The 3DO Company

The 3DO Company was founded in 1991 by Trip Hawkins, who had earlier created the game publisher Electronic Arts. Hawkins envisioned a radically different console business: rather than manufacture hardware itself and sell it at a loss, 3DO would design a standardized system and license the specification to consumer-electronics companies, who would compete to build and sell it while 3DO collected royalties on each machine and game, much like the VHS or CD model.

The 3DO Interactive Multiplayer launched in 1993, built by partners including Panasonic and later Goldstar. Technically advanced for its moment, with CD-ROM media and strong graphics, it was showered with hype and even named a product of the year by the press. But the licensing model backfired on price: with no manufacturer willing to subsidize the hardware, it debuted at a steep sum that dwarfed rival consoles, and a royalty on each game kept software expensive too.

Sales never approached the numbers needed to sustain the platform. A planned successor, the more powerful M2, was developed but never launched as a 3DO console; the technology was ultimately sold off. By the mid-1990s, with the Sony PlayStation and Sega Saturn dominating, 3DO abandoned hardware entirely and reinvented itself as a software publisher.

As a publisher it found modest success with franchises like the comedic Army Men series and the Might and Magic and Heroes of Might and Magic role-playing and strategy games. But it leaned too heavily on churning out sequels of declining quality, and mounting financial losses proved unsustainable.

The 3DO Company filed for bankruptcy in 2003 and was liquidated, its assets scattered to other publishers, with Ubisoft acquiring the Might and Magic rights. Its console is remembered as an ambitious idea undermined by economic reality: a bet that consumers would pay premium prices for an open hardware standard, at a time when rivals were racing to sell machines cheaply and profit on the games.