When researching the history of video games we usually assume that the first video game console was the Atari 2600. In many ways it is, as with its cartridge system you could buy games to use on the system, much like consoles today. But it was not the first. The Atari 2600 was released in September 1977, where as the Magnavox Odyssey) was released late 1972.
Daddy Magnavox here came out a good 5 years before the Atari we all know and love. Unlike cartridges used by the Atari and the NES the Magnavox used removable circuit boards that change the way the game works. Along with that the Odyssey had a very strange controller, with spinnable analog sticks on each side of the box. This controlled a glowing dot on the screen, where one stick moves the dot on the X axis, the other on the Y. Unlike the Atari every single game played the same, and all were rather simple and made to be played with two people.
The system was unable to keep score in it's various games, so the players had to do this themselves. The console even came with chips and scoreboards. The games were... less than exciting. Like many before it, the Odyssey starts off with a pong like game, as video game consoles dedicated to Pong were extremely popular at the time. The console came with plastic overlays to place over the television which was like an early form of graphics adding some basic colour, such as a green tennis court and various other skins of Pong such as hockey and football.
Some other gens are Simon says, where you draw cards and move your cursor over to the body parts on the overlay, and Skiing where you follow a track and see who can go fastest. Of course for our American friends there was even a game where you named the States of the USA. It also came with various different board game overlays, where you literally played the board game and used the TV as a board. It's a very basic system, but what do you expect from the first family console?
Interestingly the Odyssey came with an early light-gun peripheral similar to the NES's, based on military light gun technology planned to help shoot down rockets but adapting it for entertainment. For a console so far ahead of it's time it didn't sell well at all. There was rumors that the system would only work on specially designed Magnavox televisions and partnered with pour marketing campaigns the Odyssey remained obscure.
But for Magnavox it was not a financial failure. Overtime Magnavox sued Atari, Coleco, Mattel, Seeburg and Activision over their designs of games being extremely similar to Magnavox, and won or settled every time. Magnavox even won a court case against Nintendo for Magnavox claiming to be the first video game console (saying that Tennis for Two came first) and failed. So Magnavox sure did make alot of money.
The American company Magnavox may have been pushed into obscurity as a subsidiary for Philips but it atleast has a place in video gaming history.
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