What percentage of old consoles are still in use?

[Lord Mushroom]

I thought it would be interesting to know roughly what percentage of old consoles produced are still in use. Is it roughly the same for every console? Are the oldest ones the least in use? Does anyone have any idea?

[Mikebloke]

This isn't particularly helpful but 100% of my consoles are used, but not 100% of them are fully working

 

My non working or not quite 100% working consoles are the usual suspects: Game Gear needing recapping, with no screen display at all. My cdi has a dodgy drive that doesn't open all the time. My 3DO seems to suffer from the slowdown of a leaked or faulty capacitor that can be replaced. My CDTV disk drive seems to be playing up and not reading disks right. My odyssey 1 has some... Interesting gameplay that is sometimes fixed by unplugging boards and reinserting. All these issues are quite common for these consoles, and I would dare say mean they are less likely to be in the wild being used as well. 

 

I'd say consoles with a good reputation for continuing to work will likely have more users, anything 2nd gen, most 3rd gen consoles and the common ones like snes, mega drive. Obscure ones are less likely to have owners now, and things like the 1292s were likely binned enmass throughout the years, whereas Neo Geo consoles likely have a very high upkeep and ownership rate. Things like the Jaguar for example, while maybe not numbering as many, seems to always be available for resale and has good ownership rates. 

 

Which leads to possibly one of the best indicators of how many consoles are used : romcarts. They are useless without original hardware, so their numbers are the best suggestion of how many consoles are played regularly. Not everyone uses a romcart of course, but most of us serious about retro gaming probably do regardless of how many games we have on our shelves. 

[DragonGrafx-16]

All of my consoles and handhelds other than my Game Gear work.

[fiddlepaddle]

I have abut 20 old consoles, but statistically, in my household, the percentage of old consoles in use is a very low percentage, as only one console is ever in use at one time; and most of the time, none are in use.

 

Maybe you are asking how many old consoles are still "ready for use"...that's a much higher number.  But still, people move, get divorced, die, or just stop caring over time and those consoles sometimes go to another player, but often go into a box, into a closet or storage unit, and eventually become scrap or just crumble away.

 

My guess is 30 years later, much less than 1 percent of those produced are ready to play today for things like 2600, Colecovision, etc.  For the more scarce consoles like Vectrex, Astrocade, Virtualboy, it's probably a higher percentage because the people who own them have probably been, on average, more attached and more careful.

 

As far as actual number existing today in boxes and storage units, probably much higher, but virtually impossible to measure.

[Lord Mushroom]

14 minutes ago, fiddlepaddle said:

Maybe you are asking how many old consoles are still "ready for use"...that's a much higher number.

I mean consoles which are in use at least once in a while. They don´t have to be hooked up all the time, but can´t just be permanently put in a box either.

 

17 minutes ago, fiddlepaddle said:

My guess is 30 years later, much less than 1 percent of those produced are ready to play today for things like 2600, Colecovision, etc.  For the more scarce consoles like Vectrex, Astrocade, Virtualboy, it's probably a higher percentage because the people who own them have probably been, on average, more attached and more careful.

What about the Genesis/Mega Drive and the SNES?

[DragonGrafx-16]

I did have multiple PS2s that stopped working but I don't have any of them anymore. I use a fat PS3 to play PS2 games now.

[Tanooki]

Less than 1% ready to play of old consoles that are 30 years old?  I find that very very hard to believe.

 

[fiddlepaddle]

SNES and Genesis are similar to 2600, Coleco, but not quite as far down the curve.  As those owners age though, that drops.

 

Why 99% are gone?  More than 30 million people at one time played the 2600...  even 300,000 active today seems too high, in my opinion, even including those who take one out every Christmas or whatever. 

[CatPix]

Yeah, 300 000 Atair 2600 users seems quite high. 300 000 consoles still surviving may be possible, as Atari 2600 collector are likely to own more than one, and there are probably a good share gathering dust in an attic. But 300 000 "in working order"? I doubt it

 

I'd be impressed that the number reach even 50 000 persons. Heck, AtariAge itself "only" have 57 000 members. Sure not all Atari 2600 owners are on AA but not every member of AA owns an atari 2600 either!

[MikeA]

I think the number is likely near 1% of the consoles ever produced, possibly lower, possibly somewhat higher.

 

For example, Sega sold 30 million Sega Genesis units.  If 1 % were still in use, that would be 300,000 consoles across the world.  That feels right to me.

 

Of course there's no way to know the true number...or is there?  Perhaps a limited console ownership census could be conducted and then somehow extrapolated to determine an estimated amount.  I just doubt anyone would do that.