Sony has designed some beautiful consoles over the years. The monolithic PS2. The tastefully compact PSP Go. The delightfully dinky PocketStation. The absolutely pristine Pearl White PSP. But when it comes to aesthetics, the company has committed severe and unforgivable crimes against good taste—the worst of which is, by far, the original model PlayStation 3. The PS3 had some great games, but the hardware itself was offensive to the eyes and soul.

First off, that finish. Greasy, shiny plastic that picks up a fingerprint if you so much as hover a digit over it. Sony called it 'piano black' in an attempt to make it seem classy, but it's a visual and textural nightmare. There's something about the weighty heft of the console and that overly slick, cheap-feeling plastic exterior that is just deeply unpleasant to the touch. The curved top is a magnet for scratches too, no matter how delicately you handle it.

Related: The Nintendo GameCube Was Design Perfection

Speaking of which, the shape of the console is a nightmare too. A bulky, rounded top half, melded artlessly into a rectangular base. It has no readable shape, no striking silhouette. It's just an unwieldy, formless slab of glossy black plastic that looks bad no matter where you place it near your TV—whether you opt for the horizontal or vertical orientation. However, credit where credit is due: the rotating PlayStation logo is a small stroke of genius.

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Then there's that fake chrome lining draped along the front of the console. Sony presumably wanted it to look like the gleaming front grille of a '50s hot rod, but it's utterly unconvincing in person. It's just as cheap and plasticky as everything else, and doesn't for a second create the illusion of being luxurious polished metal. The whole console has aged poorly, but to modern eyes this ill-conceived, pointlessly flashy design flourish looks tackier than ever.

And what of the flap? That ridiculous, flimsy little plastic door concealing a trio of memory card slots no one ever used. If you polled everyone who ever owned a PS3, I'd be amazed if more than 1% ever used the CompactFlash slot on the front. Yet, for some reason, Sony decided that not only should this be a front-and-centre feature of its new console, but there should be a little flappy door to access it too. It was certainly great at collecting dust.

I never liked the eject/power buttons on the front either. Rather than having clicky, tactile buttons, it uses a touch-activated surface that feels like another showy design element implemented simply for the sake of it. There are so many pointless, finicky little bits all over the original PS3. It's over-designed to a comical degree, with so many dirt-catching cracks, vents, and corners, it was basically impossible to keep looking clean and new.

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To top things off, for reasons I will never understand, Sony printed the name of the console using the logo typeface from Sam Raimi's Spider-Man movies. This was reportedly the brainchild of former CEO Ken Kutaragi, who "insisted" (according to PS3 lead designer Teiyu Goto) it be used. "In fact," Goto says. "The logo was one of the first elements he decided on, and the logo may actually have been the motivating force behind the shape of the PS3."

See, this is what happens when you let business people make creative decisions. Teiyu Goto is a legend. He designed the PS2 and the original PlayStation controller, and obviously has an eye for design. So I'm going to blame the PS3 on too many cooks spoiling the broth. If the CEO of a company, who has no background in design, is making decisions as important as what the logo will be, this console's aesthetics were doomed from the start.

Next: The PSP Go Was Way Ahead Of Its Time And It Deserved Better