At the beginning of the 1970s, video games existed almost entirely as novelties passed around by programmers and technicians with access to computers, primarily at research institutions and large companies. 1970 marks the beginning of a commercial games industry as the first companies begin work on commercial video game hardware. This includes Syzygy, later known as Atari, which began development for Computer Space (1971), and Magnavox's work on what would become the Odyssey (1972).

Events

• Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney of Syzygy begin work on Computer Space, using their free weekends while working at Ampex. The machine is not released until the following year.^[1]
• March - Licensing negotiations begin at Magnavox over the development of video game hardware called the "Skill O Vision", later renamed to the Odyssey.^[2]
• April - Adelson-Vel'sky, Arlazov, Bitman, Zhivotovskii and Uskov publish their paper Programming a computer to play chess in Russian Mathematical Surveys. In addition to discussion of the mathematical problems involved, the paper includes records of humans playing against the computer.^[3]
• September 1-3 - The first North American Computer Chess Championship is held by the Association for Computing Machinery. The victor that year is Chess 3.0, programmed by David Slate, Larry Atken and Gorlen of Northwestern University. The other competitors are The Daly CP (Chris Daly & Kenneth King), J. Biit (Columbia University), COKO III (University of California & Bell Telephone Laboratories),^[4] SCHACH (Texas A&M University) and Marsland CP (Tony Marsland).^[5][6]
• September 12 - Chris Gaylor, a student at Syosset High School, programs the mainframe game Highnoon.^[7]
• December 24 - A Christmas Eve special of BBC Tomorrow's World features Raymond Baxter and Graham Hill playing an early racing game against one another, with data centre workers Anne Norie and Margaret Watson manning the terminals for the game.^[8]