MOST IMPORTANT GAME IN HISTORY OF VIDEO GAMES - ATARI PONG 1972
11HISTORY OF VIDEO GAMES - ATARI PONG 1972
Pong was the first commercially successful video game, sparking the arcade gaming industry. It demonstrated that video games could be profitable and popular, leading to the rise of Atari and the rapid expansion of the video game market. Pong also inspired the creation of countless home console versions, helping to bring video games into homes and fueling the development of the home gaming industry.
PONG was created by Nolan Bushnell and Allan Alcorn, was a simple table tennis-style arcade game where two players used paddles to bounce a ball back and forth. The goal was to score points by getting the ball past the opponent's paddle.
In 1972 Atari sold over 8000 arcade cabinets of Pong. Pong consistently earned four times more revenue than other coin-operated machines. Bushnell estimated that the game earned US$35–40 per day, which he described as nothing he'd ever seen before in the coin-operated entertainment industry at the time. Soon other companies began copying Pong. Similar games appeared on the market three months later. Atari was not able to stop them from producing clones and by 1973 the US market was flooded by over 70000 cabinet units but less than 30% of them where made by Atari.
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