What is the best console ever? In my opinion the best is the Sony PlayStation.
I honestly don't know how you could say any of those things. Were you even around then?!
I think it has durable hardware.
Easily scratch-able games, cracking disc hubs, over-heating causing laser misalignment (having to play upside-down was extremely common with the early units). It had a reputation of being particularly UNreliable.
Sony used the absolute slowest optical drives available (2x) and only bumped up to 4x when 2x supplies dried up. Games had mini-games to play while they loaded. It is the perfect example of everything that is wrong with disc load times.
The GameCube, on the other hand, was Nintendo's first disc-based console and used lots of tricks to hide loads. On first party games I never saw anything take longer than a highly compressed N64 cartridge (Diddy Kong Racing level selection previews on N64 come to mind). I don't think I've ever seen a load screen on a first party game and most 3rd-party games with them only had them because they were quick and dirty unoptimized ports from other console versions that had them. I noticed how Metroid Prime was delaying a door opening for a second longer than others and realized what it was doing a long time ago and was very impressed. Even loading off a HDD, PC games could never load that seamlessly in the middle of gameplay. Sony, on the other hand, went and released the PSP with load times on a PORTABLE console. Battery life is wasted physically spinning a disc just to get to the data and even more is wasted as you wait for titles, menus, levels, etc. What a BAD format choice! I'll admit that the gaming world was more than ready for discs when the PSX came around, but the least they could have done was to integrate it into a caddy-cartridge so that the discs would not get scratched and common data could be loaded from a small ROM instead of reloaded every time (character, title, menu, etc). It would also have allowed for expansion and built-in save. If they had done this then the game wouldn't have had to freeze every time Shang Tsung changed forms in Mortal Kombat 3 and the Sega Saturn memory advantage for 2D fighters (RAM cart) could have been erased.
The controllers are top notch.
The controllers are derivative. It was originally just a handled version of the SNES controller with two sets of shoulder buttons instead of one and no innovation at all. When the competition innovated, they just shoe-horned everything onto their existing pad and doubled it for symmetry. They added the dual-analog thumb-sticks and the force-motors as an afterthought. That's why the D-Pad is still prioritized on their controllers in this day and age (SO backwards!). There's a reason it took ten years for anyone else to make a dual-analog controller with a prioritized D-pad (Nintendo Wii Classic Controller). Even that is probably only because PSX/PSX were so popular in Japan but they wanted to attract those gamers and make those kinds of games seem tongue-in-cheek old ("classic") when compared to their new controllers that didn't even have dual analog.
Many games would become classics.
OK, I guess I can see how you would say ONE of those things. This one is certainly true.
Huh? How was it any easier to use than anything before or after it? Now you are just fluffing it up!