[Monty22002]

Magnavox lost a major lawsuit against Atari. I believe they settled. But Baer’s Odyssey system was the first. Magnavox must’ve been really poorly managed, since they basically blew the entire game market at home.

[SES1066]

... Magnavox must’ve been really poorly managed ...

There is a pantheon of American companies who have had a chance to do great things and flubbed big time. Add to Magnavox the name of Kodak which actually did have the FIRST DIGITAL CAMERA to market in cooperation with APPLE! Add XEROX which developed most of the main hardware and software components of modern personal computing (PARC - Palo Alto Research Center) and did not know what to do with them. Steve Jobs toured it - Veni, vidi, vici!

[Dr. Sivana]

Magnavox must’ve been really poorly managed, since they basically blew the entire game market at home.

Yup, after they came out with the Odyssey2, which was a marginal player (full flat keyboard, 2 KB RAM, pathetic processor), they decided to make its successor backwards compatible, despite the small installed base of games.

As North American Phillips, they released some Atari 2600/ColecoVision games that were really excellent (War Room on Coleco was GREAT!). Bad timing, as they came to market during the great video game melt down of 1983-84.