List of Atari, Inc. games
In 1975 Atari released Home Pong, its first of several "Pong"-based dedicated video game consoles, and in 1977 released its first home video game console, the Atari Video Computer System (later renamed the Atari 2600). From that point onward Atari developed both arcade games and console games, and in 1979 added games for their first home computers, the Atari 400 and 800. Atari produced a second home video game console in 1982, the Atari 5200, and four more home computer versions. Beginning in Summer 1981, Atari published the Atari Program Exchange, a quarterly mail-order catalog of software written for Atari computers by external developers which Atari then distributed to customers. In May 1983, Atari started the Atarisoft division, which produced ports of games by Atari and others for non-Atari home computers. In July 1984, as a result of falling sales due to the video game crash of 1983, Atari, Inc. was split apart by Warner Communications; the arcade division continued as a subsidiary of Warner under the name Atari Games, while the console and computer games divisions were sold off as Atari Corporation.
Atari 2600
Despite Bushnell's retirement in 1978, Warren Robinett's invention of the first action-adventure game, "Adventure", was developed the same year and changed the fundamentals of gaming as it unlocked a game with a "virtual space bigger than the screen". However, the VCS still had gained a killer application to sell the console, and it had suffered the loss of programmers David Crane, Bob Whitehead, Larry Kaplan, and Alan Miller, the company's "Fantastic Four", who had programmed most of the successful VCS games to that point. The four left Atari disgruntled over Warner's oversight of the company and treatment of programmers in 1978, and formed the firm Activision, which would give rise to third-party software for the VCS. While the VCS was the best-selling console during the 1979 holiday season with over 1 million units sold, Atari saw newfound competition from the Mattel Intellivision and Magnavox Odyssey², both systems that also used swapable ROM cartridges.
Atari then licensed the arcade hit "Space Invaders" by Taito, which greatly increased the unit's popularity when it was released in January 1980, doubling sales to over 2 million units. The VCS and its cartridges were the main factor behind Atari grossing more than $2 billion in 1980. Sales then doubled again for the next two years; by 1982, the console had sold 10 million units, while its best-selling game "Pac-Man" sold 7 million copies. The console also sold 450,000 units in West Germany by 1984.