Between the Wii/PS3/360/DS/PSP generation, and the Wii U/PS4/Xbone/3DS/Vita generation, which do you think was better, and what makes it the better one in your opinion?

For the purposes of this specific thread, the Switch is not included in the 8th gen. Please do not derail the thread by arguing which gen Switch falls into. If you see it as 8th gen, then please just think of this thread as "Wii/PS3/360/DS/PSP vs "Wii U/PS4/XBO/3DS/Vita".

8th gen, there has never been such a golden age of gaming. Even the 9th gen is slacking with keeping up. We had (and still have) multiple 10/10 masterpieces for every genre you can think of, an endless supply of indie games like never before, VR gaming's boom which was more novel than the 7th gen HD hype oh and we got 4k also so we weren't left behind there and not to mention HDR which is a revelation for game lighting. But, oh lord, the games. I've never seen so many solid games come out one after another for so long. Starting from when The witcher 3 came out until around the time Ghost of Tsushima dropped it just never let up. Greatest time in history to be a PS/Nintendo gamer hands down.

The bad. Lots of remasters and remakes that missed the mark but many that landed very well, all the same. Microtransactions on the rise. Loot box and Gacha gaming tactics seeping into AAA games. Companies chasing games as a service.

I don't think we'll have a generation like that again but I suppose the current gen is a continuation of the good times, just fingers crossed it'll have that 2015 moment that catapults everything to the same degree.

The eighth generation is the best.

My reasoning is simple: it is the last of all, therefore it is the best.

Now someone will come who will say that the eighth is not the last. Because the play6 will have 64 gigabytes of vram and also the play6 games will be optimized to use 64 gigabytes of vram. But it won't tell us anything about the commercial viability of doing that.

Or someone will also come who will say that the eighth is not the last. Because play5 is ninth. But he won't tell us that almost all Play5 games can be ported to Play4.

The eighth generation is the best.

7th gen for me.

The Wii was an amazing experience, and it has some of the best games Nintendo ever made. Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Super Mario Galaxy 2, New Super Mario Bros. Wii, Mario Kart Wii. Even Wii Sports was an revolution for its time.

There's also Alan Wake for Xbox 360 and PC, one of my all-time favorite games, I also enjoyed Resident Evil 6 a lot, and Gears of War, Street Fighter IV, Blur, Metal Gear Rising... Just a lot of good memories from that time.

For me it is clear that the golden age of games was play1/nintendo64/saturn. And the facts I refer:

Goldeneye (1997):
10 employees
2.5 million
2.5 years
Result: 8 million copies sold

The last of us II (2020):
+200 employees
+200 million
6 years
Updates and patches that increase the cost
Result: 10 million copies sold.

Making games has a cost. And if it doesn't generate enough profits then the companies lose but we also lose: microtransactions, they launch the incomplete game so they can then sell us a DLC, they refuse to create new IPs, etc.

The only one that does it well is Nintendo.

I mean it's a golden age for us gamers, not the publishers/Devs even though there was a gold rush for indies 8th gen. And yeah, there was a lot of that but it's mainly clear waters with a few stagnant blotches here and there. The good outweighs the bad ten fold.

8th gen was a welcome return to form for PlayStation and for Japan.

7th gen was my least favorite generation since the NES. I actually stopped ganing for a couple years. Games like Ni no Kuni brought me back. The few games I would want to revisit are all remastered on modern hardware.

7th gen for me. The last gen before live service chasing took over, dev times were shorter to where you could have entire trilogies over the course of a single console generation, a massive focus on communication and community building (made many friends throughout the 7th gen that I still have today) and there was still a large sense of new horizons with risk taking and new creative ideas.

8th gen led way too much into photorealism that has led to today of massive budgets, drastically increased development times that has led to an increase in complacency of leaning on the status quo or safe bets, and less creativity/risk taking. There were many great games throughout the 8th gen, but to me was seriously trumped by the 7th gen. 

For me 7th win with a landslide
Wii > WiiU
Xbox360 > XboxOne
DS >> 3DS
PS3 < PS4
PSP >>> PSVita

The only console from each maker that I prefer the 8th gen version of is Playstation 4, but I still like way more games released on PS3 compared to the ps4.
WiiU was the worst and I used my 3DS to play DS games more than 3DS games, and my favorite 3DS games was remakes.

Of each console generation I lived through the 8th is dead last. I think that things that happened in my personal life at the start of the 8th generation had an impact on my feelings towards it.

The 7th gen was the more revolutionary generation in every single way (with the exception of VR & Nintendo making a hybrid console). Online multiplayer really took off on consoles, OS' were fully developed on consoles too, HD was a big step alongside a bigger graphical jump, Motion controls introduced, indie games. Wireless re-chargeable controlers were the default controller. The DS was a new & unique concept. Exclusives for ALL platforms making them so individual that gamers tend to buy multiple different consoles in the same generation (making that generation the highest overall console-sales in history).
Also AAA games were cheaper to develop, it wasn't as much as a business-risk to produce a great game back then. Bethersda made Fallout 3, New Vagas, Oblivion & Skyrim in the same console generation, this couldn't be possible in the 8th generation (an definitely not in the 9th gen lol). Naughty Dog made 3 Uncharted games & the last of US. Rockstar made GTA 4, 5 & Red Dead Redemption. There was 3 Dead Space games, 3 Bioshock games, 3 Resistance games, 3 Mass Effect games.
The 8th generation became stagnant. The rising costs of making a AAA game created a risky business which caused closures of developers, online-only games & forcing companies to cave into Microtransactions. This made the games of E3 not seem as exiting anymore. Console gamers would turn to PC creating a new more 'casual' player base for PC forcing would-be console exclusives to launch on PC, making consoles less necessary (this process is now even more maximised even more in the 9th generation).

Also another fundamental pillar fell, the Wii U flopped (although I loved it's exclusives) and mobile games ate into 3DS' sales, Satoru Iwata (& therefore his potential ideas) died. Nintendo was in a dark place (until they launched the Switch). Nintendo is usually the backbone of console hardware progression (outside of graphics), they created the modern game controller, made portable gaming popular, caused a motion-control update which now other consoles have adapted into their controllers, etc, etc. Sony tends to integrate Nintendo's inventions if they sell well, yet the Wii U flopped so Sony ran out of progressive ideas. The Xbox One also didn't innovate like the 360 did, so Sony couldn't copy any ideas from them either making the PS4 feel like an extension of the PS3. But Sony did copy in Mark Zuckerberg's footsteps and made a VR headset (which is the exception like I mentioned above).
I'm not trying to say the PS4 was unsuccessful or didn't have great exclusives. They just had less amount of good games than the PS3. I remember there was a time when every month a massive game would be released, sometimes multiple to the point where I felt spoilt for choice like no other generation that came before.
As for the Xbox One, it might as well have not existed cos the industry would have been the same without them anyway. That console was the Sega Saturn of the Xbox brand. The start of the downfall of an empire.

The VR Exception - To this day I still feel that Resident Evil 7 VR was the most important game of the 8th generation. It just worked the way VR games should. It felt like going in a time machine to see how VR games will play in the distant future. It was a massive progression. I've been playing games since the 4th generation (including 2nd gen PCs & 3rd gen consoles). Resident Evil 7 VR was a breath of fresh air. It made gaming feel new again. It felt more immersive than any other game & unpredictable around every corner. I don't say this lightly in an era where games feel like the same genre I played before but with a (slightly) different skin.
There was roughly 10-20 really good PSVR games but there wasn't many great VR games in the 8th gen (or 9th gen) and now VR feels like it's been on life support for a few years now. Then a shock that's still not settled yet as Sony announcing they are unplugging the life support machine. So (generally) I'm going to have to vote for the 7th generation on this one.
P.S. I love VR though, don't get me wrong. It saved me at the end of the 8th generation (as well as the Switch).