Interview: Trip Hawkins

[16bitter]

I will never forgive trippy dick for the $700 3DO system. Talk about underdelivering.

OMG! You bought a 3DO!?!?!

Other than people who buy every new piece of electronics equipment that hits the shelves, I can't imagine what would push somebody into paying for a 3DO. It was released way too early, causing it to have too high a price with too little power. It was a stop-gap, knowingly or not, between 16-bit's dominance and the dawn of the new epochal/paradigm shift.

It never did have an era -- a marketplace -- of its own.

I always thought of it more as vaporware that managed to make its way to store shelves -- much like its compatriots in the form of the Jag, CDi and to some extent, Sega CD/32X. In a way they made up a sub-era of emptiness, all told -- no real market or cultural impact, exactly, but there certainly was a flood of systems that tried to crowd out 16-bit, failing miserably.

The 3DO, then, was something that at best was a minor status symbol as far as video game consoles, and thus not a system that even its owners would shed many tears over when it passed.

There were pitifully few that actually bought into the Hawkins' promises, even amongst those who did buy the system, I'd guess. I mean how could they logically? The reality of its present was underwhelming and the future clearly belonged to more powerful, truly next gen systems.

[CRV]

Joe Montana Football 1 for the Genesis was done by Park Place Productions. They also did John Madden Football (the good one).

I just figured it out. That BlueSky Memorial site must have been referring to Joe Montana II, not the original.

[16bitter]

Pretty good interview, but you should've asked him more about 3DO. :P

Considering how defensive he was about EA -- a success story, to put it mildly -- that would have been entertaining.

Thinking about it, a great deal if not all of the Western stars of the 90s are washed up within the business relative to the hype that they attained during that decade. Publicly at least.

It could be a sign of the maturation of the industry, which instead of being at all niche is now just another piece of a bigger entertainment/technological conglomeration. Smaller companies are drying up, or simply being bought out and assimilated into the larger whole, as is the sense of trailblazing independence. A contrast not unique to video games, but possibly more striking considering where the industry was at previously.

Perhaps I'm wrong, but today the scenario that brought the attempted coup of the 3DO/Jaguar/CDi/etc. is far less likely to be attempted at all against companies with the names of Microsoft and Sony rather than Nintendo and Sega. The point of entry looks a lot farther off and smaller than it did back then, and the light at the end of the tunnel is even more likely to be a freight train barreling forward and over them; which is the lesson of a system like the 3DO anyway.

Not that such a system's -- type being the would-be author of a standard shift in the industry, given that the 3DO hoped to be this more than any of its competitors at the time -- guaranteed to fail, just that it would be even more difficult for any upstart than it was back then.

In fact, Nintendo is now the underdog in an industry they once either ruled with an iron fist or, during the 3DO's period of pumelling, at least co-owned. Which does a good job of markedly underlining how much the picture has changed.

That status, however, is quickly shifting from underdog to standard-bearing visionary again, which could ever more concievably put Nintendo back on top soon enough. So maybe things will end up bizarrely the same in the broad due to Nintendo's response to what previously was a massive amount of change and challenge -- forced to innovate and create a new standard, the company that had its market taken away steals it right back by recreating the structure and thus monopolizing once again that same market through redefinition.

The makeup of the industry containing much of the old with the new no matter what, then. Either with tired concepts being retreaded by huge corporations aiming to homogenize video games through entertainment center/household hegemony, or by new conceptualizations under the same old label.

[Benjamin]

Other than people who buy every new piece of electronics equipment that hits the shelves, I can't imagine what would push somebody into paying for a 3DO. It was released way too early, causing it to have too high a price with too little power.

The 3DO was priced to profit. It was Trip Hawkins throwing stones at the Gillette business model, and as such would have been priced high no matter what point it would be introduced and still be a viable piece of technology.

The 3DO gets slammed now, but it was cutting edge stuff at the time with amazing color depth and detail, real and great "fake" 3-D stuff, and CD-quality music. I still believe that if Trip hasn't priced the system into being stillborn for the most part, it really could have been a major player. The software was there for the most part and would have improved if the price hadn't scared away a consumer base and in turn developers.

[ary incorparated]

sega,s Model 1 board or something also was released earlier as 32 bit Hardware so sega could have been earlier,I asume 32x is similair to that bourd.3DO sucked in every single way Captain Quasar Please what a shite console.

[Joe Redifer]

I bought a 3DO and I pretty much buy every game system at launch... though I still haven't purchased an Xbox360 because I'm waiting for more non FPS games to come out. Looks good, but the stuttering frame rates I've seen on demos concern me.

The 3DO was pretty lacking in the loading department. it was much slower than both the Tubo and Sega CD when it came to getting data. yes, it had to get more data, but game players don't care. hey just know that the time they spend looking at a loading screen was longer than any other system ever. Road Rash was freakin' awesome, though.

[ary incorparated]

yeah i have to play it someday aggain(road rash)i dont know hoe the music sounded aggain sorry forgot it,the rest was okay at mediocore,im stil happy i have it.Actually it is one of the most truly sucking systems ever this is my top 3

Neo geo 64
Jaguar
Panasonic 3Do


Mega cd and turbo dont suck at al they may be weak sellers but the far way from suck.

[108 Stars]

The 3DO gets slammed now, but it was cutting edge stuff at the time with amazing color depth and detail, real and great "fake" 3-D stuff, and CD-quality music. I still believe that if Trip hasn't priced the system into being stillborn for the most part, it really could have been a major player. The software was there for the most part and would have improved if the price hadn't scared away a consumer base and in turn developers.

The experts, at least here in Europe, pretty much slammed the 3DO the moment it was released. Everybody here recommended to wait for the far more advanced systems to come soon: Sega Saturn and Project Reality were already announced. It was a dead born child, just like the Jaguar, the CDi, the 32X or the Amiga CD 32.
I think nobody liked the idea of a PC-like console-standard in the first place, save Hawkings.

[Joe Redifer]

I think the only US publication that spoke highly of the 3DO at or before its launch was GameFan, and they were super mega-biased in every way... towards advertisers. I loved how they would review a game and tell everyone how bad it is, and it still scores 7.5. Rarely did any game ever score below 7.0 in that mag.

[highlandcattle]

How can you call the CDi a death born child? It's last official game was released in 1999!Sure most of the games where absolute pieces of shit but here in Belgium and the Netherlands it was pretty popular,especially with the rich crowds like my parents. I actually know a lot of people who owned one. And as a kid I thought that the zelda games were really cool (including the cartoon bits!). If I play them again, I do realise that the difficulty is actually the really bad controls. But Steel Machine, Burn:Cycle, Micro Machines and lots of others were cool.
I think the biggest problem was that phillips was throwing a lot of money to "game" companies who had just been established and sold baked air. Instead of relying in already well established companies.

[108 Stars]

How can you call the CDi a death born child? It's last official game was released in 1999!Sure most of the games where absolute pieces of shit but here in Belgium and the Netherlands it was pretty popular,especially with the rich crowds like my parents. I actually know a lot of people who owned one. And as a kid I thought that the zelda games were really cool (including the cartoon bits!). If I play them again, I do realise that the difficulty is actually the really bad controls. But Steel Machine, Burn:Cycle, Micro Machines and lots of others were cool.
I think the biggest problem was that phillips was throwing a lot of money to "game" companies who had just been established and sold baked air. Instead of relying in already well established companies.

Maybe it´s a bit more popular in Holland because Philips is the biggest electronic company of the Netherlands. Don´t know about Belgium though.
As far as I know, there were only like 30 to 40 games released for the machine. German magazines didn´t even bother to publish reviews for CDI-games for long.
If it was successfull in your country I guess that´s some kind of a local phenomenon.
Personally I never knew anyone who wasted money on a CDI.

yeah i have to play it someday aggain(road rash)i dont know hoe the music sounded aggain sorry forgot it,the rest was okay at mediocore,im stil happy i have it.Actually it is one of the most truly sucking systems ever this is my top 3

Neo geo 64
Jaguar
Panasonic 3Do


Mega cd and turbo dont suck at al they may be weak sellers but the far way from suck.

Hey, Ary, was there a home console of the NeoGeo 64 hardware?

[ary incorparated]

Not really it want that complete,you needed a supergun to make it work it required some somplexity very complexity it has no controller prot no video outputes no sound output all had to be made homemade im going to try it someday,BTW i bought it in germany Ebay.de you didnt know it also had uge pasted cartridges for it its so complex to make it work and its actually not worth it also.I still Think you know the system.

[highlandcattle]

More like a hundred games you mean
Look the CDi was never desgined to be a gamesmachine. It was designed to be a multimedia presentation device for use in offices and schools and stuff. The first versions didn't even have an mpegdecoder inside. In the end Phillips wanted it to be everything. Here in Belgium we even had a CDi in the historyclass (it was only used one time in the sixyears I went there and that was for an education disc about florence).
In the end it was a very cool system with some neat experiments and Phillips made profit out of it. so it's all good. I still want one of those CDi players that can play dvd's aswell, but they are rare as hell.

[108 Stars]

More like a hundred games you mean

I looked into a retro page, and they said it had only about 40 games...

[Lemmi_Is_God]

my first cdi system was the cdi 220 and i found it in the garbage (i thought it was an old vcr with metal parts) along with 7 games and 2 controllers
the only thing wrong with it was the door wouldnt open on its own, so i took the top off and manually opened the door to play games
and if there is anything you want to know about the cdi systems check this site out
http://www.icdia.co.uk/ more then 100 games were released, but not all in the US, most of the fun stuff came from germany, belguim and other overseas places
except for Arcade Classic's which is a train wreck from start to finish

i have 48 games and 48 movies in my collection along with a portable cdi unit
and my LG cdi (gdi-700m) was made in dec 1997 and was used in the Michigan Supreme court for 4 years before i bought it from them, it even has a metal plate on the side that says so

Maybe it´s a bit more popular in Holland because Philips is the biggest electronic company of the Netherlands. Don´t know about Belgium though.
As far as I know, there were only like 30 to 40 games released for the machine. German magazines didn´t even bother to publish reviews for CDI-games for long.
If it was successfull in your country I guess that´s some kind of a local phenomenon.
Personally I never knew anyone who wasted money on a CDI.



Hey, Ary, was there a home console of the NeoGeo 64 hardware?