i'm going to say the 7th generation, but for a different reason. you chose it for community, i choose it for continuity. those consoles were the standard targets for games companies for an uncommonly long time. consoles that came before and since haven't matched that. some of this, i think, is due to them kind of being architectural dead ends. that was the last console generation where the hardware wasn't just PC hardware but a little bit different. the PS3 in particular is an incredible feat of human ingenuity with second hand PS3s being hard to find at reasonable prices since the US military depends on them for nuclear research. but all this cleverness made them too expensive to develop for corporations seeking to design hardware to sell at a loss to play games sold at a markup.

but during the era of the 7th generation? it was incredible. whichever console you chose you would have so many options for games that would give you incredible and unique experiences. and the hardware exclusivity was an actual real constraint sometimes with developers knowing they were making a PS3 exclusive or a 360 exclusive targeting that hardware to get every drop of performance out of the hardware, whereas now it's just a form of manufactured scarcity since new consoles are on the same architecture as PCs nowadays.

the games that have come since that generation also haven't had any fundamental paradigm shifts in how they're played that makes them more fun either. there have been some paradigm shifts that have made gaming less safe and healthy to engage in with companies shifting the brain chemistry of their players by creating addictive structures in the rulesets and paradigms of the games.

in conclusion: 7th generation good, industry bad