So uh, Consoles.

[Anaximander]

It depends on how you look at it. I really liked the original Xbox, when modded it was far ahead of its time - you could swap hdd and put all your games right on the drive so you never needed discs, there was a built-in ftp server and you could stream videos right from your PC or NAS through XBMC. That was 10 years ago, and some of those things are only becoming the standard today. The box was ugly and the original controller was made for giants though.

For the next gen I liked PS3 for overall build quality, lower noise level and simplicity in menues (funnily Microsoft has always sucked at making good GUI's), but I liked the 360 for being really easy to flash - you could play on Xbox Live with a hacked box and pirated games np, and lots of games are available for download prior to release. Towards the end of this cycle, there seem to be a change in the development strategy, turning from exclusive titles towards multi-platform releases, and the 360 benefitted from this, both in terms of being more akin to PC's as well as having proper anti-aliasing.

I have low hopes for the next generation, sadly. They seem more like updates to get the aged console universe on par with PC, but it doesn't look like there's any hope of the two consoles setting the bar higher than PC's at the moment, such as it was the case for a short while when PS3 and 360's entered the market. They seem mostly just like updates so console people can enjoy the same games and features PC people have been enjoying for a couple of years now, and that's not very sexy. That being said, I favor PS3 over Xbox One so far because it is cheaper and you aren't force-fed useless fluff like kinect. That can all change depending on how fast they are cracked, and what extra features the crack can bring out of them.