From purely a hardware POV, I'd say the GameCube.
It was noticeably more powerful (look at RE4 and Rogue Squadron III vs. any PS2 game) than the PS2 while being $100 cheaper.
Of course making it purple and all the other mistakes Nintendo made with software choices, branding, etc. were problematic, but I'm talking about strictly just the hardware .... GameCube takes the cake and it didn't have any of the failure rate problems the XBox 360 had.
- Powerful (a lot of the games like Wind Waker, F-Zero GX, Star Wars Rogue Squadron, Star Fox Adventures, RE4 still look decent today)
- Cheap
- Reliable (not much talk about failure rates, my GCN from 2002 still as good as the day I bought it)
- Easy to Program For
Not bad. A real shame Nintendo f*cked up the marketing, look, and software decisions for the machine so much.
