3DO Interactive Multiplayer

History[edit]

The 3DO Interactive Multiplayer was originally conceived by The 3DO Company, founded on September 12, 1991 by Electronic Arts founder Trip Hawkins. The company's objective was to create a next-generation, CD-based video game/entertainment standard which would be manufactured by various partners and licensees; 3DO would collect a royalty on each console sold and on each game manufactured. To game publishers, the low US$3 royalty rate per game was a better deal than the higher royalties paid to Nintendo and Sega when making games for their consoles. The 3DO hardware itself was designed by Dave Needle and RJ Mical (designers of the Amiga and Atari Lynx), starting from an outline on a restaurant napkin in 1989.^[9] Trip Hawkins was a long-time acquaintance of Needle and Mical and found that their design very closely fit his philosophy for architecture and approach, so he decided that: "Rather than me start a brand new team and starting from scratch it just made a lot of sense to ... join forces with them and shape what they were doing into what I wanted it to be."^[9]


The 3DO Company lacked the resources to manufacture consoles, and instead licensed the hardware to other companies for manufacturing. Trip Hawkins recounted that they approached every electronics manufacturer, but that their chief targets were Sony and Panasonic, the two largest consumer electronics companies in the world.^[9] However, Sony had already begun development on their own console, the PlayStation, and ultimately decided to continue work on it rather than sign with 3DO.^[9] According to former Sega CEO Tom Kalinske The 3DO Company was engaged in very serious talks for Sega to become involved with the 3DO. However, it was passed on by Sega due to concerns over cost.^[10] Panasonic launched the 3DO with its FZ-1 model in 1993, though Goldstar and Sanyo would later manufacture the 3DO as well. Companies who obtained the hardware license but never actually sold 3DO units include Samsung,^[11] Toshiba,^[12] and AT&T, who went so far as to build prototype AT&T 3DO units and display them at the January 1994 Consumer Electronics Show.^[13]


Licensing to independent manufacturers made the system extremely expensive. The manufacturers had to make a profit on the hardware itself, whereas most major game console manufacturers, such as Sega and Sony, sold their systems at a loss, with expectations of making up for the loss with software sales. The 3DO was priced at US$699,^[14][15] far above competing game systems and aimed at high-end users and early adopters. Hawkins has argued that 3DO was launched at $599, and not "higher myths that are often reported".^[16] In a later interview, Hawkins clarified that while the suggested retail price was $699, not all retailers sold the system at that price.^[9] Goldstar, Sanyo, and Panasonic's later models were less expensive to manufacture than the FZ-1 and were sold for considerably lower prices. For example, the Goldstar model launched at $399.^[4] In addition, after six months on the market, the price of the FZ-1 had dropped to $499,^[17][18] leading some to contend that the 3DO's cost was not as big a factor in its market failure as is usually claimed.^[9]


Hawkins' belief was that the 3DO system could become a dominant standard in a similar way to that achieved by the VHS video cassette format, with several companies being able to promote the standard effectively against individual competitors with their own technologies, such as Sony and Betamax, in the context of VHS. It was also believed that companies would be able to more effectively compete by being able to leverage a common standard, as opposed to having to attract developers to individual formats, with Hawkins noting that this would be "tough for Atari and Sony". Indeed, Hawkins believed that the failure of NEC to establish its TurboGrafx system, and yet being "much bigger than Sony", illustrated the difficulties faced by new entrants to the console market and thought that Sony, in following the business model of Sega and Nintendo, "would have had a better chance if it had partnered with some of the others". Meanwhile, other products were not regarded as competitive threats: the Atari Jaguar was perceived as "primitive" and "slightly better than a 16-bit system", and the Philips CD-i was regarded as "really obsolete by today's standards". Both 3DO and Philips, seeking to pioneer the broader concept of interactive entertainment, aimed to sell in the order of one million units during 1994 and into 1995.^[19]


Hawkins claimed that the console was HDTV-capable, and that the company could use its technology for a set-top box.^[20] It was believed the platform would appeal to cable companies seeking to provide digital interactive services, with broadcasts being accompanied by digital information, eventually leading to the development of video-on-demand services on what was described as a "client-server interactive network", with an interactive networking trial having been announced in collaboration with US West in Omaha, Nebraska for the autumn of 1994.^[19] Computer Gaming World reported in January 1994 that 3DO "is poised for an avalanche of software support to appear in the next 12 months", unlike the Atari Jaguar and Pioneer LaserActive. The magazine predicted that "If 3DO's licensees can get enough machines and software out in the market, this could very well become the interactive gamer's entry level machine" and possibly "the ideal plug and play solution for those of us who are tired of playing circuit board roulette with our personal computers".^[21] Electronic Arts promoted the console in two-page advertisements, describing it as a "technological leap" and promising "twenty new titles ... over the next twelve months".^[22]


The launch of the platform in October 1993 received a great deal of attention in the press as part of the "multimedia wave" in the computer world at the time. Return Fire, Road Rash, FIFA International Soccer, and Jurassic Park Interactive had been slated for launch releases but were pushed to mid-1994 due to the developers' struggles with the then-cutting-edge hardware.^[9] Moreover, the 3DO Company made continued updates to the console hardware almost up to the system's release, which resulted in a number of third-party titles missing the launch date, in some cases by less than a month, because the developers weren't left enough time to fully test them on the finalized hardware.^[23] The only 3DO software available at launch was the third-party game Crash 'n Burn.^[9][24] Panasonic also failed to manufacture an ample supply of the console in time for launch day, and as a result most retail stores only received one or two units.^[1] By mid-November, the 3DO had sold 30,000 units.^[25]


The system was released in Japan in March 1994 with an initial lineup of six games. The Japanese launch was moderately successful, with 70,000 units shipping to 10,000 stores.^[12] However, sales soon dropped and by 1995 the system was known in Japan as a host for pornographic releases.^[26]


The 3DO's claim to the title of most advanced console on the market was lost with the 1994 Japanese launches of the Sony PlayStation and Sega Saturn. The 3DO Company responded by emphasizing their console's large existing software library, lower price (both the Panasonic and Goldstar models were $299 by this time), and promised successor: the M2.^[27] To assure consumers that the 3DO would still be supported, the M2 was initially announced as an add-on for the 3DO.^[28] It was later revealed that the M2 would be an entirely separate console, albeit one with 3DO backward compatibility. Eventually the M2 project was cancelled.


Unlike Panasonic, Goldstar initially produced only 3DO hardware, not software. This made it difficult to manage competitive price drops, and when the price of the Goldstar 3DO dropped to $199 in December 1995, the company took a loss of more than $100 on each sale.^[29] Goldstar tried switching to the usual industry model of selling hardware at a loss and profiting on software, but though a handful of Goldstar games were published for the 3DO, Goldstar's software development operation arrived too late to allow them to turn a profit on the 3DO. This lack of a profitable business model, combined with Panasonic acquiring exclusive rights to the M2 technology, were cited as the two chief reasons for Goldstar dropping support for the 3DO in early 1996.^[29] During the second quarter of 1996 several of the 3DO's most loyal software supporters, including the software division of The 3DO Company themselves, announced they were no longer making games for the system, leaving Panasonic as the only company supporting active software development for the 3DO.^[30]


The 3DO system was eventually discontinued towards the end of 1996, with a complete shutdown of all internal hardware development and divestment of the M2 technology. The 3DO Company restructured themselves around this same time, selling off their hardware division to become a multi-platform company focused on software development and online gaming.^[31] After selling the Opera hardware to Samsung in 1997,^[8] the hardware was revived in South Korea for another 2 years then discontinued again at some point in late 1998 or early 1999. The amount of systems produced after the Samsung buyout is unknown.


The initial high price is considered to be one of the many issues that led to the 3DO's failure, along with lack of significant funding that larger companies such as Sony took advantage of.^[4] In an interview shortly after The 3DO Company dropped support for the system, Trip Hawkins attributed its failure to the model of licensing all hardware manufacturing and software to third parties. He reasoned that for a console to be a success, it needed a single strong company to take the lead in marketing, hardware, and software, and pointed out that it was essentially a lack of coordination between The 3DO Company, Panasonic, and the 3DO's software developers which had led to the console launching with only one game ready.^[32]