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It was decided Sears would sell it under it's own specically created Tele-Games lable, and production was initially projected at 50,000 units. Tom soon raised it to 150,000 for the 1975 Christmass season. Nolan also managed to work an exclusivity agreement that was agreeable to both parties. Atari agreed to give Sears exclusive rights for the following year, and would continue to make custom Tele-Games versions for any future consoles. This was the beginning of a long relationship between Atari and Sears, which would continue even after Nolan Bushnell sold Atari to Warner.
The console turned out to be a smash hit, and there were actually lines in the stores that Christmass for the console. This was all the proof of concept other people needed and soon many companies sprung up to develop and market their own pong type consoles. General Instruments became the most influential in the group, creating their own fabricated "pong on a chip" IC to be used as an OEM chip for the many pong competitors in their consoles. (Atari experimented in using this chip in one of their Sears consoles the following year, and even used a later generation of GI's chip in a console of their own). Atari followed up with no less than 5 new consoles for Sears in 1976. Pong IV was Atari's attempt to bring it's 4 player Pong to the home and introduced a new design concept - hardwired wedge shaped controllers to replace the mounted dials on the original pong console. It's next generation Pong, Super Pong (which added 3 more games to the original Pong), also used the detachable controllers to completely replace the mounted knobs. True to form, a 4 player version was also released, called Super Pong IV (a Sears exclusive, which had no later Atari release). Odd Sears releases and Atari releases their own home pong....
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