Ping-O-Tronic

The Ping-O-Tronic (stylized as ping • o • tronic and also known as Zanussi Ping-O-Tronic or Sèleco Ping-O-Tronic) is a dedicated first-generation home video game console produced by Zanussi, an Italian home appliance company, and released under their Sèleco brand in late-1974 only in Italy.[1][2] It was the first Italian video game console, excluding Magnavox Odyssey imports and clones.[3]

Ping-O-Tronic
A Zanussi Ping-O-Tronic with its two paddle-based game controllers
Also known asZanussi Ping-O-Tronic Séleco Ping-O-Tronic
ManufacturerZanussi
TypeDedicated home video game console
GenerationFirst generation
Release dateLate 1974
Retail availabilityLate 1974
Lifespan1974-?
Introductory priceEstimated 70.000–130.000 Italian lira (Play-O-Tronic)
Units soldc. 1 million with Play-O-Tronic (as of 1983)
PredecessorNone
SuccessorPlay-O-Tronic

It came in an orange and white plastic container with a paddles housing. The control logic is based on three 7400 chips. Usable games are only three similar ones: Pong, Squash/Solo and Automatic/Attract.[3][4] The last one was the only game that did not require players and was used by stores to demonstrate the system without having anyone play it.[5]

There are several versions of this console, marked by the abbreviations PP-1 up to PP-10. Starting from the PP-5, there was a new slot to which an optical gun could be connected to play a new aiming game. This accessory was called Gun-O-Tronic (stylized as gun • o • tronic).[3] The only other known consoles at the time which allowed the user to play target shooting games were the Magnavox Odyssey and Philips Tele-Game ES 2201.[4]

On April 21, 1975, Zanussi obtained the license to implement Pong from Sanders Associates.[2]

Play-O-Tronic
Play-O-Tronic

In 1977, Zanussi produced and sold a new model of a Pong-like console called Play-O-Tronic (stylized as play • o • tronic and also known as Zanussi Play-O-Tronic or Sèleco Play-O-Tronic). Unlike the Ping-O-Tronic, which was built with discrete components, the Play-O-Tronic was built from a single AY-3-8500 chip.[4]

The console was also sold in Germany by German mailorder company Quelle, who sold the console under the name Universum TV Multi-Spiel (stylized as UNIVERSUM TV Multi-Spiel).[6][7][8] A built-in power supply comes with the Multi-Spiel.[6]

Sales

Zanussi was reported to have sold 21,514 units of the Play-O-Tronic from October 1, 1977 to December 31, 1977 and earned a total of 620,408,000 Italian lira (US$127,782,334), of which 5.5%, 34,122,440 lira (US$7,028,028) went to Sanders Associates.[2] When calculating and considering sales margins, it can be assumed that each console costed between 70,000 and 130,000 lira.

As of 1983, around 1 million units of both the Ping-O-Tronic and Play-O-Tronic had been sold.[9]

gollark: Facebook's mobile apps have an awful development process. They had to do horrible hacks to Android VM internals to fit their over 60 thousand classes in. This probably harms productivity somewhat.
gollark: Not necessarily.
gollark: Which PHP isn't good at due to accused technical debt induction.
gollark: They could have done better with another language, and/or it was a flÜke.
gollark: Some examples of it being used successfully do not make it good in general, cuboid.

References
  1. Tristan, Donovan (2010). "Hardware Glossary". Replay, The History Of Video Games. Lewes (Regno Unito): Yellow Ant. ISBN 978-0-9565072-2-8.
  2. "Zanussi - Ping-O-Tronic Advertisement". Pongmuseum.com. August 27, 2009. Archived from the original on April 27, 2014. Retrieved June 8, 2019.
  3. J. P. Wolf, Mark. The Video Game Explosion: A History from PONG to Playstation and Beyond.
  4. http://www.pong-story.com/zanussi.htm Dal sito pong-story
  5. Baker, Kevin. The Ultimate Guide to Classic Game Consoles.
  6. "Universum Multi-Spiel". Pong-picture-page.de. September 29, 2006. Archived from the original on September 7, 2012. Retrieved July 14, 2018.
  7. "Universum TV Multi-Spiel [BINARIUM]". binarium.de. Retrieved 2020-07-07.
  8. "Play-O-Tronic for Dedicated console (1977)". MobyGames. Retrieved 2020-07-07.
  9. "Riapre Sèleco, e la tv torna a parlare l'italiano". Tom's Hardware (in Italian). August 1, 2017. Retrieved July 14, 2018.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.