Gaming Consoles: A History of Their Evolution

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Do you know what the first official gaming console is? What about the first gaming console to offer online gaming? There are a lot of gaming console firsts that people don’t know about, but you can impress your gamer friends with these fun facts.

First Commercial Gaming Console

Many people believe that the Nintendo NES was the first commercial gaming console, but the real first one was released 13 years earlier. Magnavox’s Odyssey is based off Baer’s Brown Box, a prototype device that allowed people to interact with the TV. Baer invented the Brown Box in 1967, but couldn’t find a commercial backer until 1971.

This console was moderately successful with over 300,000 consoles sold to the public. As the first console, it might come as no surprise that it didn’t have color or audio.

First Online Gaming Console

Many people think that the Sega Dreamcast or Saturn was the first to offer online gaming, but that’s entirely false. The SNES was actually the first console with online gaming. This could be achieved with Satellaview in 1995, and it only had a small handful of players at the time due to the expensive hardware.

Selling Records

These are some interesting facts about the number of gaming consoles sold. The main reason why people think the NES is the first commercial gaming console is because it was wildly popular. It was the first gaming console to sell more than 50 million copies, and it was actually more popular than the SNES.

The PS2 was the first gaming console to sell over 100 million consoles, and it’s also the best selling gaming console ever. It sold over 155 million copies. The only gaming console that comes close is the first PlayStation, which sold 102 million copies, but it didn’t reach the 100 million number until far after PS2 did.

Another old gaming console that’s on the top 10 selling list is the Atari 2600. This gaming console was released several years before the gaming bubble of the 1980s when gaming became dramatically less popular. The Atari is at the bottom of the list, but it was able to sell 30 million units. This puts it above the Dreamcast, Xbox and Gamecube.

Gaming Consoles: A Blast from the Past

Gaming Console and Display

There are many gaming consoles today that have displays attached to them. Many people think that Nintendo was the first to do this with the GameBoy, but it actually occurred in 1982 with Milton Bradley’s Vectrex.

Color and Audio

The Atari 2600 was mentioned earlier as being one of the best selling gaming consoles of all time, and there are a few major reasons for that. This was the first commercial gaming console to feature both full-color games, audio and it even had cartridges.

Sega’s First Gaming Console

Most modern gamers believe that the first Sega console was the Sega Genesis. More experienced gamers would say that the first system was the Sega Master System, which came out two years before the Genesis. This is close, but still not right.

Sega’s first gaming console was developed in 1983, which is five years before Genesis. Called the SG-1000, this simple system had limited colors and a cartridge-based loader, but it wasn’t popular.

A History of Gaming Console Evolution