Trip Hawkins: I Almost Got Sega, Philips And Panasonic To Take On Sony. An article in what could have been.

[Gamernyc78]

I Almost Got Sega, Philips And Panasonic To Take On Sony, Says EA Founder Trip Hawkins

"That grouping of companies could have given Sony a run for it"

www.timeextension.com

It's common knowledge that the 3DO Interactive Multiplayer didn't quite catch on. The brainchild of EA founder Trip Hawkins, the system was designed to be "VHS for video games" and would, it was promised, take the industry to the next level. In reality, it was too expensive, and its lifespan was dramatically cut short when the PlayStation arrived soon afterwards.

However, those of you who know your gaming history will be aware that The 3DO Company wasn't about to throw in the towel after one round; it had a successor in development called the M2, which it was developing with Japanese hardware giant Matsushita, which now goes by the same of Panasonic.

Not wishing to skip too far ahead in this narrative, M2 wasn't a success, either – in fact, the proposed console never ever made it into stores. However, things might have been very different had Hawkins been able to pull off one of the greatest hardware team-ups in gaming history.

Speaking to EDGE magazine back in 2009 (yes, we like leafing through old magazines), Hawkins revealed his ambitious plans for M2:

We made some really interesting moves where we got very close to putting together a stronger coalition of companies to support the M2 and take on PlayStation. At one point, I had a verbal deal with Philips and Sega to join forces with Matsushita. That grouping of companies could have given Sony a run for it. Matsushita wanted to kick Sega out of the deal, and then Sega obviously got all mad, and Philips backed off. I spent a year putting that coalition together, but in the end, they just couldn't get along.

Despite this, Hawkins was proud of the work that had been done on M2 and feels that Matsushita's input on both 3DO and M2 is what ultimately led to the rise of the DVD format, a video media in which the company was heavily involved. He also points to the fact that IBM's entry into the world of video game hardware (it would supply PowerPC chipsets for both GameCube and Wii) came off the back of work related to the failed M2, for which it had created the processor.

M2, however, never got off the ground – and today, we can only ponder what a Sega / Philips / Panasonic collaboration console might have looked like.



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[flaccidsnake]

It was a good concept and bad implementation. They should've gone for x86 ahead of Xbox and leveraged all the amazing work developers were already doing.

If the big publishers couldve figured out a standardized way to do user accounts, achievements, matchmaking, etc back in like 1998, gaming would be a much more dynamic medium today.

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

I kind of doubt a joint effort between those three would've done much. A more competitive system that would have sold more? Yes. But one to actually beat Sony at that point in time? Very much doubt it.

SEGA was bleeding a lot of money between arcade market slowdown, bad accounting with Genesis/MegaDrive and losses on the Saturn. Between Saturn and 32X, they were eroding significant goodwill among their fanbase. Working with Philips and Panasonic would've alleviated costs on the hardware manufacture point but SEGA'd still have to do a lot to regain favor with burned fans & 3P. Phillips had no real clout in the industry as the CD-i was a failure, and the 3DO performed even worst than the Saturn, partly because of price.

If they didn't plan on M2 being priced like a normal console of the time, it would've been DOA just like the original was. Yeah, they could've cut the price significantly closer to when PS2 was getting ready, or earlier, but that would mean slow initial sales. The main benefit M2 would've had over PS2 is DVD support, beating PS2 to market on that front. Which probably would've made M2 more competitive with the PS2, but by 1997/1998? It wasn't going to do anything to the PS1 or N64, and at best would've gotten some late upgraded ports of 3P games from those systems, with SEGA having to carry a lot of the software burden like they did with Dreamcast (in fact this same thing happened with Dreamcast and it was worst off than M2 because of no built-in DVD support).

An M2 in 1996, or even mid-1997, would've had more an effect on PS1 (and N64), but on the flipside, it'd mean SEGA dropping Saturn that much earlier, pissing off even more of their fans than they actually ended up doing. Leaving more of the burden on Panasonic (eh) and Phillips (lol) to drive M2 adoption. I doubt it would've panned out.

The M2 is really cool technology and the Konami games made for it seem pretty good for what they are, but it's very easy to see why it was ultimately cancelled. Plus by the time it would've came out, Dreamcast released, and that was easily more powerful than the M2 anyway. The opportune time for M2 would've been 1996 as a high-performance arcade system with a Neo-Geo style home variant available in lower quantities. But the 3DO company wanted more than that, and paid the ultimate price.

 

[Polyh3dron]

Yeah the Dreamcast would run circles around this thing. It's something like the NEC PC-FX, way too underpowered for its time.

 

[Zzero]

M2s are out in the wild (as hotel data kiosks) but there is some gamesoftware available too. Not that it matters, this thing would have died a death anyway with its low specs and bad controller.

 

[Bryank75]

You'd have failed anyway Trip and I knew EA was fundamentally a rival to PlayStation, at least in their own mind.

Thats why you see them on gamepass and always aligned with MSFT.

Cant wait for TTwo to release a decent soccer game.

 

[Yurinka]

As I remember he told once that with the first 3DO they had a key issue: the main retailers didn't want/couldn't give them enough shelve space in the sttores because the top consoles of the time (I assume Nintendo and Sega, and later PS) had signed deals for getting certain space in the stores, which prevented new consoles to get enough presence or space in the stores because their space for gaming was limited.

Plus obviously the pricing issue, but as I remember they planned to bring it down over time if achieving certain level of success that they didn't achieve.

For them was also very difficult to get support from other 3rd party devs.

You'd have failed anyway Trip and I knew EA was fundamentally a rival to PlayStation, at least in their own mind.

Thats why you see them on gamepass and always aligned with MSFT.

Cant wait for TTwo to release a decent soccer game.

On its early days, his idea with EA was to be full multiplatform. Later they tried to be their own thing being the first ones who did the equivalent of "trying to skip the 30% of the platform holder (which was bigger back then)" by making their own Genesis/Mega Drive cartridges.

Then in the same way he left Apple to found EA, he left EA to found 3DO.

Time later founded Digital Chocolate (where I did work) that became top 4-5 publisher in the early years of mobile gaming and web browser gaming days during the Facebook, Kongregate, Flash games age.

Being one of the main publishers of the App Store and a personal friend of Steve Jobs since Trip was the 7th person hired at Apple, their first head of marketing, already tried to find a way to skip the 30% from there and also from Facebook. After a lot of work and money spent on it, Digital Chocolate got their own store, but didn't succeed because didn't get enough volume of players similar like the one FB or the Appstore gave (same issue of why the EA/Ubi/Epic/etc stores don't work in PC).

Then the company started to decline, the Helsinki guys left to create Supercell, we got acquired by Ubisoft (we had these 2 main dev studios) and he moved to do something I think it was like educational software for kids.

A handful years ago he became investor/parter of a studio of my city run by some former coworkers -including my boss who left to create the local King studio, getting also super successful- and some ex-Blizzard guys where are working to make blockchain games in the right/fair/good way.

More than having something against PS, he always had to have his own place covering all players while being independent.

Regarding the current EA, many years after he left, remember they have marketing and bundle deals with Sony every year, and that EA Play is also in PS.

 

[Polyh3dron]

I had a 3DO at its height and that thing was really fun. It could run Wing Commander 3 when my family PC of the time didn't have a chance in hell at running it well.

 

[Gamernyc78]

I had a 3DO at its height and that thing was really fun. It could run Wing Commander 3 when my family PC of the time didn't have a chance in hell at running it well.

3DO Def was high quality.