Atari 2600 of 2004. Atari was founded by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney of which their first major product was "Pong" in 1972, one of the first successful arcade games. It transitioned "Pong" into a home console version by 1975, helping to pit Atari against Magnavox, the only other major competitor for home consoles at the time. Bushnell recognized that this approach to home consoles has a drawback in that because it used custom logic burned onto the circuit board, it was limited to only one game and any variants, and would require consumers to buy another console to play a different
Early history of video games directly displayed via modification of a video signal; it was also the first video gaming device to be displayed in a television commercial. It sold for US$100 and shipped with several games, including "Table tennis", which Bushnell had seen a demo of and which "Pong" had been based on. The Odyssey sold over 100,000 units in 1972, and more than 350,000 by the end of 1975, buoyed by the popularity of the table tennis game, in turn driven by the success of "Pong". "Pong" and the Odyssey kicked off a new era of video gaming, with numerous other competitors starting