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Slot Manufacturer Profile: Bally Gaming    (Part 3)

In less than ten years, Bally had again skyrocketed to the top of the slot machine business in America, and had sold a full ninety percent of all the fruit machines in the nation. The 60s were when the Bally company went public, and its shares were bought and sold for the first time. The money that flowed in from the success of the first sales fueled Bally’s diversification into other industries than gambling for the first time. Bally’s first venture outside pinball and slot games was into the video game industry, which was just in its genesis in the 1970s. Space Invaders was one the first video game titles to achieve widespread popularity (think the Nintendo Wii for your parents’ generation). It was licensed by Bally. Think that that was a coup? Well, you may have heard of Bally’s next purchase once or twice: a little Atari game called Pac-Man.

Based off the epic popularity of Pac-Man, Bally set forth with plans to develop and produce their very own video game console (system), called the Bally Astrocade. Despite the company’s apparent flair for developing console games and the system’s nifty and futuristic-sounding name, the Astrocade was a flop. Part of the problem was that the system’s technology was miles ahead of its contemporary competitor, the Atari 2600. Subsequently, it was priced much higher. The high cost drove away buyers, and the slot machine company was forced to withdraw from the video game biz. A string of similar failures in other arenas led Bally to turn its focus back to its old standby, slot games. That, at least, was an area in which Bally could rest reasonably assured of success!

Continue to part 4 here.

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