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You are here: Home / History / Best-Selling Video Game Consoles: 1972 to 2002

Best-Selling Video Game Consoles: 1972 to 2002

January 2, 2013 By ausretrogamer

Atari2600       NES       SMD

Do you remember those school-yard arguments you used to have with your friends about which video game console was better: Atari vs Intellivision or Sega vs Nintendo ?
Finally, you can check out the best-selling video game consoles from 1972 to 2002 figures below and put an end to those endless arguments – or will this just reopen old wounds ? 

Best-Selling-Consoles_1972_to_2002

It is quite clear that Atari reined supreme in the early days with 30 million consoles being sold world-wide. After resurrecting the video games industry in the mid 80’s, Nintendo enjoyed massive sales of their NES (61.9 million) and SNES (49.1 million) consoles, while Sega played the bridesmaid with their Master System (13.1 million unit) and their better selling 16-bit machine, the Mega Drive / Genesis (41.9 million).

The early 90’s were still dominated by Nintendo, however, that all changed when Sony decided to enter the video games industry in 1994 by releasing their Playstation console. Sony’s dominance was clear with the first Playstation (102.9 million) selling exceedingly well, but its successor, the Playstation 2 (155.1 million) still remains the best-selling video games console of all time**

** as at 1 January 2013

 

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Filed Under: History Tagged With: Atari, Commodore, consoles, nec, nintendo, Retro Gaming, sega, SNK

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Taggsta says

    June 18, 2013 at 10:43 pm

    ItS interesting to see Nintendo’s Console dropping off In sales from Model to model. Without their handh

  2. Taggsta says

    June 18, 2013 at 10:45 pm

    Handheld Success they may of just gone into making Games like SEGA

Trackbacks

  1. Best-Selling Portable Video Game Systems Of All Time | Australian Retro Gamer says:
    January 8, 2013 at 8:38 am

    […] last week’s Best-Selling Video Game Consoles: 1972 to 2002 post, it was clear that Sony had taken the stranglehold in the consoles market in the mid […]

  2. The Playstation Journey | AUSRETROGAMER says:
    December 17, 2013 at 9:54 am

    […] their place in the gaming pantheon with the world’s best selling console of all time, the Playstation 2. The gaming world has changed quite a bit over the last decade with the merge of gaming with online […]

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