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Panasonic FZ-1 R.E.A.L. 3DO Interactive Multiplayer

Developer: The 3DO Company

Manufacturer: Panasonic, Sanyo and GoldStar (now LG Corp)

Type: Video game console

Generation: Fifth generation era

Retail availability NA October 4, 1993

                               JP March 20, 1994

                               EU 1994

Discontinued: Late 1996

Units sold: 2 million

Media: CD-ROM

CPU: 32-bit 12.5 MHz RISC CPU ARM60 based on ARM architecture

Online services: Planned but canceled

Successor: M2 (canceled)

The 3DO Interactive Multiplayer was originally conceived by The 3DO Company, founded in 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 $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 R.J. Mical, starting from an outline on a restaurant napkin in 1989. Trip Hawkins recalled,I'd actually known those guys for a while and we are kindred spirits ... and it turned out that they had already started working on designing a next generation system and they had made some very important decisions that were the same decisions that I would have made (architecture and approach). 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.

 

The 3DO Company lacked the resources to manufacture consoles themselves, 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. 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. Panasonic launched the 3DO with its FZ-1 model in 1993, though Goldstar and Sanyo would later manufacture the 3DO as well.

 

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. Some sources claim that 3DO was priced at $699, 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."He clarified in a later interview that the official list pricepoint was $699, but that very few retailers actually sold it at that price. Goldstar (LG) and Sanyo 3DO models, as well as Panasonic's later FZ-10 model, were all less expensive to manufacture than the FZ-1 model, and as such sold for considerably lower prices. The Goldstar model, for instance, launched at a price of $399. In addition, six months after launch the FZ-1 had already dropped its price to $499, leading some to contend that the 3DO's cost was not as big a factor in its market failure as is usually claimed.

 

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. Return Fire, Road Rash, FIFA International Soccer, and Jurassic Park Interactive had all been slated for launch release, but were pushed back to mid-1994 due to the developers' struggles with the then cutting edge hardware; as a result, the only 3DO software available at launch was the third-party game Crash 'n Burn.

 

Price drops announced in February 1996 were perceived in the industry to be an effort to improve market penetration before the release of the promised successor of 3DO, the M2. Heavy promotional efforts on the YTV variety show It's Alive and a stream of hinted product expandability supported that idea; however, the M2 project was eventually scrapped altogether.The 3DO system was eventually discontinued at the end of 1996 with a complete shutdown of all internal hardware development and divestment of the M2 technology. 3DO restructured themselves around this same time, repositioning their internal software development house as a multi-platform company supporting the PlayStation, Sega Saturn, and computer platforms.The higher quality of later CD-ROM based systems that emerged in the mid-90s, the uneven quality of the games, and the initial high price point are all considered to be among the many issues that led to the 3DO's demise.

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