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While SEGA had made advances into the arcade game industry, by the early 70s there still wasn't a home based video gaming counsel of any sort. While most people involved with the gaming industry, around that time, knew that the creation of a home gaming counsel was very possible, they questioned whether or not there was any future in it. After all, the very first home gaming counsel created by Magnavox, in 1972, known as "The Odyssey", had failed miserably, not to mention cost Magnavox millions of dollars to create. Someone had to have the courage to create a home based gaming counsel, and that someone was Nolan Bushnell. In 1972 Nolan Bushnell started his own gaming company called ATARI, and in just one year came out with very first Pong arcade games. Two years later, in 1975, Atari came out with a home based version of Pong that was played through a television. Seeing sales in the game, and huge potential, bought the exclusive sales rights for the game, but Warner Communications put Atari into the status of a major company when they purchased the company for 28 million dollars. With loads of money available for production, In 1977 Atari was able to release a 4 bit system called "The Video Computer System" (VCS 2600). This was a major advancement and landmark in the gaming world because not only was the first major home counsel available to the public, but it was the first video gaming counsel that had the capability to play various games instead of only being restricted to one specific game. Over the next three years Atari released popular games for their VCS 2600 such as Pong, Space invaders, and their best selling game, asteroids. While other companies such as Mattel would release their own home gaming counsel in the early 80s, none would prove to be successful as Atari was. One major landmark in 1980 was the arcade game "Pac-Man" released by Namco. Pac Man quickly became the most popular arcade game in history, and earned Namco millions of dollars in profits.
