A presentation I made for a USC Computer Game class.

1. The History of
The 3DO Company
D AVID MUL L ICH
NOVE MB ER 25, 20 13

2. Trip Hawkins
• Designed his own major at
Harvard University in
Strategy and Applied
Game Theory
• Director of Strategy and
Marketing at Apple
Computer
• Founded Electronic Arts in
1982
• Created the Producer
model of game
production, based on
music industry producers

3. One Console To Rule Them All…
• Problem: Electronic Arts was frustrated with having to support
multiple console platforms
• Solution: Develop one great platform develop a new technology,
surpassing the technical capabilities of existing Nintendo and Sega
consoles, which everyone would want to support

5. The 3D Era
4 T H G E NE R AT ION G R APHICS
5 T H G ENER AT ION G R APHICS

6. San Mateo Software Group
• Electronic Arts’ board of directors thought console development was such a
different business, it should be spun off as a separate company
• Founded as SMSG in 1991, as a subsidiary of Electronic Arts
• Renamed The 3DO Company, it became a separate company in 1993 in
partnership with 7 companies, including
•
•
•
•
•
•
Electronic Arts
LG
Matsushita (now Panasonic)
AT&T
MCA
Time Warner

7. Trip Hawkins Departs EA For 3DO
• Trip was looking for someone to run 3DO but was having difficulty finding
the right person
• He and others came to the conclusion that he was the one who had the best
vision for what the company should be and that he should run it
• Trip became president of 3DO, remained chairman of EA, and named Larry
Probst president of EA
• He kept an office at both companies and spent half time at each for the first
year to 18 months
• When 3DO started developing software, a conflict of interest developed,
and Trip had to resign entirely from EA.

8. BUSINESS MODEL
• 3DO collected a royalty on each console sold and $3 royalty sold by
game (low compared Nintendo and Sega’s >$10 royalty)
• The licensing method accounts for why the 3DO became available
from no less than four separate manufacturers.
• To game publishers, the low $3 royalty rate per game was a better
deal than the higher royalties paid to Nintendo and Sega when
making games for their consoles.

9. GAMES
• 3DO started developing software to help kickstart hardware sales. It
developed a few games to showcase what the hardware could do and
then a few more in genres that weren’t be covered by their software
licensees.
• Some of the best-received titles were ports of arcade or PC games
that other cartridge-based systems of the time were not capable of
playing, such as Alone in the Dark, Myst and Star Control II.

10. GAMES
• Since its release coincided with the arrival of the modern first-person
shooter, the 3DO also had some of the earliest members of the genre
as exclusives, such as Escape from Monster Manor, as well as ports of
Wolfenstein 3D and Doom
• Other popular titles included Total Eclipse, Jurassic Park Interactive,
Gex, Crash 'n Burn, Slayer, Killing Time, The Need for Speed and Road
Rash

11. 3DO LAUNCHES
• October 4, 1993. The 3DO
Multiplayer launched at an
initial price of $699. (Released in
Japan on March 20, 1994 and in
Europe in 1994)
• Panasonic produced first models
in 1993. Further versions were
produced in 1994 by Sanyo and
GoldStar (now LG Corp)
• Time Magazine 1994 Product of
the Year

12. People Magazine’s
Most Beautiful
People of 1995
“IN COMPUTER-GAME CIRCLES—
and on the street too—he's a
knockout. With his strong bones and
thick, brown hair, electronicentertainment magnate William
"Trip" Hawkins III, 41, cuts a
charismatic swath through Silicon
Valley… Four years ago he staked part
of his estimated $100 million fortune
in 3DO, a Redwood City, Calif.,
company that he hopes will
revolutionize home game playing
with a new format that operates on
TV sets.”

13. Fifth Generation Consoles
3DO
ATARI JAGUAR
SEGA SATURN
SONY PLAYSTATION
NINTENDO 64
October 1993
November 1993
May 1995
September 1995
September 1996
$699.99
$249.99
$399.99
$299.99
$199.99
2 million
250,000
9.4 million
102 million
32.9 million

14. PROBLEMS
• Extremely High Console Price
• Over-Saturated Console Market
• Limited 3rd Party Developer Support
• Lack of Exclusives
• Stigma of Interactive Movie Style Gameplay

15. Flaws With The Business Model
• The biggest failure was the hardware business model, which gave the
licensees control of pricing, marketing and distribution of the
consoles
• Because of the low royalty rate, manufacturers had to make a profit
on the hardware itself, whereas most major game console
manufacturers, such as Sega and Sony, sold their system almost as a
freebie, with expectations of making up for the loss with software
sales

16. Software Glitches
• The 3DO library also exhibited less successful aspects of home
gaming at the time.
• It was launched at the dawn of CD-ROM gaming, and early titles on 3
frequently attempted to use interactive movie-style gameplay
featuring poor quality full-motion video and limited interactivity
• Night Trap, Mad Dog McCree, and The Daedalus Encounter are some
of the more notorious titles from this era

17. M2
• The M2 project, which began as an accelerator add-on for the 3DO,[1 was to
use dual PowerPC 602 processors in addition to newer 3D and video
rendering technologies , making it 2-3 times more powerful than the
Nintendo 64 in terms of polygon graphics
• Due to various business and technological issues, the company abandoned
the console hardware business and sold the M2 technology to Matsushita
in 1995
• Unwilling to compete against fellow electronics giant Sony’s PlayStation ,
Matsushita shortly thereafter re-branded for the kiosk market
• The M2 also survived as a short-lived arcade board for Konami, and is still
used today in ATM’s and Japanese coffee vending machines

18. Abandoning The Hardware Business
• Poor console and game sales trumped the low royalty rate and
proved a fatal flaw
• As it became clear, that the hardware business was failing, then the
company sold the hardware technology and shifted completely to
software development for other platforms
• The technology itself was successful for the companies that bought
it. Matsushita has used the IP it bought in many products. Samsung
bought our hardware division, then sold it to WebTV, who later sold it
to Microsoft. Much of that technology wound up on the Xbox, and
many people on the hardware team contributed to it.

19. Redefining The Company
As changed its business to develop and publish games for other game
consoles and PC, 3DO began acquiring development studios

20. Army Men
• Combat Strategy Game
• 24 titles in franchise (19
with 3DO)
• 1998: Army Men
• 2002: Army Men:RTS
• Franchise sold to Global
Star Entertainment

21. High Heat Baseball
• Sports Strategy Game
• 6 titles in franchise
• 1998: High Heat
Baseball 1999
• 2003: High Heat
Baseball 2004
• Franchise sold to
Microsoft (but no
sequels made)

22. Might & Magic
• Fantasy RPG
• 8 titles in franchise (4
with 3DO)
• 1998: Might & Magic VI
• 2002: Might & Magic IX
• Franchise sold to Ubisoft

23. Heroes of Might &
Magic
• Fantasy Strategy
• 16 titles in franchise (8
with 3DO)
• 1996: Heroes of Might &
Magic II
• 2002: Heroes of Might &
Magic IV
• Franchise sold to Ubisoft

24. Meridian 59
• First Graphic 3D MMORPG
• Dec 15, 1995: Initial release
by developer Archetype
Interactive
• June 1996: Archetype
acquired by 3DO
• Sep 26, 1996: Released
Commercially
• Named Fantasy RPG of
the Year in 1996
• Aug 31, 2000: 3DO shuts
down game
• Re-released by Near Death
Studios

25. Publishing Woes
• There was always a lot of internal dissension about the company’s
objectives and product lines
• Although 3DO acquired some excellent studios, they never seemed
to be able to integrate them well and to get everyone to play as a
team
• However, 3DO might have been a very different company if it had
started from day one as a software business.

26. Bankruptcy
• 3DO filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy in May 2003
• The company’s brand names and intellectual property rights were
sold to Microsoft, Namco, Crave and Ubisoft
• Trip Hawkins went on to create mobile game publisher Digital
Chocolate in 2003 (before stepping down as CEO in 2012) and his new
start-up, educational software publisher If You Can