It depends on each game. I have older games that I prefer and newer games that I prefer. Graphically, sometimes even a remake can lose a sweet spot that makes me prefer the older art style.
Highly depends on the game. There's games that suck that are new, but there's games that are old that suck as well and didn't stand the tests of time. To pick between older or newer is just generalizing to be honest.
For me the old/new split is 2010, it’s quite arbitrary, but it’s just how I remember it as I was growing out of primary school then. If I split it the way you did then I would lean even harder into my ultimate answer…
The average was much better 6th-7th gen, but the best games of today are much better than even a lot of the best 6th-7th gen games. The only games in my top 10 that even came out before the 2010’s are Tetris DS and Spyro The Dragon (PS1). Hell probably not even the former as there are just enough good newer games to push it off.
If you asked me which I would pick, new games as I could easily sustain my interest on the best games of today. It’s not like I have time to play every single game that interests me and when I think of it that way, the average means less. It is just hard to ignore how much I disagree with some modern trends though.
5th and earlier very very little holds up. N64 games aged like milk.
Old console hardware was better though, the new ones are so flimsy and installing everything is so slow and annoying, at least file management is much better on PC even though it’s also relegated to installing. The old consoles just let you play games and that’s all they needed to do. No bloat. 3DS hit the perfect point between that and having worthy DLC/updates/OS novelty features but literally no other console has managed that balance. It adds to the experience of playing old games honestly, you never have to worry about how they work. Nowadays every controller seems to break in a few months too.
Before I played "Animal Crossing: New Horizons" I would have said "older games," as I keep updated with the latest Sega Genesis collection on EACH AND EVERY Nintendo system. NOW I prefer new games as I enter my 1,000th+++ day IN A ROW of playing New Horizons!!!
I started playing roughly a month and a half after launch due to my adoration of "Disgaea 5" and have not missed a day!
i think a lot of older games are viewed through the lens of nostalgia don't get me wrong i do love a fair amount of old games but if u asked me to play it today, i wouldn't. there are janky things like terrible qols, bad camera angles, and just a ton of things that modern games have that u couldn't have back then due to technological limitations.
there's been a trend lately of game studios doing remakes which i think has improved a lot of old classic games like resident evil, persona, final fantasy. so i think that's the best middle ground is remakes of older popular games with improved qols and graphics is what i would choose. my top list of games includes a ton of remakes that i otherwise wouldn't have played.
This is hard to answer for me since "older games" is such a broad subject. If it's games pre-sixth generation than I'm probably not going to play for long because as creative as these games were a lot of them were overly punishing, poorly balanced, or clunky to play (especially early 3D games). There are less than a dozen games from before 2002 I actually want to go back to. I loved a lot of these games as a kid since I was more patient back then and it was fun trying games from before I was born, but now I lose my patience very easily with them. 2000s games were great since some of the AAA games being released were still very daring and creative while still having some actual quality of life features. Indie games were still kinda small though and there weren't nearly as many to choose from.
I spend most of my time with modern games though because there's so many to choose from. The gaming industry is much bigger now and I can play blockbuster quality hyper realistic games that feel like interactive movies, play a AA game made by a mid sized studio that covers more niche genres like JRPGs, farming sims, or visual novels, or I can settle down with a creative or addicting indie game that does what AAA studios would never do now. I usually prefer the latter two, but the choice is always there.