THREE-WAY COMPARISON / 6TH GENERATION

PS2 vs Xbox vs GameCube: Who Really Won the 6th Generation?

Sales numbers already answered this question in 2006. Twenty years later, the collector's answer is more interesting.

Sales Winner: PS2, By a Wide Margin

PS2 became the best-selling console of all time, and that scale shows up directly in its library — it has more games across more genres than Xbox and GameCube combined. For a collector who wants one console that plays "everything," PS2 is still the obvious pick.

Power Winner: Xbox

Xbox shipped with the strongest hardware of the three, including a built-in hard drive that let it do things the others couldn't, like storing soundtracks and save data without memory cards. It also had the strongest online multiplayer infrastructure of the generation via Xbox Live, which is now a piece of gaming history in its own right even though the original service has long since shut down.

Craft Winner: GameCube

GameCube sold the least of the three but built one of the most beloved first-party libraries of any Nintendo console — Metroid Prime, Wind Waker, and Melee are still discussed as high points of their respective series. Its mini-DVD format kept load times short and discs compact, though it also meant no DVD movie playback, a genuine selling point on the other two consoles at the time.

Which to Collect First

If you want breadth, start with PS2. If you want a specific, focused library of genuinely great first-party games, GameCube rewards the smaller investment. Xbox sits in the middle — strong shooters and strong third-party ports, but it's the console most likely to need repair work today due to its notorious clock-capacitor leakage issue on original hardware.

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