Atari and Magnavox continue to battle it out in court well into 1976. When it becomes increasingly clear that Atari can’t win the court battle, the two agree to settle out of court, with Atari paying a huge amount of money to license Ralph Baer’s patents. Since it isn’t in court, it doesn’t set a clear court precedent, but it leads Magnavox to begin a chain of legal battles going after every major video game company until the patents finally expire in the 1990s. Magnavox wins every case, although they aren’t able to enforce ownership of video arcade games, only home consoles.
Shortly after the Magnavox v Atari case is settled, Atari is sold to Warner for a hefty sum of money. Under their leadership, Atari is brought back from the brink, and puts out a string of pioneering video arcade games. When they release their second home console, the Atari 2600, it becomes far more popular than the Magnavox Odyssey ever was, inspiring a string of successors.
Nintendo continues to make arcade games. In 1976, some of them are even distributed internationally by Sega. They use what they learned working with the Magnavox Odyssey, and eventually decide to make their own home console, and when they release it in the US, they make sure to license Magnavox’s patents.
Tomohiro Nishikado and his team continue to make arcade video games for Taito. He soon moves away from sports games to come up with a string of innovative video games, which inspire numerous other companies in the region to start making their own video games. His games play a major part in establishing Japan as a major producer of arcade video games, and, eventually, as the center of the worldwide video game industry.
Atari Japan continues to operate under Nakamura Manufacturing Company. Using the experience it gained managing the branch, the company decides to enter the video game market in 1977, which is also when it officially shortens its name, from Nakamura Manufacturing Company, to Namco.
The PDP line and PLATO system are slowly phased out, succeeded by the nascent microcomputer. Silas Warner, a contributor to several PLATO games, goes on to create Castle Wolfenstein. The game lays the foundation for the first-person shooter, which has its start in many of the 3D multiplayer shooters Warner was involved with.
After the lawsuit, Ralph Baer sees a cabinet of Atari’s Touch Me at a trade show. Believing the idea has potential outside the format of an arcade game, he creates Simon, a version of the game converted to a electronic handheld format. Ultimately, he gave Atari a taste of their own medicine, with Simon finding immense popularity vastly eclipsing that of the original Atari game.
An emulated version of Simon, a distant predecessor to handheld video games. For directions or more info, please check the original source here.
After Simon, Baer goes on to build new home consoles for Atari’s competitors. He campaigns for years to be recognized for his contributions to the Magnavox Odyssey, and, in 2006, is awarded the National Medal of Technology by president George W. Bush in honor of his work. He dies in 2014, at the age of 92.
Ralph Baer receiving as award for "groundbreaking and pioneering creation, development and commercialization of interactive video games."
Al Alcorn leaves Atari in 1981, becoming involved in a series of startups around the Silicon Valley area. In 2008, he gets a chance to play Magnavox Odyssey Table Tennis for the first time on an emulated replica of the Brown Box, which he’d only heard descriptions of while building Pong. Playing against Ralph Baer, he’s able to beat the creator at his own game.
Ralph Baer and Al Alcorn facing off with a replica of the Brown Box’s Table Tennis game.
After selling Atari to Warner, Nolan Bushnell founds Pizza Time Theater, based on the pizza parlor idea he had back in 1970, before starting Syzygy. Thanks to Pizza Time Theater, video arcade games come to found in pizza parlors just as much as dedicated video arcades, and the company rebrands itself a few years later after its mascot, Chuck E. Cheese. Bushnell gets extremely rich off of his businesses, enabling him to buy the historic Folger Mansion, where he raises six children with his second wife.
Bushnell remains an active businessman to this day, as well as a prolific speaker, often giving talks about entrepreneurship and his time at Atari. He’s been criticized for magnifying his own achievements and minimizing those of others, and consistently avoids acknowledging the Magnavox Odyssey, in 2010 describing Ralph Baer as “at most a pain in the ass.” He now capitalizes on his association with Atari and Pong to sell blockchain-related projects and crypto scams.
Nolan Bushnell’s answer to the question of whether success changed his life.
After leaving Atari in 1974, Ted Dabney makes his best efforts to preserve his friendship with Nolan Bushnell. He invents the automated ticket number system used at Chuck E. Cheese for Bushnell, and creates an electromechanical quiz game for the establishment as well. He cuts off involvement with Bushnell’s ventures after a dispute over $90,000, soon leaving the video game industry for good to work at a string of technology companies.
Ted Dabney recounts a story about he and Bushnell’s relationship after leaving the company.
Dabney watches the video game industry grow from a grocery store in northern California, which he manages with his wife until around 2006. He remembers watching his grandchildren play video games and getting to tell them about how he’d helped invent them. His grandchildren are not impressed, but confused: “because if I helped invent video games, why wasn't I more known, like Walt Disney or Steve Jobs?"
In March 2018, a group of seven people from the Smithsonian Institute travel to California to interview Dabney on his role in Atari’s founding. Dabney is taken aback at the scale of the operation- he genuinely never considered that so many people were interested in him and his work. Ted Dabney dies of cancer two months later, on May 26, 2018, at the age of 81.