Attack of the Pong Clones [1973]
11Atari wasn't positioned to capitalize on the sudden success of Pong. Other companies were. Subscribe to Blown Cartridges for more retro game history videos: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoDQj54Gd-w8RTdukMrQScQ?sub_confirmation=1
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Pong was a smash hit. Unlike the other games we've talked about in this series - Space War, Computer Space, The Sumerian Game, the Odyssey - it gained enough traction to break into the public consumer consciousness. Why did it succeed where earlier games wallowed in relative obscurity?
It was simpler than the games that came before - controlled by a single dial instead of the thrust, rotation, and hyperspace of Computer Space, but also addictive, and social, making it a perfect match for the working class bars and poolhalls that hosted the coin-op games of the day. More than that, though, it had the air of cutting edge technology about it.
When Atari released the game in late 1972 we'd only landed on the moon 3 years ago, and public interest in technology and computers was higher than ever. Pong felt like the future. Perhaps more importantly, it lacked the stigma that linked Pinball to gambling, enabling it to grow to reach higher class venues than traditional electromechanical arcade machines.
As a result demand was so high that Atari was able to sell machines for cash up front in an industry where the norm was to give distributors a few months credit to sell or return product. This demand enabled Atari to keep production constant despite a lack of financing, and by the end of their first fiscal year they'd pulled in over three million in sales, reinvesting it all into more product.
Remember, though, Atari was a small startup at this point - introducing the most popular arcade unit in the world was perhaps a little more than they could handle - particularly as they'd never intended to actually manufacture the machines. Dabney and Bushnell's original plan had been to contract designs out to other firms and let them build them, so they were really boostrapping their manufacturing capacity from scratch. Demand was so fierce that over 70,000 ball and paddle games were sold in 1973 - but Atari only had the capacity to meet 10% of that demand. This left ample room for competition to step in and cash in on the gold rush they'd created.
The arcade industry had been all about copycats since the early days of pinball, and Pong inspired imitation on a scale that hadn't been see in decades. Atari's slow roll-out at the end of 1972 allowed competitors to release clones before they could control the market, because 1 - Atari could only manufacture around a dozen units per day, and 2 -
Pong was as easy as it was to copy as it was to play, especially compared to other electromechanical machines with precisely calibrated analog components. Pong was entirely hardwired circuts, not programmed software, constructed entirely off of easily available off-the-shelf parts. Anyone who acquired a machine could deconstruct it and, with a little research, figure out what all the parts were and who manufactured them. Arcade manufacturers had the resources and expertise to produce their own versions on a scale Atari couldn't match, and even the integrated circuits were simple enough that you could contract as many chips as you might need.
The clones spread along with awareness of what Pong was and how well it was performing, staring with those firms on the West coast with access to Atari's initial slow rollout.
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