Both are great and both can be very bad when stereotyped. I love me some Steam Punk though!

Sci-Fi tops everything in my book. My favourite movies of all time include Titan A.E., The Fifth Element, The Time Machine and The Iron Giant.

Oddly enough, I share more love for fantasy games than sci-fi ones, but I think that's rather due to the lack of the later. My best game of all time is a sci-fi one, though: Knights of the Old Republic.

In gaming it comes down to preferring a sword over a gun.

In other mediums toss up based on writing and characters.

Tell that to the Halo crowd!

Surprised didnt go more obvious Star Wars and the iconic light saber.  To me when they do laser swords it feels like fantasy in my sci fi, which can be fine as enjoy Science Fantasy like old Star Wars films.

It's more important that it be well written than of a particular genre--and there's more than a bit of crossover between Science Fiction and Fantasy.

But if I had to pick, I would say SF. Ghost Trick, TLOU, MGS, heck, even the Witcher and most of the good Final Fantasy games can be construed as SF. Pure fantasy is actually kinda rare. There are a few RPGs, but that's more or less it.

Hard to say, as sci-fi is really just another form of fantasy that happens to take place in a futuristic setting. If I had to choose one I MIGHT say fantasy.

The only problem with fantasy though is that I feel it's stagnated terribly in the last few years--with games in particular. It seems like everything now is just that pulpy sort of Tolkien-established D&D-inspired takes-itself-way-too-seriously-despite-how-silly-it-is stuff. Even the most critically-acclaimed fantasy games just look so silly to me. Sci-fi on the other hand has impressed me more recently, in movies as well. It seems like Lord of the Rings did high fantasy on the big screen first and best and no one's even tried to top it since, and it hasn't made any sort of real progression in other media since D&D pinned its style down.

Overall I would still choose fantasy though, mostly just because the daydream of hitting stuff with a sword is still like a hundred times better and more frequent than the one of zapping dudes with ray guns and flying in ships. Just nothing cooler than swords.

My top 10 games is mostly fantasy (Everquest, ICO, Grim Fandango, SotC), top 10 movies leans more towards sci-fi (Blade runner, 2001, 12 Monkeys, Children of men), books I prefer sci-fi (Otherland, Rama series, Time Oddyssey, Flood/Ark)

I love epic sci-fi stories, which don't translate well to movies and certainly not to games. Maybe one day we'll get an 11 hour epic sci-fi movie, like the extended edition of LotR.

Fantasy all the way. For me there are 2 kinds of Sci-Fi. The one that's a dystopian future on earth and the one that's about space travel. I've come to loath the latter one because my suspension of disbelief only goes so far.

I will rather accept elven magic than someone that tries to give me a bullshit "scientific" explanation about how they can fly faster than multiple times the speed of light without being crushed in their own space ship.

I like it when they're blended together, like in Star Wars. (Before the prequels ruined that)