It sells 1.5 million units over the year, beating the mighty 2600, the Intellivision, and Atari's new 5200 Supersystem. There are 29 game publishers producing cartridges for the system, and with the Atari converter it has the largest game library of any console on the market. There are three internal slots, along with an expansion bus for the peripherals and the stand-alone system features an external cartridge slot into which ColecoVision cartridges can be inserted and played, as well as two game controllers. The add-on had its own port for video output to a monitor, as well as two external joystick ports, but TV output to channels 3 or 4 was handled by the original game console, which the CPU box fit onto through the expansion slot at the front of the console. By late 1983 Coleco has received a delayed approval from the FCC on the ADAM design and the company frantically begins mass production to meet the 400,000 orders retailers are demanding before the much-valued Christmas season.
Public reaction is mass indifference, with sales vastly below company forecasts.
Out of the pre-orders, only 100,000 eventually sell. The ADAM is buggy to say the least, with one of the most dramatic problems being the enormous magnetic pulse the machine emits when powering up, erasing any tapes accidentally left in the data drive. 60 percent of all ADAMs sold are eventually returned to stores as defective. In 1984, with the home videogame market hemorrhaging badly, the consumer electronics division of Coleco loses over 258 million dollars. The ADAM and ColecoVision line of electronic devices are abandoned by Coleco in early 1985.