The history of the console wars, and the beauty we have today.

[mike_intellivision]

Resident_Hazard said:

TheSource said:

Some of those numbers are wrong...

Atari had a few rivals that topped 10m (Intellivision I'd wager).

PC Engine was pretty successful in Japan and did ok elsewhere.

Genesis is complicated because I'm pretty sure you can still buy it in portions of South America where they still make it. So the officially tally is 30m...but...I'd wager the company that sells in South America isn't included in the total. Still, South America isn't a big market. But Genesis could easily be in the low 30ms if you include that.

PS2, if you check out our stickied "official big three quarterly results" thread has shipped about 133m "to date" (which is through Sept 2008). Sony did at one point claim it had shipped 140m, but BKK2 and I came to the conclusion it was a typo or a spoken mistake, based on shipments of about 120m through December 2006 in many other sources, ~10m through December 2007 according to a press conference Sony held, and then about 4m through September 2008.

PS2 will certaintly reach 140m shipped, but it isn't quite there yet guys.

 

I recalled Intellivision selling 10-11 million and ColecoVision selling 3 million. I checked Wikipedia and all of a sudden, Intellivision says 3 million and ColecoVision has no sales numbers. Previously, on Wikipedia, it was roughly the numbers I listed.

I remember this because I was surprised how well Mattel did against Atari. The "big 3" of the second generation were Atari 2600, Mattel Intellivision, and ColecoVision. ColecoVision's big plus came because then-arcade hit Donkey Kong was an exclusive pack-in title.

 

The accepted number in classic gaming circles is for the Intellivision is 6M. That was 3M by Mattel and 3M by Intellivision Inc/INTV Inc.

Wikipedia cites the right article: http://classicgaming.gamespy.com/View.php?view=ConsoleMuseum.Detail&id=17&game=9

But the person only reads this: "Despite Mattel's awful marketing, the Intellivision sold over 3 million units."

And missed this: "The company went bankrupt later that year, but had managed to sell three million systems during its run—no small accomplishment in the face of Nintendo's market dominance."

The accepted number for the Colecovision is 6M-7M. It was a competitor of the Atari 2600 and its successor, the Atari 5200, as well as the Intellvision.

Mike from Morgantown