Many different companies, mostly those that specialize in electronics tech, have invested their time and resources in the gaming industry by releasing consoles over the past few decades. Some persevered and are the current face of gaming hardware, while others moved on or switched focus to game development or publishing.

These companies have all left a mark through the consoles developed. Some through innovations in player control, others through technological advancements, and several were infamous for less favorable achievements. Whichever it is, these consoles make up the gaming roster.

Valve's history with gaming began with them making games for other consoles and PC computers. Games that they developed include Half-Life, Left 4 Dead, and Portal. In 2003, Valve developed Steam as a storefront for PC gaming, which, before Steam, was difficult to purchase and manage universally.

2022 saw the release of the Steam Deck, a handheld console that allowed customers and players that utilize Steam's library to take their library of games on the go. Its effectiveness depends on the graphical fidelity of the games themselves, but this is a great way to develop a library of indie games that are prominent in the store.

Nokia is a long-running tech and electronics company, founded in 1865. The company's attempt at making a game console was the N-Gage, which was meant to be a competitor to the Game Boy Advance by being a game and a phone with texting functionality. This was, of course, before app games on phones were a thing, making the product innovative.

Outside their role in game consoles, Nokia is known for their expansive work in cell phones, which was what they focused on after they were bought by Microsoft. While the company's venture into video games was short-lived, with just two versions of the N-Gage, it thrived in the phone market and is currently the third-biggest manufacturer of network equipment.

Mattel is one of the biggest manufacturers of toys, figurines, and building sets for customers of all ages. Its biggest products are Barbie, Hot Wheels, and the He-Man series. In 1979, alongside the first Atari home console, Mattel released its own video game console called Intellivision.

Many Intellivision games were based on sports and strategy, and they were fairly successful, despite Atari's decline and Nintendo's budding rise. Mattel eventually sold its assets to former investors, which gave rise to INTV Corp, which lasted into 1990 before it was discontinued.

Coleco tried its hand at developing two different consoles, Telstar and ColecoVision. Approximately a hundred games were made for ColecoVision. Many of them are ports from Sega and Nintendo, like Donkey Kong and Zaxxon.

ColecoVision was discontinued in 1985 as Coleco focused on other products like the Cabbage Patch Kids. Over saturation of the Cabbage Patch kids caused the company to go bankrupt three years later. In 2005, the company was revived, and many of its classic brands were brought back.

Hudson Soft is best known for many of the games it's published, from Bomberman to Adventure Island and Bloody Roar. It also developed several installments of Mario Party under Nintendo's umbrella. In 1987, Hudson Soft and NEC developed the TurboGrafx-16 and pioneered the idea of playing video games on a CD-ROM instead of a cartridge through an expansion.

It was launched to compete against Nintendo's Famicom but lost ground to Sega's Genesis console and the Super Nintendo. Despite that, the PC Engine remained successful in Japan until 1994, around the same time as Sony entered the industry with the PlayStation.

Philips made the CD-i series, four models of specialized CD-ROMs that played several games, along with being a major technology supplier for PCs. The CD-i was considered to be one of the first attempts to crossover gaming with PCs, and was a mixed bag as a result.

Nowadays, the consoles are best known for their Nintendo-licensed games, such as The Legend of Zelda CD-i trilogy and Mario. Both were poorly adapted and hard to play due to many of the difficulties inherent in the console.

Founded by the founder of EA, the 3DO Company developed its own systems in 1993. Several models include Panasonic, Goldstar/LG, and SANYO. At a time when cartridges were still the way for many games, the 3DO Company was one of the first hardware companies to attempt the innovation of CD-based games, which would improve graphics and immersion in their projects.

When 3DO discontinued in 1996, the company was able to publish and develop several video game series, such as Army Man and Might and Magic, before they went bankrupt and had their titles bought off by other game-making companies of the time. Their disc-based innovations would be inherited by other Hardware companies like Sony and Microsoft.

Bandai is best known for making toys and action figures along with the large library of video games they have developed and published. Many of them are long-running series we've known and loved that were a part of multiple console generations. They managed one console called the Super Vision 8000 before moving to handhelds.

In the early 90s, Bandai made their own competitor to Nintendo's Game Boy series, the WonderSwan. They also released several variations of other consoles, from Arcadia 2001 to the LCD Solarpower.

Formerly known as just The Oculus, Reality Labs took PC gaming into a new dimension, using VR headsets to fully immerse players in the gaming experience. There have been attempts to make a virtual reality game console in the past, but Oculus was the first to make it past the experimental execution stage.

After the success of the Oculus Rift, The Oculus Quest, also known as the Meta Quest, became released as a standalone headset that doesn't need to be attached to a PC system. By definition, this makes the new Oculus and Meta series technically new consoles that are specific to VR.

VTech is a Hong Kong company that is most well-known for its work in developing educational video games and consoles that are primarily sold for preschool and younger children. Their lineup of consoles includes the V. Smile and V. Motion; both are considered interchangeable and were made in 2004/2007 respectively.

VTech is unique in that there's little focus on actually engaging with the gaming industry. Instead, their focus remains on learning devices for children, baby monitors, and cordless phones. They're still going strong and many of their products and learning-based hardware can be found and sold across the globe.