Best and Worst Platform Revisions

[Salnax]

Great Revisions

• GBA SP - Nearly perfect, fixing and tweaking many things without sacrficing quality or increasing cost significantly. You got lighting, a better form factor, rechargable batteries, better battery life, etc. It could do everything you could reasonably want for $99 in 2003... except tell you the time.

Good Revisions

• DS Lite - Anything that manages to be smaller/lighter and cheaper without compromising features is a win in my book. This was the DS model people bought by the tens of millions for a reason. The only problem is that the GBA cartridge slot is a bit too small to keep GBA games from sticking out,
• Game Boy Pocket - Lighter, better battery life, tehnically larger screen... all that was missing was some form of lighting.
• New Style NES - Was a reasonable $50 for a much sleeker piece of hardware. This wouldn't have helped much if the NES was dead by 1993, but even in 1993, you got games like Kirby's Adventure, Bomberman 2, Ducktales 2, and Mighty Final Fight.

Middling Revisions

• Nintendo 2DS - On the bright side, it was a significantly cheaper model that only sacrificed a largely underused feature, while being nice and durable. On the other hand, it's ugly and has worse sound quality.
• Nintendo DSi - Though it had better specs and features like the new DSiWare store, missing the GBA slot was a major blow. Not only did hat entire library of 1500 or so GBA games get locked off, you also were unable to play games requiring certain peripherals, most notably stuff like Guitar Hero and the games that used the Rumble Pack. And the cameras weren't worth the trouble.
• PlayStation 2 Slim - Significantly smaller and quieter than the original, but they cut the expansion bay. That isn't a major dealbreaker unless you wanted to play Final Fantasy XI, but some other games benefitted from it and removing features is always a downer.
• Wii 2011 Redesign - The so-called "Family" model, this sacrificed GameCube controller compatibility for a $50 price drop. I'm tempted to rate it lower, but a $50 price drop is considerable, especially since these thingsusually came with multiple games.

Bad Revisions

• Genesis 3 - Incompatible with hose infamous add-ons the Genesis is known for and even some games that don't require peripherals, such as the Virtua Racing port. Even in 1998, this was arguably not worth the $50 budget price tag; the PlayStation and N64 were already down to $129.99, and although I can't find info on the SNES in 1998, the redesigned "New" SNES cost $99 in 1997 and came with the fairly recent Yoshi's Island
• PSP Go - More expensive, no compatibility with UMD's, a smaller screen, and honestly not that much storage space considering the all-digital design.
• Wii Mini - It's small and cheap, but comes at the cost of many of the Wii's basic features (480p video, SD Card compatibility, ONLINE PLAY, etc). All of this made it sell for $99 instead of $129.

There are loads more, but I don't want to share completely uninformed opinions.