The concept was predated by Ramtek's Clean Sweep (1974), but the game's designers were influenced by Atari's own Pong (1972).

The company's influential Apple II computer, designed mostly by Wozniak, has technical elements inspired by Breakout's hardware.

Atari was involved in a series of court cases over their ability to copyright Breakout, and they were ultimately allowed to do so.

The paddle shrinks to one-half its size after the ball has broken through the red row and hit the upper wall.

The original arcade cabinet of Breakout has artwork framing the game's plot a prison escape.

Al Alcorn was assigned as the Breakout project manager, and he began development with Cyan Engineering in 1975.

The original deadline was met after Wozniak worked at Atari four nights straight, doing some additional designs while at his day job at Hewlett-Packard.

[19] In Atari Games Corp. v. Oman, then Court of Appeals Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg found that the work was copyrightable.

However, Wozniak claims Atari could not understand the design and speculates "maybe some engineer there was trying to make some kind of modification to it".

Atari had this term trademarked and used it in addition to Breakout to describe gameplay, especially in look-alike games and remakes.

In October 1976, the annual RePlay chart listed Breakout as the fifth highest-earning arcade video game of 1976 in the United States, below Midway Manufacturing's Sea Wolf, Gun Fight, and Wheels, and Atari's Indy 800.

On the first annual Game Machine arcade chart, Breakout was the fourth highest-grossing arcade video game of 1976 in Japan, below Taito's Ball Park (Tornado Baseball) and Speed Race DX and Sega's Heavyweight Champ.

[32] In 2021, The Guardian listed Breakout as the fourth greatest video game of the 1970s, below Galaxian, Asteroids and Space Invaders.

Ten years later, the concept found new legs with Taito's 1986 Arkanoid, which itself spawned dozens of imitators.

Breakout was also the basis and inspiration for certain aspects of the Apple II personal computer and Taito's arcade shoot 'em up game Space Invaders (1978).

After designing hardware arcade games, I knew that being able to program them in BASIC was going to change the world.Tomohiro Nishikado cited Breakout as the original inspiration behind his hit Space Invaders (1978).

He wanted to adapt the same sense of achievement and tension from destroying targets one at a time for a shooting game.

[38] A revamped version of the game titled, Breakout: Recharged, was released on February 10, 2022, for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Microsoft Windows and Atari VCS as part of the Atari Recharged series.

Sudnow describes studying the game's mechanics, visiting the manufacturer in Silicon Valley, and interviewing the programmers.

[40] The first-generation iPod Classic has an Easter egg where holding down the center button for a few seconds in the "About" menu causes Breakout to appear.

The image thumbnails form the breakout bricks, turn different colors, and after a ball and paddle appear the game begins.