Well, the other thing is that "about" 11 video game consoles came out in 1977. Though many of them were little more than variations on the various pong type machines. But there were a couple expandable (aka Cartridge based) consoles that came out in 1977. The Atari 2600 and the RCA Studio II, the Fairchild Channel F actually came out in 1976. In regards to the hobby being bigger than ours in some ways, most collectors of game consoles don't have a physical venue to display their systems. The majority of events where vintage gaming is seen tend to be sales. So instead of people hobbyists displaying exhibits, you have vendors selling them. Often knowing very little about them short of the price they're selling for on eBay. So there is a significant difference between the type of venues. On Saturday, December 17, 2016, Evan Koblentz via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
An example could be like when I did my "Basically it's BASIC" exhibit. The Atari 2600 does have a cartridge version of BASIC, that people could write programs with. Or maybe an exhibit "Flight Simulators throughout the years" as an example, and have a mixture of both game consoles and computer systems.
I agree, but those are examples where the 2600 is one part of a exhibit on a different theme.
But no matter how one looks at it, gaming consoles have been integral in the development and popularity of computers.
Of course.
What we're avoiding are exhibits devoted entirely or mostly to console gaming. That's a whole other hobby (bigger than ours in some ways). Just because they used microprocessors is not enough -- so did a lot of products.
-- Normal Person: Hey, it seems that you know a lot. Geek: To be honest, it's due to all the surfing I do. Normal Person: So you go surfing? Normal Person: But I don't think that has anything to do with knowing a lot... Geek: I think that's wrong on a fundamental level. Normal Person: Huh? Huh? What?