Word: atari
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...some 40 manufacturers are producing TV games at list prices of $40 and up. By the end of the Christmas season, Americans will have bought some 3 million of them this year-at least ten times as many as in 1975. Some of the leading makers, notably Atari, Fairchild and Magnavox, have plants working overtime and still cannot meet the demand. Nor, it seems, is there any limit to the TV games people will eventually play. By TIME's count, there are already more than 50 different varieties of video contests available, from tennis to tank warfare to ticktacktoe...
Typical of the new games is Pong*, a popular version of electronic table tennis manufactured by two-year-old Atari, Inc. (estimated fiscal 1974 revenue: $14 million) of Los Gates, Calif. Atari sold some 8,500 games to U.S. amusement parlors and other businesses last year, in addition to a substantial overseas trade. Pong is played on a standard television to which a simple circuit board has been added. This device projects images representing a "ball," two "paddles"-four for doubles-and a "net" onto the screen (actually, all are beams of light). By turning knobs, each player...
Other screen games use different means to add to the challenge. A race driving game now being test-marketed by Atari projects the view from the cockpit of a Grand Prix car negotiating the hairpin curves of the track at Le Mans. Manning a phony steering wheel, accelerator and gear shift, the player tries to complete the circuit as many times as possible without "spinning out" before the time limit expires. The simulation, complete with the sounds of squealing brakes and revving engines, is so realistic, Atari executives report, that "we've watched guys leaving the wheel with sweat...
They are also more profitable. Atari executives report that Pong games frequently take in $200 to $300 per week. Each game costs a quarter, v. only a dime for most pinball machines; the total take from all the machines now in play is estimated at more than $900 million annually...
...least 18 U.S. firms and 23 European companies are fighting for a share of the more than $60 million that industry sources expect to rack up this year from selling electronic games. This hunt for profits could wind up in court. Atari, whose Pong machines were the first to show up in penny arcades, has secured a patent on the electronic circuitry that makes the games possible. Its management contends that other manufacturers should therefore be paying Atari a royalty on each game they produce. To the true pinball aficionado, of course, all this is beside the point; what...