3DO

Home
Video Games
Accessories
3DO
Atari
Colecovision
Commodore
Intellivision
Microsoft Xbox
Microsoft Xbox 360
Nintendo 64
Nintendo Game Boy
Nintendo Game Boy Advance
Nintendo Game Boy Micro
Nintendo GameCube
Nintendo NES
Nintendo, Super
Other Accessories
PC Games
Sega CD
Sega Dreamcast
Sega Game Gear
Sega Genesis
Sega Master
Sega Pico
Sega Saturn
Sony PlayStation
Sony PlayStation 2
Sony PSP
Games
Internet Games
Other
Systems
Wholesale Lots

by Electronic Arts co-founder Trip Hawkins in a partnership with seven other companies, including Matsushita, AT&T, MCA, Time Warner, and Electronic Arts. The company's original objective was to create a next-generation, CD-based video game system 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 $3 royalty rate per game was a better deal than the higher royalties paid to Nintendo and Sega when making games for those consoles. The launch of the platform in October, 1993 was well-promoted, with a great deal of press attention in the mass media as part of the "multimedia wave" in the computer world at the time.

Unfortunately the 3DO console itself was priced at $700, and the promised "early adopters" never showed up to purchase mass quantities of games. The quality of 3DO games was perceived as low, on the whole. When the Sony PlayStation appeared in 1994 with its hardware 3D graphics support and its outstanding game software, it smashed all remaining hopes for the 3DO console. In 1996, The 3DO Company sold its next generation console, codenamed M2, to Matsushita and changed its business to develop and publish games for the PlayStation as well as other game consoles and PCs.

After abandoning the 3DO console the company acquired Cyclone Studios, Archetype Interactive and New World Computing. The company's biggest hit was its series of Army Men games, featuring the generic green plastic soldier toys that had been re-popularized by the unrelated movie Toy Story. Its Might and Magic and Heroes of Might and Magic series from subsidiary New World Computing were also popular and lucrative for the company. During the late 1990s, the company published one of the first 3D MMORPGs: Meridian 59, which survives on to this day at the hands of some of the game's original developers.

Read more at Wikipedia.org