Nutting ordered an initial production run of 1,500 units of "Computer Space", an optimistic decision given that a hit arcade game at the time would sell around 2,000 units, though a handful had reached 10,000. Reception to the game from distributors was mixed. While some were excited by the game, others felt it confusing and would amount to nothing more than a passing fad at best. By spring 1972 the game had sold over 1,000 units, and according to Bushnell in 1976 ended up selling between 1,300 and 1,500 units. While this was a commercial success, making over , it was a disappointment to Nutting, which had been hoping for a large-scale success like "Computer Quiz". The game's relative lack of success was attributed to the complexity of its controls and a steep learning curve, which pushed away customers used to less complex games. Bushnell noted that the locations that the game did well in, like the Dutch Goose playtest location, were generally located near university campuses; the general market for coin-operated games, however, was in working-class bars, where the patrons were less interested in deciphering a complicated game. In the documentary "Video Game Invasion: The History of a Global Obsession", Bushnell explained, "Sure, I loved it, and all my friends loved it, but all my friends were engineers. It was a little too complicated for the guy with the beer in the bar." Bushnell has also stated that part of the difficulty lay in the novelty of the game; he said that even a few years later the controls and gameplay would have been more understandable to players who would have seen other video games by then. Conversely, Bushnell and Dabney have said that the game's novelty was also part of its appeal to players—most people had never seen a television screen displaying images being controlled by a person in front of it, rather than playing video from a remote television station.