The good old days of the 360 - PS3 wars are long gone. A lot were banned, yet also since PS4 started dominating there wasn't really much point in list wars etc anymore. Same with how the Wii and Switch sales took the wind out of the sails of the nay sayers.

There isn't really much competition between the consoles anymore today. They all found their own audience, MS focusing on PC and Gamepass, Sony sticking mostly with consoles and Nintendo catering more to the handheld market.

There's a Quest3 vs PSVR2 rivalry atm, yet both camps are niche and understand both need to grow. Plus there are many common enemies to rally behind nowadays, 'lazy developers', MTX, releasing broken games, always online and so on. The rivalries are mostly about the publishers nowadays rather than about the consoles.

Fallout 3 but I voted too late.

Enter any thread on Era or Gaf that even hints at PS vs Xbox sales and you’ll find that this is anything but true 😅

I love Persona 4 Golden (that would be valid to vote for based on the rules despite it coming out later), but I just prefer Super Smash Bros. Brawl at least a little more.

I'm kind of surprised Brawl won. I'm well-aware this is a Nintendo-heavy site (as far as the Big 3 go, followed by PlayStation and Xbox), but Brawl gets dragged through the mud sometimes in comparison to other Smash games. Melee and Ultimate seem to get universal praise, while there are always some clear complaints against all the other Smash games. 

Because Smash is mostly iterative (while mixing some things up) there is little to go back to Brawl for. But up to that time, it's the best Smash. Melee's moment to moment physics and by extension item-free battles are better, but virtually everything else is improved in Brawl.

The thing with Brawl is that those who criticize it are a vocal minority; it sold more than 13 million copies and was many people's introduction to the series. It's not that surprising that it's remembered fondly years later.

While I personally don't have a preference between Melee and Brawl, I do think many who have played both prefer Melee (if not most). However, Melee released in 2001, a year when there was some really tough competition: FF X, GTA 3 and Halo: CE all released the same year. It was nearly a four way split in the initial vote, with each of these four games getting a lot of votes in the runoff too. That may have been the year with the fiercest competition out of any of these GOTY threads.

Ironically, I think Brawl won and Melee didn't because Melee had tougher competition

I think Super Smash Bros. Brawl might've literally been the worst option on the entire runoff list of choices, at least in my opinion. It won purely on the Nintendo brand and its commercial success in the Wii era. It won because more people here actually played it than the other games. That's the key. Gamers tend to have pretty good tastes, but only within the framework of titles they've actually played before, so sales totals can play a big role in the outcomes of these votes, fairly or otherwise.

I have no problem with you thinking Brawl was the worst option in the runoff. But I strongly object to your assertion that it won only because of the Nintendo brand and its commercial success. That totally invalidates the opinions of people who voted for the game, myself included, because they genuinely love it.

There's some truth to that, yet it's not different for sequels stealing the thunder of originals. Like Civilization 2, Diablo 2, AoE 2, HL2, etc. And NSMBW showed in 2009 that it's definitely not automatic voting for Mario! Kicked out for the run-off even. But yes, sales totals make a big difference.

I think you make a good point, and I would have loved to see Valkyria Chronicles win this one.  However, Brawl does have the best single-player content of any Smash Bros game I've played.  Kind of funny to say that about a competitive game, but after Brawl, I had been disappointed by the single-player (or co-op) content in later Smash Bros games, because it was so good in Brawl.