King Pong: How Atari Bounced Across Markets to Make Millions by Guins, Raiford
King Pong: How Atari Bounced Across Markets to Make Millions by Guins, Raiford

King Pong: How Atari Bounced Across Markets to Make Millions

Why and how Atari's first video game PONG established an industry that shapes consumers' relationships to technology...
$39.90 USD
$71.99 USD
$39.90 USD
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Author: Raiford Guins
Format: Paperback
Language: English
Subtotal: $39.90
King Pong: How Atari Bounced Across Markets to Make Millions by Guins, Raiford

King Pong: How Atari Bounced Across Markets to Make Millions

$71.99 $39.90
King Pong: How Atari Bounced Across Markets to Make Millions by Guins, Raiford

King Pong: How Atari Bounced Across Markets to Make Millions

$71.99 $39.90
Author: Raiford Guins
Format: Paperback
Language: English
Description
Why and how Atari's first video game PONG established an industry that shapes consumers' relationships to technology to this day.

PONG is one of the longest- and most consistently circulating video games. Released in 1972, it remains at our fingertips as Android or iOS app, hosted at freepong.org and the Internet Archive, and even released as A Tiny Game of Pong for the Apple Watch. Despite its simplicity and ubiquity, Atari's PONG encapsulates far more than the history of a video game and an iconic game company. King PONG is the first book dedicated to an unassuming game that changed the world. Through the prisms of product positioning, market development, and category creation, Raiford Guins answers the question of why Atari's inaugural product succeeded and why it endures.

The author of Game After and Atari Design, and an excavator of the "Atari landfill" in New Mexico, Guins brings us a unique history that reconsiders the launch of Atari's PONG through the lens of the company's business practices. He follows the young Silicon Valley startup from its early days of positioning its new product within the existing coin-op amusement industry to its establishment of a consumer industry for home video games--a story of remarkable market development innovation. Written with a passion for video games and a historian's insight, the book animates the business exploits of one of the fastest growing and most influential companies ever.

Author: Raiford Guins
Publisher: MIT Press
Published: 02/10/2026
Pages: 224
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.45lbs
Size: 8.00h x 5.20w x 0.70d
ISBN: 9780262051330


Review Citation(s):
Kirkus Reviews 11/01/2025

About the Author
Raiford Guins is Professor and Chair of Cinema and Media Studies in the Media School at Indiana University, Bloomington. A few of his books include Atari Design and Game After (MIT Press). Guins also coedits the MIT Press's Game Histories book series with Henry Lowood.
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