Page:Gametronics Proceedings.djvu/9

 I

TELEVISION GAMES THEIR PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE RALPH H. BAER Manager, Consumer Products Developments Sanders Associates, Inc. Nashua, New Hampshire

The Home TV Game industry has just been through a year of unprecedented growth. By the end of Calendar 1976, somewhere between three and four million Home TV Games had been sold to U. S. consumers alone. All indications are that there is a demand for still larger quantities of TV Games in 1977.

There were several engineers at Sanders Associates, Inc. who worked with me nearly a decade ago to get Home TV Games underway. With all due modesty, we now look with considerable satisfaction at the results of our pioneering efforts. It is not everyday that engineers can personally identify with the creation of a whole subindustry.

Furthermore, we have had the pleasure of staying close to continuing TV Game development activities at Sanders Associates, Inc. to the present day. As a result, I was happy to respond when I was asked to look at the Past, Present and Future of TV Games, and Home TV Games in particular. I hope that you will find the few minutes I am about to spend on reminiscencingreminiscing [sic], of interest; after that I will try to shed some light on where we are today and where future developments are likely to take us over the next several years.

I've often been asked how and when it all began, and I get the feeling that some people expect to hear some kind of an inspiring tale of divine revelation. Now, I wish I could oblige but I don't have to tell you that in real life, ideas rarely come out of thin air, and that what usually happens is pretty straightforward.

The background for my numerous TV Game related inventions starts with a degree in TV engineering which I obtained further back than I'd like to admit. The question of how to make use of home TV sets, other than watching over-the-air programs, had been bothering me since the early sixties. Now, again you don't have to go too far to find my motivation. That also has very little to do with divine inspiration. The fact is that even back then there were some 62 million TV homes—that is TV, not. There were well over a million TV sets, in the U. S. alone by 1965, and about as many again in the rest of the Western world and places like Japan and Australia. The idea of attaching some device to even a small fraction of that many TV sets was a pretty powerful incentive for coming up with something, anything, on which people might actually want to spend their money. Page 1: ABC newscaster Ed Leslie and Ramtek president Chuck McEwan watch as ABC cameraman zooms in on Barricade.

Page 2: Jerry Eimbinder presents award to Nolan Bushnell.

Page 4: Magnavox game designer John Slusarski.

Page 6: Ralph Baer addressing Gametronics conference.