Good thread Curl.

My answer: Sega Saturn

The reason: I rented both a SS and a PS1 from my video store for a week each.

Conclusion: I thought Ridge Racer was better than Daytona. But, since I don't care much about racing games, I didn't buy either system.

Next, I saw the reviews from EGM magazine for Tomb Raider - and they scored the PS1 version better than Saturn.

So, after that, I bought a PS1,

It's either Sega Saturn or Xbox One

1) Sega Saturn: Failed to do anything to compete, its lack of Sega 1st party titles hurt alot and lost majority of its customers to Sony and Nintendo. Putting immense pressure on the Dreamcast in a do or die scenario, and the final outcome wasnt good.

2) Playstation 3: On a financial front, it was considered the 2nd worst in history, losing Sony $5billion on Hardware. It also lost Sony half its user base, and to top it off, was an extremly hard console to develop for.

3) Xbox One: Didn't lose money like the other two but did loss 1/3 of its user base. Xbox One hurt all based on poor marketing. Xbox has not recovered from it either.

4) Nintendo 64: Solid system, and is considered a success, it just didn't grab the market like its rival, losing majority of 3rd party support however still went on to provide Nintendo and its fans, some of the best games ever made. 

One of these no longer makes consoles. However XBox might still become 3rd party as well.

For now it's Sega Saturn, until the dust settles over the fate of XBox hardware. Series X is the new Dreamcast, but so far it doesn't seem it will have the same fate. Still alive and kicking. Too much money invested to pull the plug now, plus far bigger share than Dreamcast ever had.

Dreamcast 9.1 million, GC 21.7 million, PS2 158 million.
Actually PS5 to XBox is currently about 2:1 like GC to Dreamcast was, with Switch running away at 143 million.

30 million Series consoles sold, not gonna pull the plug on that.

Saturn and isn't even close. Sega went to respected to nobody caring from one gen to the next.

similar to the above, Sega Saturn as it was the end of Sega really!

Phil Spencer said they lost "the worst generation to loose" in the Xbox One / PS4 generation, as people were building their digital libraries there. So he will vote for Xbox One.

Segata Sanshiro says it must be Xbox One

Xbox One was a Return to Status quo, and PS3 didn't do any lasting damage, just a temporary misstep.

By the time Saturn came out, Sega's reputation had already declined drastically. But Sega really only had a few years of being in the discussion as a market leader. The Saturn was a good console, but it went up against a superior console with a better price point. But it's worth noting that the Sega Saturn was Sega's fourth console. Their first was the SG-1000, second was the Master System, and third was the Mega Drive. I have all five of Sega's consoles.

The N64, on the other hand, ended a period where Nintendo was synonymous with video games that had lasted 12-13 years. Nintendo went from dominance to falling into a distant second before falling into third place the next generation where GC sold less than 1/6th of the PS2. The N64 also used cartridges, which were not only obsolete, but inferior and more expensive than CDs. Nintendo consoles went from being the home of RPGs to being more or less devoid of the genre.

A lot of this was because of the poor choices with the hardware, but the main problem was Nintendo's poor leadership prior to Iwata taking over - specifically the CEO (H. Yamauchi). Iwata's predecessor not only destroyed relationships between Nintendo and RPG developers, but decided it would be a good idea to publicly insult RPG fans. Instead of acknowledging his own incompetence when actually going up against some real competition, he made things much worse. His antics more or less lost all of Nintendo's major third party developers as exclusive developers or developers who primarily supported Nintendo consoles - this included (but wasn't limited to) Squaresoft, Enix, DMA (Rockstar North), Capcom, Konami, Koei, and Rare would make its exit shortly after. Some of these companies, such as Squaresoft, would release no games on N64. The damage to third party relations was profound, and lasts to this very day. Final Fantasy is still primarily a Playstation product.

Lastly, as a Nintendo fan, and an RPG fan, apart from the ridiculous statements from Nintendo's CEO, they also completely ripped off a contingent of Nintendo fans who supported them (during this generation and the next) with something like religious fervour as they would even buy Nintendo consoles and games out of duty, even when they sucked, even when the games were extremely overpriced. The Yamauchi era Nintendo took advantage of this.

That's why I say N64.
1. Nintendo should have easily won that generation.
2. Saturn wasn't really a bad console, just a commercially unsuccessful one, and also Sega's fourth console rather than their third. PS3 was a small stumble, and Xbox One was a return to Status Quo.
3. Permanent damage done between Nintendo and third parties.
4. Ended Nintendo's 12-13 year period of dominance.
5. It took around 10 years for Nintendo to recover.
6. Nintendo ripped off fans with the N64's software.

While the Wii and DS did the majority of the recovery, I'd say it took all the way until the Switch for Nintendo to regain the good will of the gaming audience and developers as a whole.

Sega is no longer in the hardware business.

That's all you really need to know.