Atari, Nintendo, Sega, Sony and Microsoft have all released mainstream video game consoles. From the Atari 2600 all the way up to the Xbox One, different consoles have been released, with many different hardware configurations.

Some of the engineering gave rise to great consoles like the Super NES with its unique ability to have hardware upgrades built into the game cartridge itself, and others like the Playstation 3 which was so hard to develop for, developers needed at least one year to learn how to program effectively for the console.

But out of all the engineering choices made, the design choices behind the Xbox 360 stand out to me as probably the best ever.

The tri core CPU, GPU(with unified shaders), 512MB unified RAM, 10MB eDRAM, excellent controller, easy game development and superb online infrastructure made it an almost perfect gaming console.  These design choices were so good, they influenced the development of ALL of the 8th gen consoles. So good was the design, I am led to believe that there was no need for Microsoft to have rushed the manufacturing, which led to the Xbox 360 being released only four years after the original Xbox. This rush to market caused them to incur the now legendary failure rate of the first wave of Xbox 360s.

Yes, Sony messed up the ps3’s launch. But a big reason for their gigantic loss of market share was due to the fact that they had a rival console which was simply one of the best engineered consoles ever. Console sales, software library, game performance and developer praise all support this line of thinking.

Feel free to leave your thoughts below.

XBOX 360 is absolutely my non-Nintendo favourite console.  So is out of TOP 100 :P

Well, other than the problems like RROD with the original models, I don't think there was anything wrong with the 360 at all.. 

Do you mean the WORST engineered console ever? I shudder at the thought of that absolutely insane hardware failure rate. That thing suffered from dozens of design flaws. The CPUs literally melted. The steel housing retained heat. The fans were chaotic. The disc drives were highly volatile due to cheap construction. I could go on and on with how dramatically cheap the thing is. That doesn't include other quality cuts. Examples: The controllers didn't connect via Bluetooth. Wi-fi wasn't included for ages (requiring a $100 add-on). The system stuck to old DVDs, despite predictable massive increases in game file sizes. The HDD is proprietary and expensive. The power supply is an ENORMOUS external brick.

The PS4 takes the simplicity of the  core 360 architecture, massively improves it, makes it even simpler while providing better dev tools, provides more flexibility for OS growth, and does so with an almost perfect record on build quality. Meanwhile, it is also better engineered into a small and sleek box, keeps the power supply internal, and allows for superior air flow. All while packing in essential features like Blu-ray; non-proprietary, swappable HDD support; Wi-fi; and Bluetooth. The PS3 had all of those things as well, though it has a confusing internal architecture (albeit with an ingenious CPU design) with far too few dev tools at launch.

Im beginning to see a pattern to ops threads.

I can see where you're coming from, but no, not even close. I'd say the Playstation was.

(Glitch, please delete)

You're all wrong! It's the Gamecube. Seriously. Buy a 4.5mm game bit, open one up, and marvel at its design. The size, the power, the load times, the failure rate. Gamecube!

Considering all of its hardware failures, I wouldn't say so.

My pick would be either the GCN, the SNES, or the PS4.

Nothing beats PS4 in this aspect. I would also make an honorable mention to the GameCube; small, sexy and as powerful as its main competitors for $100 less.

OP: The best Xbox family design is definetely the original Xbox. It could be ugly as hell, but it was powerful, had online play by default (No need to buy an ethernet modem separately) and more importantly, it had a harddrive.