Atari 2600 of course.

But since most people here are too young to give Atari some credit and only remember their later years, the results of the poll doesn't surprise me.

teens/adults becoming gamers was just natural progression, kids in the 80s became teens/young adults in the 90s so developers/publishers naturally made games to cater to their maturing customer base.

games aimed at an older audience were becoming more and more common in the early 90s and would have continued to increase in quantity with or without Playstation.

they certainly deserve credit but it shouldnt be hard to believe why people think NES had a more significant impact.

it revived the market that Atari had killed in America and put in on the map in Japan. without NES its possible that console gaming would never have recovered in America and never made it big in Japan, with people choosing arcades/PC instead.

That's part of it but as they made more adult focused games, it drew a lot broader range of consumers to gaming which changed the stigma surrounding gaming being a kid's hobby which in turn drew in even more consumers. 

yes, which had little to do with Sony, the gaming market was already moving in that direction in the early 90s with violent games aimed at teens/young adults like Mortal Kombat & Doom becoming big hits.

you are giving Sony credit for something that was already happening before they even got into the game. games aimed at this age group were releasing more frequently in the years leading up to PS1 and would have continued to increase in quantity & popularity with or without Sony.

Atari's Tele-Games Pong console essentially built the home game industry. It was the console that proved interactive television entertainment was viable as a consumer product. There's a reason why virtually all of the early consoles released ahead of the Atari 2600 were essentially Pong clones (Magnavox Odyssey and Fairchild Channel F being the two primary exceptions). Expanding on that, the Pong arcade system was also the first widely successful commercial gaming device, period.

Of course, given that the Pong idea was essentially cribbed from one of the Magnavox Odyssey's games, it could be argued that it was the most powerful console.

I'm not surprised NES is winning the poll, of course, but it's greatest impact wasn't global, but in the US market specifically. It certainly was an IMPORTANT console, with many games that either defined or built genres, but let's not forget: Nintendo's first entry into the video game market was a PONG clone, which was built because that initial Pong consoles was madly successful. EVERYTHING in this industry stems from that one little device. 

Most of it had to do with sony being in the market and it being a great platform for 3rd party devs. It's games were by and large different than nintendo's games or sega's. There's still is a world of difference between sony's and nintendo's games which have very focuses in terms of demographics. They still follow the same pattern in terms of games. Sony releases a ton of games aimed at teenagers and adults while releasing some kid games. Nintendo releases a ton of games at kids and "everyone"s but release a handful of token games for teens/adults. 

The PS1 comes out and introduces alot of different kinds of games to consumers, breaks sales records never imagined at that point. The stigma of gaming being a kid's hobby dies off around that time. Hmm... That makes me wonder what the cause of that was. 

It must have been because of kid hobby reinforcing stigma nintendo or in it's death bed sega that rarely released any games.... That's so hard to figure out.

I'd say it's a tie between the OG consoles from the 70s like the Magnabox Odessey, which kickstarted the inductsry, and the NES, which brought it back from the brink. Without the NES there'd be no Sege Genesis, Playstation, or Xbox. The Nes is where the standards for level and game design were set.

I'd say it's the PS1, PS2 and PS4. Nintendo hasn't done anything that was significant on a global level. The crash only happened in America and Nes was only significant there, in Europe they had their own games and of course there was Sega. The Wii also didn't broaden the industry, all the new people it brought didn't stick around and become gamers.

PS1 and PS2 broadened the industry to hundreds of millions and achieved new heights in install bases.

PS4 probably saved the industry from a crash. Back around 2011-2013 the appeal of mobile was especially yuuge, the Wii U failed, big publishers took a wait and see approach on the next gen, it explains why the early years of Gen 8 were so barren. But the PS4 sold and recovered confidence in the traditional gaming industry.

Is this post a joke?!

The only Sony console worthy of that title was the overrated PS2 just because of its sales, The NES saved the gaming industry in the states, The N64 is a more important console than any of the Sony consoles and one of the most important consoles in the history of console gaming, you need to take off your Sony rose tinted spectacles, your PS4 is just an upgraded PS1, and i didn't even have a N64, i had a Playstation.