Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari, at GamesBeat Summit.
Categories

Atari founder Nolan Bushnell is still gaming’s showman at 72

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 10 min

In 1972, Nolan Bushnell co-founded Atari with Ted Dabney. The company went on to launch seminal video games such as Pong and Breakout that defined a generation of gamers. Almost 43 years later, he’s still the spokesman and showman of video games.

Bushnell still has a lot of fun as the public voice of gaming. He has an educational games startup, BrainRush, and he’s an advisor to many game startups. He wrote the book, “Finding the Next Steve Jobs,” where he talked about how he could have owned a third of Apple for $50,000. He’s also writing a new book, “The Unemployment Myth,” about how tech can both destroy and create jobs.

Unlock premium content and VIP community perks with GB M A X! Join now to enjoy our free and premium perks. 

Join now →

Sign in to your account.

Next page
Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.