Time4Tea: I think this is a key insightful comment. The main focus of pre-NES consoles was to try to recreate video arcade games in the home. They generally did a poor to middling job of it (due to the hardware limitations) and they all went down with the video arcade industry in the early 80s.

Part of the reason the NES was successful and helped to revitalize the video games industry is that it pioneered video games that were designed from the start to be home console games, rather than just weak arcade ports. It introduced entirely new types and styles of games and concepts.