indies are just good news. Can't say anything about Valve though, I don't have a gaming PC =(

Don't count it over now that Kingdom Hearts 2.5 HD has been announced!

The quantity was lower but the quality was much higher. All things considered, it was a very good gen. The number of high level games we got is astounding. We got a lot of diversity, with western developers really coming into their own. The wRPG took tremendous strides forward and the sci-fi FPS genre was excellent. Narrative in games really advanced, which is something that I like.

Japan really struggled early, especially by neglecting the jRPG, but they came around in the second half. A down year in that regard, though it did rebound, and there are promising signs for next gen.

Open world games became good. No, seriously, I think they mostly sucked before.

It's a shame about the middle tier but I think it was mostly because they failed to adapt.

6th Generation was almost my last generation of console gaming, I hated it. 7th generation saw a huge resurrection in gaming interest for me, so it's no contest. If I hadn't swapped consoles from 6th to 7th gen I probably would have given up on gaming all together. Very happy that I did.

Agreed. Sixth was certainly better than the seventh, and the fifth was better than the sixth.

That's not to say that this past generation was a waste of time. It gave us games like BioShock, Super Mario Galaxy, Elite Beat Agents, Gears of War, and many, many more. But in general the games were less impressive than those from the previous two generations.

Plus, many of the secondary features of seventh gen games -- features like achievements, online passes, DLC, and microtransactions -- detracted from the overall experience, at least in my opinion.

Eh... I'm not really a fan of Western style games, so for me, this was a pretty mediocre generation. Too many games relying on the same gameplay engine. Lots of great innovation in story telling and visuals, but few games really combining that story telling with new ideas in gameplay. Bioshock Infinite is to me, the epitome of this. A great story that was attached to a game that was constantly buckling to conventions of its genre (regenerating health and huge set pieces and linearity which were not really a part of the Bioshock DNA previously). Giant companies spending obscene amounts of money that were making it impossible for smaller games to get noticed...

So yeah... not a huge fan.

For me it was much better than the 6th gen, I didn't purchase a home console during the 6th gen (although I did have a GBA) because it seemed like a continuation (in a direction I didn't want to go) of the 5th gen, however in the 7th Gen I purchased both a Wii and DS and eventually picked up a PS3 after the 8th gen started (but it was just this year so its kinda on the border).

4th Gen (SNES/GEN) will proabably always be my favorite, followed by the 5th (PS1/N64 specifically) but 7th is next for me and 8th is already more fun (for me) than the 6th was. I was late for the 3rd Gen and before.

This gen and last gen were like night and day. Consoles were better, games were better, everything was better.

Well, except Nintendo's relationship with 3rd parties... I didn't think that could get any worse, but somehow it did.