Dedicated console in the context of Magnavox Odyssey series

Magnavox Odyssey is the general brand name of Magnavox's complete line of home video game consoles released from 1972 through 1978. The line includes the original Magnavox Odyssey console, the Magnavox Odyssey series of dedicated home video game consoles, and the Magnavox Odyssey 2, a ROM cartridge-based video game console released in 1978. Philips Odyssey is the brand name that includes the Philips Odyssey series of dedicated home video game consoles.

Magnavox sold a total of 1,773,918 units across the entire Odyssey brand between 1972 and 1981 with a total sales value of around $71,300,000.00. Nearly half of those sales occurred between August 1972 and September 1976 with total sales at that time being around $45,000,000.00 selling 800,000 units.

The Coleco Telstar is a series of dedicated first-generation home video game consoles produced, released and marketed by Coleco from 1976 to 1978. Starting with Coleco Telstar's Pong clone-based video game console on General Instrument's AY-3-8500 chip in 1976, there were 14 consoles released in the Coleco Telstar series. About one million units of the first model, called Coleco Telstar, were sold.

Coleco sold over a million units at the price of $50 in 1976. Coleco was unaffected by a chip shortage that year, as their early orders meant it was entirely supplied. The large product lineup and the impending fading out of the Pong machines led Coleco to face near-bankruptcy in 1980.

The Color TV-Game is the first video game system ever made by Nintendo. The system was released as a series of five dedicated home video game consoles between 1977 and 1983 in Japan only. Nintendo sold three million units of the first four models: one million units of each of the first two models, Color TV-Game 6 and 15; and half a million units of each of the next two models, Block Breaker and Racing 112. The Color TV-Game series has the highest sales figures of all the first generation of video game consoles.

Tank is an arcade game developed by Kee Games, a subsidiary of Atari, and released in November 1974. It was one of the few original titles not based on an existing Atari property developed by Kee Games, which was founded to sell clones of Atari games to distributors as a fake competitor prior to the merger of the two companies. In the game, two players drive tanks through a maze viewed from above while attempting to shoot each other and avoid mines, represented by X marks, in a central minefield. Each player controls their tank with a pair of joysticks, moving them forwards and back to drive, reverse, and steer, and firing shells with a button to attempt to destroy the other tank. The destruction of a tank from a mine or shell earns the opposing player a point, and tanks reappear after being destroyed. The winner is the player with more points when time runs out, with each game typically one or two minutes long.

Tank was designed by Steve Bristow, who had previously worked with the founders of Atari on Computer Space, the first arcade video game, and was developed by Lyle Rains. It was created as part of Bristow's vision to move the company away from only producing copies of Atari's games into also developing original titles. The game's cabinet was designed by Peter Takaichi. In September 1974, during development, Atari merged with Kee. The game was commercially successful, selling over 10,000 units and buoying Atari's then-troubled finances. It led to a cocktail cabinet release of the game and to three sequels: Tank II (1975), Tank 8 (1976), and Ultra Tank (1978). A dedicated console version of Tank II was announced in 1977 but cancelled later that year; the joysticks for the game, however, became the standard joystick controllers for the Atari 2600 (1977). Variations on the game were included in the Atari 2600 game Combat, as well as in the Coleco Telstar game Telstar Combat!, both in 1977.

Nintendo has developed eight home video game consoles and multiple portable consoles for use with external media, as well as dedicated consoles and other hardware for their consoles. As of September 19, 2025, Nintendo has sold over 869.95 million hardware units.

The company's first console, the Color TV-Game, was a success in Japan but was never released in other territories. Their first systems to achieve worldwide success were the Game & Watch handheld series, before achieving greater worldwide success with the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), originally released as the Family Computer (Famicom) in Japan in 1983. The NES restarted the video game industry after the video game crash of 1983, and was an international success. In 1989, Nintendo released the Game Boy, which became the first handheld console to sell in large numbers. In the early 1990s, Nintendo's market lead began to decrease; although the 1990 Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) was a strong seller, the Sega Genesis was a very strong contender. Nintendo and Sega would both lose a significant portion of the console market towards the end of the 1990s, as Sony's PlayStation became the most popular console, beating the Nintendo 64, though Nintendo managed to sell more than Sega Saturn.