QOTW: Which is the best games console of all time?

[Anomander]

PS1 + FF7 = fun childhood

^that

Although SEGA was pretty strong as well and imo it helped gaming popularize. But PS1 brought probably the biggest jump so it's a tough one. My vote goes for SEGA due to having enough good games to play there (Shining Force, Phantasy Star, Shining in the Darknes, Robocop, Lion King the list goes on and on).

[virtuo]

From a personal perspective, the PS1 was it. Most of my waking childhood was spent on that thing (and a fair amount of my current adulthood..)

Looking at the numbers and influence, it has to be the PS2. I believe it's the best selling console of all time, and they were still publishing games for it up until just a few years ago

[daddacool]

Best of all time to me means the best contextually when it was a current console, not a retro console and to that end it's probably the PS1 because the jump from 2D (MD/SNES) to 3D (PS1 & Saturn) was a much more significant leap than anything we've had before or after. It was also the beginning of the end for the arcades too as home conversions could begin to match what you could play in the arcade. The Naomi arcade board based on the Dreamcast was the natural evolution of this.

I think personally I prefer the Saturn but it's hard to deny the effect the PS1 had on gaming generally- it made it cool

I was a home computer gamer (Spectrum, C64, Atari ST) up until the Megadrive, and then a console gamer from the Megadrive and SNES generation right up until now. Although I've had gaming PCs from the days of the PII onwards, there is something that psychologically works for me in just turning the game on and playing it without having to fanny around with graphic settings and resolutions.