And Now To 1974
I kept cogitating about ways to improve our chances for substantial license income from TV games. A memo I wrote to Dan Chisholm, Lou Etlinger and Herb Campman on March 18 sums up what I was thinking: I reiterated Magnavox‘ complete lack of effort in the sublicensing arena and recounted my frustration with their foot dragging in accepting my support. I specifically described my effort to get Magnavox to work with me on a single chip PMOS design that was by now more than feasible. Such a design would have given Magnavox an attractive package to present to future sub licensees, especially overseas. At least that was my opinion.
Magnavox resisted the thought of sub licensing … they insisted that they did not want to generate competition for themselves. It was obvious that both Atari and others were going to develop the „video game“ business whether they, Magnavox, liked it or not. I was fuming mad.
As it turned out, I was right, of course. The appearance of the GI AY3-8500 game chip changed all that within a year. Suddenly anybody could produce a high quality pong like video game for home use. With this new situation, the pressure to get a sub licensing program organized at Magnavox went up dramatically … but I’m jumping ahead!
I further reported on Magnavox‘ dealings with TI on a chipset which basically imitated our Brown Box and Odyssey’s discrete component designs. They included the sync circuits, the ball and paddle spot generators, as well as our summer, flip-flop and diode matrix subcircuit designs. Odyssey ITL-200 contained these subcircuits on separate small PC boards that plugged into a mother board. TI went one step further and integrated these subsystem modules on one chip.
In May, TI and Magnavox signed an agreement to have TI design and fabricate such a chip set, copying our circuitry, with Magnavox‘ help under a contract negotiated that month for multiple chip sets. They were to be used to produce the Model 100 game by Magnavox in 1975, a development spurred on by the inside knowledge of an impending Atari home video game.
TI promised delivery of that chip set for 01/75. Magnavox, finally getting up some steam, wanted a fall back position and went ahead with a discrete component design should TI fail to deliver. By the time August rolled around, Magnavox had received a proposal from National Semiconductor for a single chip, PMOS design for January or February 1975 delivery. There was a 30k to 40k design cost associated with this chip set and devices were estimated to cost $7 to $8 per chip.
Come August of ’74, Bob Fritsche tells me that National Semi is „out“, at least for now. Magnavox had decided to go with the design calling for the five TI chips „aping“ our discrete component design … talk about moving backwards. A single chip design was to follow later.
I knew I couldn’t just hang around waiting for Magnavox to get off the dime. I had begun to spend more and more time away from my primary job in the electro optics division. My main focus was now directed at squeezing as much mileage out of our Magnavox licensing deal as possible. That wasn’t going to happen without pushing the envelope every day of the week because Magnavox didn’t seem to have a firm handle on the direction their future product line should take.