When a console is unsuccessful, typically third party support is poor, as they there's less money to be made from a small install base.

Which unsuccessful console do you think had the best third party catalog, and why?

Dreamcast for me. The amount of Capcom and SNK fighting games I have on this console is astounding lol. Then there’s the likes of Soulcalibur, Dead or Alive, and even having an exclusive Resident Evil. And even having Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament was a huge plus.

Probably 3DO. Only 2 million of those things were ever sold, but you had about over 200 third party games released for it. And those 200+ games included a fair amount of variety and quality by the standards of the mid-90's. You had adventure games like Myst and Policenauts, racers like Need for Speed and Road Rash, platformers like Another World and Gex, fighters like Super Street Fighter II Turbo and Samurai Shodown, the mandatory pile of FMV games, etc.

Not exactly my favorite console, but probably the highest density of good third party games for such an unpopular machine.

Turbografx-16/PCEngine and SEGA Saturn as the top 2 with DC in 3rd.

It has a ton of great exclusives for the time including Ys 1-3. Cosmic Fantasy. At the time the second most popular JRPG series in Far East of Eden. It was second only to Dragon Quest. PC Engine was NES's and SNES's biggest competition in Japan not Mega Drive. PC Engine also had the largest and best library of Shmups of it's time. 100 of them. PC Engine was massive in Japan but flopped outside Japan. Leading that it's successors like SuperGrafx & PCFX (which were failures).


Second to that is SEGA Saturn but again only in Japan. Saturn has over 1000 games. Most of that in Japan. Like PC Engine it had a lot of good exclusives including some great fighting games. VF1-2 Remix. Fighters Mega Mix. Fighting Vipers. Last bronx. Snatcher,Policenauts and other games of a similar nature. Then the best ports of 2D fighting games from Capcom and SNK that were honestly kinda shit on PS1. Missing animations and less stuff in some of the PS1 games. Saturn did not have FF7 but it did have Grandia and the best version of that game to this day. Dragon Force. Sakura Wars. The best TRPG of the era in Shining Force III. Guardian Heroes. Princess Crown (the game that led to the creation of Vanillaware after) Interesting platformers like Astal. A ton of great shmups like the DoDonpachi series. Terra Diver. One of the best ever in the genre with Radiant Silvergun. On on rails shooters like Panzer Dragoon and Zweii. Some of this did come west like PD.

Saturn and PC Engine have massive and great libraries thanks to finding their niche in Japan. Surprised I did not mention Dreamcast? Dreamcast is awesome and has a shockingly good library for how short it was around. Even getting releases up to 2007 (officially) but as for the absolute best in a failed console. It's PC Engine and Saturn (JP). I put DC just behind these 2.

For me its the Gamecube. Objectively its probably the Dreamcast.

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If I am not mistaken the Sega Saturn had more games than N64, GameCube, Master System, Megadrive, Dreamcast and the original Xbox. Quite outstanding for a system that sold less than 10 million. The vast majority of these were third party, and a lot of them are acclaimed. To name a few:
Saturn Bomberman, Resident Evil, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, Grandia, Tomb Raider, Rayman, Suikoden, Enemy Zero, Radiant Silvergun, X-Men vs. Street Fighter, Street Fighter Alpha 1-3, Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter, Vampire Savior, X-Men: Children of the Atom, Duke Nukem 3D, Powerslave, Quake, Mega Man X4, Policenauts....

Another contender is the Xbox Series, I guess, although some will say it didn't exactly "fail". Strong third party support is what it has going for it.

GameCube for me. GameCube had some RPG gems like Tales of Symphonia and Baten Kaitos, plenty of Resident Evil and other Capcom goodies, and the second best fighting game of the generation, SoulCalibur 2 with Link. There were years when I bought more GameCube games than PS2 games. I rebuilt a lot of my Gamecube library on Switch and Switch 2.

Gamecube for me, I had a tons of third-party games like, lord of the rings, true crime, need for speed, sonic adventure, phantasy star online, def jam, nba, fifa, fifa street, madden, etc.

Probably the last two Xbox's. I know "unsuccessful" is relative, but I'd say they more or less fit the bill, but luckily they're easy to develop for when you're already making a PS version.