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Wman1996 said:
Mandalore76 said:

To be honest though, the Atari 2600 and the Atari 5200 do not belong in the same generation.  And, at the time of the 5200's release, it was not considered a 3rd generation console.  Advertising for the 5200 and Coleco's Colecovision clearly pronounced them as the first "Third Generation" systems.  I'm not sure exactly at what point someone decided to retroactively downgrade them in history.  But, it's probably because the North American Video Game Crash of 1983 was used to delineate the 82'-84' systems from the rise of the NES since they never directly competed with each other. 

Note this 1982 article from Electronic Games Magazine, whose title reads, "Third Wave Video Gaming Comes to Market" (referencing the ColecoVision and the 5200 as the start of the 3rd Generation):

Here's a comparison of Pac-Man on 2600 compared to the 5200 and Coleco Vision:

Here's Nintendo's Donkey Kong on the 2600 compared to the ColecoVision:

I actually didn't know that. It seems that the 5200 and ColecoVision were meant to be third generation, but history has not seen in that way. I don't think we'll ever get a consensus on whether Switch is eighth or ninth generation unless Nintendo says so. But with Atari, that would still mean they had two consoles in a generation even if you entertain that 5200 is third generation. Because there's no way you can argue Atari 7800 is fourth generation.

The classification that makes the most sense to me and most other old schoolers who remember this time period is this:

Generation 2:  Atari 2600, Intellivision
"Crash Generation": Atari 5200, Colecovision, Vectrex
Generation 3: NES, SMS, Atari 7800

The Crash Generation was basically a lost generation in North America.  Console makers released new systems, but when the sales numbers crashed, then retailers panicked and just put everything on sale.  I remember Atari 5200 games being sold in bargain bins even though they were fairly new.  And copies of Pac-Man and E.T. for the 2600 were in bargain bins for years.  The retailers did their best to clear out all inventory and didn't order anything new.

The real winner of the Crash Generation was the Commodore 64.  It was the cheapest computer, so that is what people bought for gaming.  And retailers would actually sell it, because it wasn't technically a console.  The C64's successor, the Amiga, was released around the same time as the NES, but it didn't sell nearly as well.  People had gone back to consoles by that time.