Fanboys will HATE my Console Tier List

[AdamFromLTT]

Console Wars never change.. and we want to enlist on the side of Gamers. Tier Lists are a great way to rate gaming machines and there are PLENTY of rankings to go around. What PlayStation is the greatest of all time? What Xbox sits atop of the rest? Why is Nintendo always changing their naming?
 

 

[WhoIsWORM]

I think S tier is a tad high for the Switch. Joycon drift and paid online features paired with sub-par netcode in first party titles bumps it down a letter grade for me.

[LMGcommunity]

Here's a link to a Tiermaker where you can make your own version of the console tier list.

[manikyath]

i have to say it's really an "easy content, but actually did some serious effort" type of feel on this one. aside from the tier list i like the quick "history lesson" that this turns out to be.

 

on that note.. the PS3's rather disappointing game library made me go from PS1 to PS2, to nintendo wii.

 

the wii is also the last console i've bought, despite returning to the game store SEVERAL more years i always ended coming home with a pc game to play on holiday, rather than a new console.

 

on that note, i am slightly disappointed that the switch made it to S tier, but the wii didnt. i still own the wii i bought in 2007, and the balance board i bought in 2008. of ALL the gadgets we have piled up in the attic, the only thing that regularly descends from the heavens for family events is the crusty old wii.. because nothing before it, and nothing after it will capture that "quirky party game" vibe like the wii did. yes the games are incredibly simple, but the simplicity is what makes it so "timelessly fun". i can load up wii fit's ski jump minigame, and no matter the audience, everyone will have a blast.

the only huge downside.. is that the "great" wii games are very rare.. with my "top 10" including "achtung wii kurve" - a hacky homebrew port of "achtung die kurve / curve fever", a silly snake-alike flash game, that apparently sorely needed tilt controls to be even more unplayable.

[AbsoluteWoo]

9 minutes ago, manikyath said:

on that note.. the PS3's rather disappointing game library made me go from PS1 to PS2, to nintendo wii.

Disappointing game library? The PS3 has some of the greatest games of all time. The Uncharted series. TLOU. Metal Gear Solid 4. GTA5. God of War. Dark/Demon Souls. (I could go on forever).

 

I am confused by Linus ranking the 360 as S-Tier but the PS3 as A-Tier. Sure at the beginning of those consoles' life spans that could be true, but after the 360's early success it died off pretty quickly. After Halo 3, Forza 3 and Gears 2 came out the 360 had run out of steam. They started focusing on Kinect and the PS3 ended up overtaking it in both quality of game library and in sales.

[SinistralFern23]

I would not call the Switch S tier, it did have good games and easy multiplayer though. The console itself had seriously outdated hardware on release with hardware issues. Calling the PS4 S tier would be a stretch as well since it did not have the multiplayer platform that Xbox did.

[manikyath]

1 minute ago, AbsoluteWoo said:

Disappointing game library? The PS3 has some of the greatest games of all time. The Uncharted series. TLOU. Metal Gear Solid 4. GTA5. God of War. Dark/Demon Souls.  (I could go on forever).

none of which i particularly care about. PS3 was the point where a lot of the more quirky games really just vanished.. crash bandicoot (which was *the* game i bought for PS1 and PS2) gone, all ratchet &clank got was a remake of the PS2 games. yes, it had a lot of "big serious titles", but that's also the only games that it got. i did know a few people who were into PS3, and what was quite obvious at the time was the severe lack of split-screen multiplayer games.. which is quite key when you have to share with a sibling.

 

i was actually *in the store* for a PS3 when i had to notice that none of the games on she shelf even came close to appealing to me..

also, from the viewpoint at the time where i was deciding between PS3 and wii:

- uncharted "series": only one was released, and at the time 13 year old me wasnt exactly looking for an action RPG.

- the last of us: despite "not being my jam" once again - this released when my wii was already 7 years old.

- metal gear solid.. somehow the third action RPG on this list of 3 games so far.

- to explain to you how 'late' GTA V was to my consideration of what console to buy.. there have been 4 computer purchases between the before mentioned wii, and me buying GTA V on the pc. the only reason this is on your list is because this was available for just about anything they could shoehorn a port onto.. they'd haev stuck it on the 3DS if they could.

- god of war.. we're on 4/5 for action RPG's here, only exception being an action adventure for GTA V...

- dark souls.. 5/6 on the action RPG...

 

yes.. truly vast and huge selection of games to pick from, if you're into action RPG's at all.

 

meanwhile, my selection of wii games:

- wii sports, that was included with the thing. i'd say i wish i had an hour tracker to see how much of this we played, but the highscores say it all.. some of the profiles on my wii have rankings so high it breaks UI elements.

- mario kart wii.. because PS3 didnt have crash team racing. yes.. this game being on the right shelf at the right time was the deciding factor.

- wii play was a quick addition for living room fun.

- super mario bros wii because it is obligatory to own a mario bros game for every nintendo platform owned.

- tiger woods PGA tour 08.. because my dad is into golf, he bought it for himself.. but it was actually plenty fun for the whole family.

- i dont exactly recall the occasion for wii fit being added to the library, but it quickly became the most played game, despite being a glorified fitness tracker with some balance minigames.

- a few more things like a sims spinoff, a duck hunting game, and a few more bits and pieces.. but the above are the key ones.

 

also.. nothing your PS3 cell processor can do beats spending the entire afternoon laughing at PS1 hagrid.

[Motifator]

Didn't watch the video till the end, but I think this is a "console therefore should be used for gaming" thing which is not the best logic in my book. Recent consoles beginning with the Xbox One have been media devices to non-smart TVs alternatively. It's been long since consoles stopped being just toys for gaming, Linus has to realize this. As much as media consumption seems to be thrown to the side when it comes to consoles, it still consumes a decent portion of the whole thing you get. This is why Xbox stays closer to the throne than Playstation regularly if you ask my own opinion. Even if the games are better and the device is better on PS. Cause I will always primarily use my PC for gaming... pretty much.

[mrtwonavels]

2 hours ago, WhoIsWORM said:

I think S tier is a tad high for the Switch. Joycon drift and paid online features paired with sub-par netcode in first party titles bumps it down a letter grade for me.

I agree a while the only reason games like botw are popular were because of the switch. They at least could have made a new Zelda and have that release along side botw

[ARandomPerson]

Xbox One X and PS4 Pro *cries in the corner*.

 

I am looking forward to an acknowledgment of the handhelds for the tier list (Gameboy, PS Vita, 3DS, Gamegear)

 

 

[mrtwonavels]

2 minutes ago, ARandomPerson said:

Xbox One X and PS4 Pro *cries in the corner*.

 

I am looking forward to an acknowledgment of the handhelds for the tier list (Gameboy, PS Vita, 3DS, Gamegear)

 

 

The title was CONSOLES not handhelds but I would assume that that will be covered in a later video 

[starsmine]

1 hour ago, ARandomPerson said:

Xbox One X and PS4 Pro *cries in the corner*.

They talked about the Xbone and PS4 though.

the X and pro are just a variant of the same console. Otherwise you would be like also rating ps3 slim/super slim or ps4 slim. or wii family edition, or genesis v2/v3. Which is just silly.

[Beerzerker]

At 1:35 in the vid, you see how to load your game cart into an NES if NOT expecting to play a game with it.

Just sayin....
 

[VinLAURiA]

I really don't think it's fair to put the PS4 at S-tier when it ended up sharing - like - 95% of its library with the Xbone, which got a much lower rank. That thing coasted on the pre-launch hype of its "sick burn" towards Xbox at E3 2013 for years, with an utterly anemic library until Bloodborne came out (not helped by ditching all BC) and even after that, only really got one or two must-play exclusives per year, most of which have since been ported away. In retrospect, its proclamation of being the "savior" console against big mean Microsoft ended up being a load of hot air when we eventually ended up where everyone lambasted the Xbone for trying to take us anyway, in no small part due to Sony's own actions later on, many of those with the PS4 itself.

 

It wasn't even the more powerful system by the end when factoring in the Pro/X models, and if anything, I'd say Xbox is the more consumer-friendly brand nowadays, largely from all the steps they've taken during the Xbone era such as Game Pass and massive efforts in multigenerational BC. Now, does that mean the Xbone itself was all that great? Perhaps not exclusives-wise, but with a near-identical library to it and pale shadows of the steps MS made, the PS4 is hella overrated. Probably Sony's weakest home system, depending on how the PS5 fares by the end. Bear in mind, I largely liked PS1-PS3 and the PS5's DualSense is an awesome piece of tech. But the PS4 just had nothing going for it besides PR the other two brands could only dream of at the time.

 

If anything, Gen8 really just went to show us how much slick marketing counts as much as the actual product itself; it's probably the biggest waste of potential a gen has ever been. I mean, don't even get me started on the undeserved fate that befell the poor Wii U, especially after how legendary the original Wii era was. Hell, how did the Wii not end up in S-tier?

[Brian McKee]

I'd have loved if the handhelds were ranked so we could have seen the mental gymnastics to put the psp and the vita in s tier.

 

I mean come on guys, we're gonna hit the N64 because it uses cartridges but barely gloss over the ps1's horrendous load times and what could be best described as "graphics". But I mean I guess it DID have Bubsy 3d.

[dogwitch]

n64 controller was garbage and game cube one was right behide it..

agree.

[xnamkcor]

If I had a nickel for every time an American leather company made a video game console, I'd have 2 nickels. Which isn't a lot of nickels, but it's odd that it happened twice.

[Spindel]

This comes down to so much personal opinion. 

 

But on that note: I personally think that the only consoles deserving S-tier on that list are SNES and PS2

[AndreiArgeanu]

8 hours ago, AbsoluteWoo said:

I am confused by Linus ranking the 360 as S-Tier but the PS3 as A-Tier. Sure at the beginning of those consoles' life spans that could be true, but after the 360's early success it died off pretty quickly. After Halo 3, Forza 3 and Gears 2 came out the 360 had run out of steam. They started focusing on Kinect and the PS3 ended up overtaking it in both quality of game library and in sales.

That was kind of end of generation. The Kinect came mid to late in the generation and it was a success as far as I can recall and did get people excited, it's what came afterwards that worked it's way into the next generation that ended up slowly killing Microsoft. The PS3 overtook the Xbox 360 in sales really late in the lifecycle, in early 2013 from what I can find the PS3 only just about overtook the Xbox 360 in sales by a few thousand units.

 

It was after the kinnect released in about 2010-2011 where Microsoft started shifting their focus to a more casual audience, while Sony was still going full steam ahead with many exclusive titles, and a lot of multi platform games did run better on the Xbox 360 for a really long time, and that hasn't really changed as far as I know since I doubt developers went back to their legacy titles to patch them on the PS3 given that they could focus on making their newer titles better. Meaning that for some people the 360 was the better choice given that the established library of 3rd party games would just run better most of the time, even if all those 3rd party titles did also eventually come to the PS3.

 

That's not even mentioning the massive data breach Sony suffered from in 2011 which ended up costing them 171 million dollars and ended up with the data of 77 million playstation 3 and psp users leaking, including passwords and also caused a network outage for nearly a whole month meaning no online play, or any kind of access to sony services. This, on top of the fact that Sony's online services were just objectively worse than Xbox live, even if it was free does bring it down a notch. That definitely tarnished Sony's reputation. So I can definitely see why someone would choose to rank the 360 above the PS3.

 

 

[AndreiArgeanu]

7 hours ago, Motifator said:

Didn't watch the video till the end, but I think this is a "console therefore should be used for gaming" thing which is not the best logic in my book. Recent consoles beginning with the Xbox One have been media devices to non-smart TVs alternatively. It's been long since consoles stopped being just toys for gaming, Linus has to realize this. As much as media consumption seems to be thrown to the side when it comes to consoles, it still consumes a decent portion of the whole thing you get. This is why Xbox stays closer to the throne than Playstation regularly if you ask my own opinion. Even if the games are better and the device is better on PS. Cause I will always primarily use my PC for gaming... pretty much.

That's your particular use case. Most people in a casual audience don't have a 1000$+ gaming PC laying around or they don't know how to/are willing to deal with the hasles that come with owning a PC. There's a reason why TV streaming boxes are so popular, just the fire TV stick alone having sold over 200 million units, Roku with over 80 million active users as of 2023 and Android/Google TV with over 110 million users. They're cheap and easy to use, coming with an actual TV remote. Most people that I know that own a console also have either a Smart TV or some kind of TV stick that they use to stream media.

 

Consoles are primarily gaming devices with media streaming coming at a distant 2nd, I don't think most people buy a 500$ console with streaming in mind. I can't find exact statistics for console users but generally it seems that mobile and TV viewing at least in 2023 accounts for about over 70% of viewership in the US for netflix. Other probably means consoles I'd imagine but I can't say for sure, but if that's the case then console viewership account for about 7% of the total.

[Addsomehappy]

26:27 Ok, where does the 7,918 number come from?

All I could find online with this number is a Quora thread in which a bot answers this number, and someone else says 7.9k - 8.2k, byt sites Wikipedia's list, which says 4105 games, plus ~200 "applications" and 125 Net Yarose games.

I wouldn't mind if this was a simple mistake but "library not surpassed since" was a talking point, and Switch has like 4,5k titles on Wikipedia, so this alone would be a problem.

[AbsoluteWoo]

3 hours ago, AndreiArgeanu said:

That was kind of end of generation. The Kinect came mid to late in the generation and it was a success as far as I can recall and did get people excited, it's what came afterwards that worked it's way into the next generation that ended up slowly killing Microsoft. The PS3 overtook the Xbox 360 in sales really late in the lifecycle, in early 2013 from what I can find the PS3 only just about overtook the Xbox 360 in sales by a few thousand units.

 

It was after the kinnect released in about 2010-2011 where Microsoft started shifting their focus to a more casual audience, while Sony was still going full steam ahead with many exclusive titles, and a lot of multi platform games did run better on the Xbox 360 for a really long time, and that hasn't really changed as far as I know since I doubt developers went back to their legacy titles to patch them on the PS3 given that they could focus on making their newer titles better. Meaning that for some people the 360 was the better choice given that the established library of 3rd party games would just run better most of the time, even if all those 3rd party titles did also eventually come to the PS3.

 

That's not even mentioning the massive data breach Sony suffered from in 2011 which ended up costing them 171 million dollars and ended up with the data of 77 million playstation 3 and psp users leaking, including passwords and also caused a network outage for nearly a whole month meaning no online play, or any kind of access to sony services. This, on top of the fact that Sony's online services were just objectively worse than Xbox live, even if it was free does bring it down a notch. That definitely tarnished Sony's reputation. So I can definitely see why someone would choose to rank the 360 above the PS3.

 

 

Kinect was announced in 2009 and the general consensus at the time was that Microsoft had given up on hardcore games. The E3 event that year was universally panned. That was only half way through the generation. The last big Xbox exclusive released was Halo 3 (2007), nothing came close after that. That was 2 years in to a 8 year old long generation.

 

It's irrelevant how late into the generation things happened, it still affects the overall quality of a console.

 

The fact is, looking back, if you had a choice between getting a PS3 or an Xbox 360, the sensible choice would be a PS3 because you'd barely be missing anything that was exclusive to the 360 whereas if you went with the 360, you'd be missing a rather collection of some of the greatest games ever released.

[xnamkcor]

1 hour ago, Addsomehappy said:

26:27 Ok, where does the 7,918 number come from?

All I could find online with this number is a Quora thread in which a bot answers this number, and someone else says 7.9k - 8.2k, byt sites Wikipedia's list, which says 4105 games, plus ~200 "applications" and 125 Net Yarose games.

I wouldn't mind if this was a simple mistake but "library not surpassed since" was a talking point, and Switch has like 4,5k titles on Wikipedia, so this alone would be a problem.

https://archive.org/details/The_PlayStation_Book_2015_UK/mode/2up

Page 9 right sidebar.

I'll try to find a more primary source later.

[ToboRobot]

A fun follow up from LTT staff would be:  My personal console tier list (of consoles that LTT employees owned)

Personally:

S: PC

A: SNES
B: Xbox 360& One & PS4

Yes, I think a PC can essentially be a console.

[05032-Mendicant-Bias]

This is one of the best tier list video I have seen, very well researched.

 

I always used the knockoff consoles you buy for almost nothing with knockoff names like the Polystation then I had a computer, so I don't have atier list for consoles.

 

For portables, my S tier are the Game Boy Color, and now the Steam Deck.