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 ?
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
