But that doesn't square with the obscurity of that game relative to Pong.Ītari was quicker to file a patent for it. But that doesn't really make sense the reason they were able to make it more complex, was that the technology had moved forward, and it had also moved forward for the cloners. Tank, being more complex, was harder to clone. So maybe the Pong clones make up the general ubiquity that game seems to have had.īut that leads to another question: why did the same thing not happen with Tank? Why was the world not similarly flooded with Tank clones? In those days, patents didn't start applying until granted, and it took two or three years from application to grant for that reason, Atari did not put the application at the top of its initial to-do list this is discussed further at

One way to square the numbers is to note that both are specifically for the Atari versions. How does that square with the estimates of the two games selling roughly equal numbers? well, sure, it existed, it was reasonably popular in its day, but I had forgotten its existence until I looked it up it certainly doesn't seem to have had anything like the iconic omnipresence of Pong. Those numbers look surprising when matched against recollections of the time. (A lower figure of 8,500 is also listed, but looking at the references linked from that page, that seems to be only the number sold in one year.)Ī subsequent game, Tank, is said to have sold over 15,000 units in total: (video_game) According to the number of units eventually sold was about 19,000. The first commercially successful arcade video game was Pong in 1972.

Atari arcade tank battle sifi