PlayStation won it, outselling Nintendo 64 by 69.6 million units — 211% more hardware. Across all 4 machines the generation sold
146.7 million units, and games released on them collected 12 Game of the Year awards in our database.
A game that
shipped on three machines of this generation is counted for all three, because the
question is how much award-winning software each box could play — not which console had
it exclusively.
Did the best-selling machine also have the best-reviewed games?
No. PlayStation sold the most hardware, but the most award-winning library belonged to Nintendo 64 with 9 awards. Winning the generation commercially and winning it editorially were different outcomes here.
A console's figure counts every awarded game that shipped on it, so
multi-platform releases raise several boxes at once and an exclusive raises only one.
That makes this a measure of what you could play, not of what you could play
only there — and it is why the numbers here are larger than any single
console's exclusive line-up.
All consoles, sales against awards.