Atari 2600 set of games. Further, while they could continue to take games they had created for arcade machines to home consoles, this development step cost at least and time to complete, and once on the market, had only about a three-month shelf life before being outdated, making this a risky move. In 1974, Atari had acquired Cyan Engineering, an electronics company founded by Steve Mayer and Larry Emmons, both former colleagues of Bushnell and Dabney from Ampex, and started Atari's Grass Valley Think Tank, where they were involved with coming up with new ideas for arcade games. Based on Bushnell's concern
Nolan Bushnell California, contracted with Bally Manufacturing to create a driving game, and hired their second employee, engineer Allan Alcorn. Bushnell later bought out Dabney, who was forced out after Nolan told him he would transfer all the assets to another corporation and leave Ted with nothing. After Bushnell attended a Burlingame, California demonstration of the Magnavox Odyssey, he gave the task of making the Magnavox tennis game into a coin-op version to Alcorn as a test project. He told Alcorn that he was making the game for General Electric, in order to motivate him, but in actuality he planned to simply