page_title: History of video games
section_title: First generation of home consoles and the Pong clones (1975–1977)
hierarchical_section_title: History of video games / 1970s / First generation of home consoles and the Pong clones (1975–1977)
caption_attribution_description: The Odyssey 300, a dedicated game console released in 1976.
context_page_description: The history of video games goes as far back as the early 1950s, when academic computer scientists began designing simple games and simulations as part of their research or just for recreation. At M.I.T. in the 1960s, professors and students played games such as 3D tic-tac-toe and Moon Landing. These games were played on computers such as the IBM 1560, and moves were made by means of punch cards. Video gaming did not reach mainstream popularity until the 1970s and 1980s, when video arcade games and gaming consoles using joysticks, buttons, and other controllers, along with graphics on computer screens and home computer games were introduced to the general public. Since the 1980s, video gaming has become a popular form of entertainment and a part of modern popular culture in most parts of the world.
  One of the early games was Spacewar!, which was developed by computer scientists. Early arcade video games developed from 1972 to 1978. During the 1970s, the first generation of home consoles emerged, including the popular game Pong and various "clones". The 1970s was also the era of mainframe computer games. The golden age of arcade video games was from 1978 to 1982.
context_section_description: The Magnavox Odyssey never caught on with the public, due largely to the limited functionality of its primitive technology. By the middle of the 1970s, however, the ball-and-paddle craze in the arcade had ignited public interest in video games and continuing advances in integrated circuits had resulted in large-scale integration (LSI) microchips cheap enough to be incorporated into a consumer product.  In 1975, Magnavox reduced the part count of the Odyssey using a three-chip set created by Texas Instruments and released two new systems that only played ball-and-paddle games, the Magnavox Odyssey 100 and Magnavox Odyssey 200. Atari, meanwhile, entered the consumer market that same year with the single-chip Home Pong system designed by Harold Lee.  The next year, General Instrument released a "Pong-on-a-chip" LSI and made it available at a low price to any interested company. Toy company Coleco Industries used this chip to create the million-selling Telstar console model series (1976–77), while dozens of other companies released models as well.  Overall, sales of dedicated ball-and-paddle systems in the U.S. grew from 350,000 in 1975 to a peak of 5–6 million in 1977. A similar boom hit the United Kingdom and other parts of Europe, with much of the market supplied by clone manufacturers in Hong Kong.
  After 1977, the dedicated console market in the United States collapsed. A new wave of programmable systems hit the market starting with the Fairchild Channel F in 1976 that offered the possibility of purchasing and playing a wider variety of games stored on cartridges containing mask ROM that could be plugged directly into the CPU of the console. As older model dedicated consoles were heavily discounted and consumers with more purchasing power transitioned to the new programmable systems, newer dedicated systems with more advanced features like Video Pinball from Atari and the Magnavox Odyssey 4000 were squeezed out by their lower priced predecessors and their more sophisticated programmable replacements.  This caused a brief dip in the market and the exit of industry leader Coleco, which failed to transition to programmable hardware. Fairchild remained in the new programmable market alongside Atari and Magnavox, which released the VCS (1977) and Odyssey² (1978) respectively.
caption: The Magnavox Odyssey 300, Magnavox's 1975 Odyssey model
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