I might argue it's a little tougher for Sony to pick a "best of" list for Playstation that would hit most people's nostalgic favorites, too. Anecdotally, when speaking with my friends about this, they've each come up with different games that are "must haves" that I wouldn't personally feel the same as. I don't think Sony had as many must haves shared across the fanbase as maybe the NES and SNES does.
That's fair. Let's acknowledge two things:
1. Nintendo's first party titles are so universally praised that they absolutely should make up at least half of the selected titles of any given Nintendo throwback console.
2. The original PlayStation had such a wide variety of great third party games that no selection of 20 games was ever going to meet everyone's expectations.
With the second item in mind, Sony's selection is all over the place, seemingly with no rhyme or reason. Even if someone isn't a fan of Final Fantasy VII, they understand why it's there. It's so intertwined with the history of the original PlayStation and exemplifies why the console is held in such high esteem. I don't know if anyone can say the same about Mr. Driller or Cool Boaders 2. Are those the games people really think about when they look back on the console?
You know what I've realized? This throwback console scene isn't even a thing. It's just a Nintendo Classics scene. Everyone else has flubbed it. Nintendo's products are a phenomenon, everyone else is getting Atari Flashback success at best.
To me, the difference seems to be that Nintendo is the only company that has released throwback consoles created by people who actually play video games. PlayStation Classic looks like it was built by the marketing team or as a reaction to an investor meeting. Like when a shareholder asked why Sony wasn't also releasing a throwback console, they responded with "Ugh, fine," instead of, "We've offered 99% of the most memorable games digitally for over a decade. Why would we release this?"
Hell, Nintendo didn't even know what they had. The NES Classic vastly outsold their expectations and initial inventory. Nintendo stumbled into gold simply because they made a product that met their high quality standards and they have such a strong first party lineup that could make up for third parties not playing ball (and yet oddly enough the third party selections on the Nintendo Classics are fantastic).
I think Nintendo knew exactly what it had. It just wanted to make money then move on. The Classic Edition consoles were meant to pad their revenue during years in which Wii U was doing nothing. The problem with these things is that they take up shelf space, and even though each probably sells for a decent profit, there's no attach rate and they're stupidly easy to hack, meaning people
could be playing hacked ROMs instead of buying new games.
Several years ago, Reggie Fils-Aime mentioned that retailers don't like carrying different color 3DS models.
"If I had to try to have 25 different SKUs out there, Wal-Mart would kill me. So what that means is that we have to be more selective and more knowledgeable in how we handle different SKUs." I was in Target last night and I saw the Classic Edition consoles in the same case as Switch. Nintendo rereleased the Classic Edition consoles due to demand, but I bet it would rather have more Switch units in those retail cases.