Pong was released by Atari in 1972 and  it became the most popular arcade video game of all time and it was the first ever commercially successful arcade video game. Ironically Pong is what led the way to video games replace arcade games with the release if the Magnavox Odyssey which was the first home console and it had a table tennis game which was very similar to Pong. Pong was so successful that between 1972 and 1984 over 15 companies began to develop video games based on the success on Pong. within a year of it's released between 8,000 and 10,000 machines were sold.