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Forums - Gaming - Best 4th console

 

Which is the best?

Gamecube 26 38.81%
 
PS4 32 47.76%
 
Xbox Series 3 4.48%
 
Dreamcast 6 8.96%
 
Total:67
Pinkie_pie on 01 October 2025
TheRealSamusAran said:
Pinkie_pie said:

We're talking 100 million difference here and the obvious huge library difference also. PS3/360 sold a little less than Wii and the libraries are very similar. DS sold 40 million more than PS4 and you can argue it's better than PS4 with it's massive library and many quality of innovative games. Have you even looked at the sheer amount of quality 3rd party games on PS4 compared to the GC? Elden Ring, red dead redemption 2, nier automata, witcher 3 to cyberpunk to games like Hogwarts. Like come on, it's not even close

Cool list of games that we could always play on Xbox and PC.

So multi platform titles don't count? Not everyone has all consoles and a PC. If I'm not mistaken, resident evil 4 was multi platform during that generation too but I don't see you mention it. Okay let's just say which console had the most exclusives and PS4 would still come out on top but it's not just about exclusives 



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Pinkie_pie on 01 October 2025
curl-6 said:
Pinkie_pie said:

We're talking 100 million difference here and the obvious huge library difference also. PS3/360 sold a little less than Wii and the libraries are very similar. DS sold 40 million more than PS4 and you can argue it's better than PS4 with it's massive library and many quality of innovative games. Have you even looked at the sheer amount of quality 3rd party games on PS4 compared to the GC? Elden Ring, red dead redemption 2, nier automata, witcher 3 to cyberpunk to games like Hogwarts. Like come on, it's not even close

A difference of 14-16 million consoles isn't a "little less", that's a pretty clear margin of victory. And it still sold more; do you consider the Wii to be better than the PS3/360?

For some people, games like say Timesplitters, Viewtiful Joe, Baten Kaitos, Tales of Symphonia, Prince of Persia, Skies of Arcadia, etc are better than Elden Ring or Witcher 3. 

Oh dear for some people yes, but you wouldn't think it's the majority since the 3rd party games on PS4 were way more popular selling tens of millions more than the games you mentioned on GC. Just admit it, the reason why GC is so close to PS4 in the poll is because it's full of Nintendo fans here. 14-16 million less compare to 100 million less is night and day



Wman1996 on 01 October 2025
curl-6 said:
Pinkie_pie said:

If GC library is half as good as PS4 it wouldn't come last that generation. One sold 110 million and absolutely dominated it's generation and the other sold 20 million and came last so how is it possible GC library is anywhere near as good as PS4's library 

Sales and quality aren't one and the same.

DS sold more than PS4; would you consider DS the better system? It would be a legitimate opinion if you did, but a lot of folks I feel would argue for PS4 in that case despite it selling less, just like a lot of people would argue for PS3/360 over Wii despite the latter winning in sales.

Consoles that sell 100 million plus typically do so by selling very well to a more mainstream/casual audience; this is an enthusiast forum so naturally a poll here will be unlikely to reflect real world popularity.

Take my opinion with salt in hand because I've never played a Dreamcast, played a little of PS2 and Xbox, and played a good amount of GameCube but from what I can see Gen 6 was super competitive in actual quality of the consoles. Relatively speaking, they seemed evenly matched.

PS2 had its insanely big library and backwards compatibility

GCN had its Nintendo titles

Xbox had Halo and Xbox Live plus some multiplats from PS2 that at times GameCube didn't have

Dreamcast had acclaimed titles and online

I suppose one of the few other times in gaming history this happened was 360, PS3, and Wii. But they were far closer in sales. Gen 6 was PS2 domination, and it wasn't even close. But sales do not equal quality as already said. 

Admittedly, Gen 4 had SNES and Genesis/Mega Drive, but that was just two consoles duking it out with other consoles still released that gen. I think very few would call the PC Engine competitive in quality to Sega and Nintendo. 

Another interesting topic of discussion here are the exclusives to GameCube. To this day, GameCube still has about 80 exclusives. And when you add in former exclusives, that would probably bring it closer to 100 or more. And some exclusives like Super Smash Bros. Melee are adored to this day. 

PS4 has about 48 exclusives, excluding really minor indies that would add to that count. But most would consider them shovelware but not even like the kind we saw on Wii and PS2. Granted, PS4 probably has about 20 or more former exclusives too. Maybe even way more. 



Lifetime Sales Predictions 

Switch: 161 million (was 73 million, then 96 million, then 113 million, then 125 million, then 144 million, then 151 million, then 156 million)

PS5: 122 million (was 105 million, then 115 million) Xbox Series X/S: 38 million (was 60 million, then 67 million, then 57 million. then 48 million. then 40 million)

Switch 2: 120 million (was 116 million)

PS4: 120 mil (was 100 then 130 million, then 122 million) Xbox One: 51 mil (was 50 then 55 mil)

3DS: 75.5 mil (was 73, then 77 million)

"Let go your earthly tether, enter the void, empty and become wind." - Guru Laghima

curl-6 on 01 October 2025
Pinkie_pie said:
curl-6 said:

A difference of 14-16 million consoles isn't a "little less", that's a pretty clear margin of victory. And it still sold more; do you consider the Wii to be better than the PS3/360?

For some people, games like say Timesplitters, Viewtiful Joe, Baten Kaitos, Tales of Symphonia, Prince of Persia, Skies of Arcadia, etc are better than Elden Ring or Witcher 3. 

Oh dear for some people yes, but you wouldn't think it's the majority since the 3rd party games on PS4 were way more popular selling tens of millions more than the games you mentioned on GC. Just admit it, the reason why GC is so close to PS4 in the poll is because it's full of Nintendo fans here. 14-16 million less compare to 100 million less is night and day

The polls we've run over the years don't support the notion that the site is dominated by Nintendo fans. There's more of them, but not overwhelmingly so.

Demographically, an enthusiast site like this, especially a forum that skews older (mostly millennial/Gen X) is never going to be reflective of the broader gaming population. 



TheRealSamusAran on 01 October 2025
Pinkie_pie said:
TheRealSamusAran said:

Cool list of games that we could always play on Xbox and PC.

So multi platform titles don't count? Not everyone has all consoles and a PC. If I'm not mistaken, resident evil 4 was multi platform during that generation too but I don't see you mention it. Okay let's just say which console had the most exclusives and PS4 would still come out on top but it's not just about exclusives 

The fact they're not exclusives should be taken into account. I could have played all of those games on Steam if I wanted (and most of them I did). And Xbone had all those games too, but I don't think that one will be winning many "best console" polls...

And I didn't mention RE4, but if I were to mention a RE it would be REmake, which stayed Nintendo exclusive for over a decade, and is actually my favorite RE of all time.



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Leynos on 01 October 2025
TheRealSamusAran said:
Leynos said:

Eh. Nintendo def was in a panic that gen. They put Mario in an NBA game to look cooler. NOA wanted to change the logo to a graffiti logo but Reggie put a stop to it. The NOA ads were weirdly edgy. They signed on RE as exclusives, then hoped they would have the next big exclusive M-rated FPS in Geist. They had a tribal tattoo Mario on an ad for Tribal tatt GBA SP. Nintendo was definitely chasing the edgier PS2/Xbox audience. I believe when that generation began, Miyamoto and co said Mario would be less cute. While Nintendo did not go full Sonic Adventure edgy Sonic redesign route. They did make him less pudgy and lankier in design. You mention Melee, and they did give him a slightly more realistic design in that game. Esp the overalls.

Nintendo was kinda stuck. Wind Waker is amazing, but Twilight Princess was Nintendo answering the call after lackluster WW sales to make an edgier Zelda. I believe some have discovered that TP is the Zelda game Nintendo didn't want to make but felt obligated. I think Aounuma took over for Zelda with WW and always wanted a lighter art stylele. TP being a one-off off then SS and BOTW kinda prove the theory.  Nintendo esp in that era, being edgier is the Hello, fellow kids meme.

Yeah and with the Wii U they went as far as to get Bayonetta exclusivety and that Devil's Third game which was a fun game, but I don't get what your point is. Oh, you're trying to say Nintendo was trying to turn GCN into a PS2 clone, just because they tried to be more edgy. That's a fallacy if I ever saw one, might as well call PlayStation and Xbox Sega clones. 

And you're thinking of Brawl, that's where Mario got the weirdly realistic overalls.

No, they were not trying to be a PS2 clone. I don't even know what that means when it comes to Nintendo, but they did poorly try and chase the audience that were buying PS2 and Xbox over Gamecube, and they to an extent, thought the answer was to be the idiot youth pastor who raps badly about Jesus.



Bite my shiny metal cockpit!

Gordy3521 on 02 October 2025

This should be the Sega Saturn not the Dreamcast. Sega's first home console was the SG-1000 which released in Japan the same day as the Famicom.

Pedantry aside my vote goes to the Gamecube, one of my all time fave consoles with an excellent library of games.



Jumpin on 02 October 2025
TheRealSamusAran said:
Jumpin said:

To be fair, Gamecube is the least Nintendo-like console ever made, and it wasn't a happy era for Nintendo's development staff who felt Nintendo was losing its creative edge and failing to stand out (Read about that here: https://nintendoeverything.com/gamecube-era-made-miyamoto-very-sad/). It was a PS2 clone-box with its library being made up of primarily PS2 game ports with no extra features or perks (sometimes fewer features, like with SSX Tricky). So, people voting for that are really voting for PS2-clone with a reduced library and a Nintendo sticker.

Ah yes, hold on, let me fire Smash Melee for a few matches on my PS2 before switching to Zelda Twilight Princess.

Surely you're intelligent enough to be able to infer that I didn't mean first party Nintendo games when I'm describing the Gamecube "library being made up of primarily PS2 game ports with no extra features or perks."



I describe myself as a little dose of toxic masculinity.

TheRealSamusAran on 02 October 2025
Jumpin said:
TheRealSamusAran said:

Ah yes, hold on, let me fire Smash Melee for a few matches on my PS2 before switching to Zelda Twilight Princess.

Surely you're intelligent enough to be able to infer that I didn't mean first party Nintendo games when I'm describing the Gamecube "library being made up of primarily PS2 game ports with no extra features or perks."

But that doesn't make sense, going by this logic the Xbox library was a clone of the PS2 too, PS3 was a clone of X360, Xbone a clone of PS4, etc. Having a library full of unique 3rd party games was a thing of the 90's, the closest we got since was the Wii library, but even that shared many ports with the PS2.



curl-6 on 03 October 2025
Gordy3521 said:

This should be the Sega Saturn not the Dreamcast. Sega's first home console was the SG-1000 which released in Japan the same day as the Famicom.

Pedantry aside my vote goes to the Gamecube, one of my all time fave consoles with an excellent library of games.

As covered in the OP, this is counting major globally released platforms, so not stuff like Colour TV Game or SG-1000 which were only released in Japan.