The 3DO - What Happened?

[Music] [Applause] you know what would be the best time to release a brand new console by a brand new company with a risky pricing model a console that's more powerful but not much more powerful than 16-bit hardware how about in 1993 the literal height of popularity for 16 bit hardware this is the story all about how the 3do got flipped and turned upside down and i'd like to take a minute to sit right there and tell you how tripp hawkins wound up geez god knows where yes on this episode of what happened we'll be traveling back to the early 90s to take a look at what went wrong with the panasonic 3do and spoilers just about everything went wrong before we get right into it though thanks to big boss mick shork down at the flophouse vip for nominating the subject of this particular episode it's gonna be a doozy we have to start of course with the man himself tripp hawkins as you can't talk about the 3do or even the early video game industry at large without him because the interactive multiplayer notwithstanding he was something of a visionary a harvard graduate who would eventually be hired as the head of marketing and strategy for a small indie company called apple in 1982 he then decided to found his own company a similarly small indie outfit called electronic arts [Applause] yes yes i i know but before you get out your pitchforks be aware he officially left in 1991 long before ea would become ea he attempted to predict where the industry was headed and then decided it needed a shakeup a new paradigm more synergy between publisher and developer and lots more other skeezy business buzzwords thus he founded the 3do company in a bid to steer the industry into another direction in an interview with retro gamer magazine he walked through what his thought process was in the late 80s which was to offer a premium device that would be as powerful as any consumer pc could be at the time but still far cheaper to make while keeping costs slow elsewhere basically he wanted everything in one bag but didn't want it to be heavy well i don't think that's possible i talked to companies to try and understand what their plans were i was also talking to those that controlled operating systems and platforms like microsoft microsoft for example had a major initiative that they schemed up with ibm which was to try and develop and promote a more consumer-orientated more multimedia-orientated version of the pc but never got off the ground even though microsoft had a lot of relationships with different pc manufacturers they couldn't convince anybody to bring that sort of product idea to market obviously it was ahead of its time now how the console market had been working for almost a decade ever since nintendo had brought it back from the depths of despair was to sell a console at a loss and then make money off the games they would do this through their own titles as well as through licensing fees that third parties would have to pay tripp's idea was to license out the 3do technology itself to various manufacturers to make their own models namely panasonic gold star and sanyo these consoles would then very much not be sold at a loss but the games themselves which are printed on cd-roms thereby saving costs would have dirt cheap licensing fees making the 3dl an attractive prospect for third parties the console architecture was designed to be a god damn beastlord greatly outstripping anything that was on the market although the realities of manufacturing meant some specs were brought down to earth a little bit it did feature a much faster cd-rom drive than the lowly sega cd could display lots of colors and animation was chock full of other various bells and whistles the guts of the 3dl were designed by the new technology group a collection of talented programmers that were fans of the amigo line of computers but had aspirations of making the next big thing famously the basis of the 3dl was first doodled down on a paper napkin back in 1989 with the specs in place tripp was working hard to get other publishers and companies on board while the machine was being put together and he certainly turned a few heads with his new business model telling third parties hey it's cheaper to make things for us is a pretty good icebreaker certainly but you still have to make sure everything else goes right as well regardless it was going to be a good deal because it's been reported that third parties would only need to pay a mere three dollars to 3do for every game sold i buy that for us 3 usd and i know it seems weird to say now given the non-existence of the 3do brand but people were excited like not ironically excited but really hyped for the thing it made its first public debut at ces in las vegas in 1992 and did so with aplomb it was covered by the wall street journal the los angeles and new york times cnn cnbc and lots of other massive media news outlets that gamers really didn't give a [ __ ] about the point was however that the industry gave a [ __ ] and that's really the first big step a brand new competitor finally challenged sega and nintendo's stranglehold on the market waiving expensive licensing fees and be us-based it's what a lot of industry insiders wanted to hear following ces the coverage was massive and odds were if you were into gaming you'd eventually start hearing about the 3do either from a friend or an issue of egm oh god i love that cover tripp was swinging into high because at the following ces in 93 he was given the honor of delivering the keynote speech something bill gates had lobbied for but was turned down in favor of trip that's how girthy his monster whopper really was in the same retro gamer interview tripp stated that in terms of groundswell the 3do dominated and while that was certainly true there were rumblings that sony was up to something in the video game space and conversations were being had behind closed doors that could have changed the entire game industry as we know it even sony looked long and hard at licensing the 3do hardware in the same way gold star and panasonic had and they sony were close to signing an agreement there was a lot of interest with sony but when we started talking to them even though at that point we were nearly 18 months ahead of them in terms of product development they had already started their r d on the playstation as a result for sony it came down to a question of whether or not they would join forces with us and come to market sooner and be part of a broader licensing platform or whether they would just bring their own product to market they decided of course to bring their own product to market so that was a loss that was a disappointment no i bet it certainly was but we'll get to that a bit later as there are still a bunch of other mistakes we have yet to touch on the 3do marketing machine was kicking into overdrive leading up to its october 1993 launch date with some amazing 90s as [ __ ] ads that of course didn't really big up the positives of the machine but just rather insult its competitors which was the style at the time of course with that summer end leading into fall with it being the hottest movie in the world the launch title for the 3do was originally slated to be jurassic park interactive a big get to be sure until it wasn't the dinosaurs would wind up being late to the launch of the console and instead crash and burn by crystal dynamics their very first title in fact would fill that void don't recall crash and burn well you wouldn't as it was a middling racing title for the ps2 that wait no that's crash inburn by climax this was crash inburn by crystal dynamics anyway crash and burn was a middling racing title for the 3do now while it lacks the distinctive jp mark this might have been for the better as jurassic park interactive looked great in screenshots but was essentially just a bunch of mini games of dubious quality nobody cares it's also important to note for the sake of understanding why the console failed that crash end burn wasn't just a launch game it was the only launch game for almost four months the console saw a dearth of any real anticipated marquee software so it's no surprise that they tripped i'm sorry coming right out of the starting gate this lack of recognizable titles was not very good at all but we're leading up to the big one we've lightly dusted it throughout this video throwing around the word premium and not at a loss but let's get to brass tacks the official suggested retail price for the 3do was 699 dollars in the united states suck it sony now the reaction of most retail chains to the mere thought of selling something for 700 large was of course oh no we're [ __ ] not knowing that they would never get rid of their inventory for such a ludicrous sum most if not all major stores lowered it themselves to 599 dollars which wasn't a great start for 3do as they now were however slightly selling it at a loss now look i get it in 1993 that was still below a high-end home pc but the 3do didn't actually do much else aside from playing games and cd music something that sega was also offering so yeah didn't exactly have the same allure as doubling as a dvd or blu-ray player at least stick a laser disk drive on there or something you can easily point to this price as the major reason why the 3do was only on shells for slightly less than three years but it's not the only reason well certainly had some good games to its library police knots wing commander gex super street fighter 2 turbo road rash and need for speed a lot of those games saw enhanced ports or sequels onto the machines of their competitors what's worse is that the 3do despite all those bells and whistles wasn't really a giant leap forward for gaming but rather an enthusiastic hop sure it had more computing power than the super nintendo but lagged behind the playstation and even the saturn in its ability to push polygons which was where the industry was headed especially in japan by late 1993 sega started making huge strides with their various 3d arcade games but of course would publish those games on their own hardware sega's old rival namco would do the same for sony another not immediately apparent issue had to do with those cheap licensing fees as expensive as it was for third parties to develop for nintendo or sega it did help weed out some smaller publishers from being able to afford to this resulted in some let's say games of another decidedly last look plumbers don't wear ties yeah there's plenty of shovelware on the 3do that's not worth anything aside from taking the piss out of it kind of on up game is this remember tripp hawkins was banking on the sales of the console to make the money but if your console doesn't have a lot of great exclusive games or marketable franchises yeah your sonics your marios your mega mans your castlevanias your mortal kombats ain't no one gonna buy your console the snes and the genesis were doing really well in 1993 and 1994 and how the super nes arguably had its strongest year ever in 95. so yeah very quickly 3do and trip hawkins realized that the price was insane so within 6 months it was dropped officially to 4.99 and by 1996 it was in parody with the playstation or the saturn but of course by then you were seeing stuff like virtua fighter tekken time crisis toshin den resident evil and tomb raider none of which were on the 3do it even started to lose the support it did have there was a supposed port of mortal kombat 3 in the works but it was seemingly cancelled and then never released doom even in 1996 was still a big get and it was generally thought due to 3do's power and pc-friendly architecture it would be a slam dunk port randy scott and his fly-by-night company art data interactive scored the license to sell the game on the machine but unfortunately they didn't know the first thing about game development they commissioned a single person to port the game and gave them six weeks in which to do so while it's a miracle they even got it into a playable state playable state is a subjective term here all stick with the super nintendo and its cool red cartridge thanks the writing was very visibly on the wall by late 96 with the playstation crushing it underneath its heel and the new n64 spitting on its corpse as it drove by the dream was dead but was it really dead the answer of course was maybe since tripp's venture was essentially still a software company they were able to transition very quickly into producing games which they waste wasted no time doing before that though 3do was seen about selling the design for their in-development follow-up console the m2 even though it was always veiled in secrecy some titles that had been confirmed to be in development were clay fighter 3 kenji enos d2 and even a game based on escape from la you have lied to me for the very last time 3do was attempting to sell this 64-bit machine to matsushita but unfortunately it never really materialized in all the years that followed so tripp hawkins focused on software with the army men franchise being the crown jewel what started as a rudimentary rts then splintered off into multiple genres expanding the world with pretty much every release especially with the sarge's heroes line ports were also farmed out to several different studios which saw every version having unique quirks to it battle tanks was another franchise which saw enough success to see sequels and ports as well and made good use of the n64's four player capabilities meridian 59 a real blast from the past was literally one of the first examples of the mmo which is certainly a distinction the game's ambition though was indeed a bit ahead of the technology available so it never really achieved mainstream success although some mad lads are still managing to keep the servers going to this day finally heroes of might and magic which needs no introduction was another major highlight of the 3do company's catalog outside of those isolated successes though the company still struggled to remain profitable which wasn't a shocker as the majority of the titles they published were things like good die dragon rage and shifters alright though now is about the time where i start wringing my hands in excitement four horsemen of the apocalypse i finally get to talk about this was going to be a triple a action survival horror game putting your control of abaddon and having to fight through hordes of demons and bosses to stop the end of the world it was going to have monster designs by stan winston studios featuring the voices of lance henriksen as abaddon and tim curry the lord of darkness himself as satan who would have thunk it this was going to be 3do's big gamble for blockbuster success on the xbox ps2 and gamecube now if you'll notice i don't own three copies or have tons of posters on my wall so that will probably clue you in as to what happened to it with hollywood talent in the mix three different versions and being expensive to make 3do simply didn't have the funds to get it off the ground so it was quietly cancelled ah 17 year old edgelord me was sorely heartbroken then in 2003 the 3do company officially threw in the towel and started selling some of their ips off like heroes of might and magic to ubisoft and army men to global star software sarge's heroes 3 which was in development before the sale received a name change to sarge's war and a a slight tonal shift that very same year trip hawking started a new company digital chocolate who specialized in mobile games a good eight years before mobile gaming really took off there is such a thing as trying to be so ahead of the curve that you can never really take advantage of it nowadays he currently heads up if you can company making educational and anti-bullying software for children certainly a more noble pursuit than a lot of the other people that we've profiled here on the show [Music] wrapping up in 2005 tripp was honored as the eighth person inducted into the academy of arts and sciences hall of fame and rightly so because while the 3dop certainly failed it was a fascinating idea an alternative to the old standard of selling hardware at a loss to make that back on the game something that still very much continues to this day so with that we salute you mr hawkins there you go that was that was a fun one if you know of any other games movies or consoles that should be pushed onto our stage hit me up on twitter or head on over to the flophouse vip patreon and become a big boss to nominate the subject of a future episode see you next time and thanks for watching [Music] bye

Channel: Matt McMuscles

Views: 329,958

Rating: 4.9486194 out of 5

Keywords: Panasonic 3DO, 3do, Trip Hawkings, What Happened, wha happun, Video Game Documentaries, failed consoles, bad consoles, Matt McMuscles, Flophouse

Id: ay0AtiTfIVk

Length: 19min 44sec (1184 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 03 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/AlexLong1000]

Jerma's favourite console, ladies and gentlemen

[u/Beartrick]

What happun is it was the most expensive console launch ever (next to the neo geo aes).

"Hey kids, wanna pay more than the price of a new ps3 but in the early 90s?(making it with inflation the modern equivalent of over a grand)"

[u/nerankori]

All I know about the 3DO is that there was a game just titled SEX for it.

[u/The_Draigg]

Holy shit, $700??? That’s even worse than the meme of $599 US dollars.