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3DO Files For Bankruptcy
Thanks to an anonymous reader for pointing to a Reuters report via Yahoo News announcing that game publisher and developer 3DO has filed for bankruptcy. As the article indicates, the former console hardware creator "..has struggled to gain a foothold in the competitive games business and has relied on Chief Executive Trip Hawkins for recent funding." Even a recent attempt to buck their reputation for bad quality games by funding higher-budget titles such as 'Four Horsemen Of The Apocalypse' seems to have ended in failure, since industry sources are indicating all except 20 employees have been laid off, effective today, as the company looks to sell its properties.
This article is showing up totally blank (like a template?) on the front page. Something broken? :P
Always ask 'why?'
Who noticed that this was an empty story on the front page?
For a minute, I thought I was in a parallel universe where everyone got to be a subscriber for free and "see it early!"
*sigh* Oh well, here's to wishful thinking.
NO MORE MILKING A DEAD CONSOLE AHAHAHAHAHAHAH.
(For the history, see the 3do console, and their licenses which lasted longer than the console ever did.)
The only good thing they ever did was buy meridian 59 fund it, and then sell it. I hate this company their support was horrendous. The infighting within the company was ridiculous, and their stupid ventures (MIGHT AND MAGIC ONLINE) cost their shareholders millions while netting no product.
Good riddance, and I wish the worst for Trip.
For the 50 or so decent folks still left at 3d0H I feel for you, but at least you didn't get canned back when Trip ran outa money.
This sums up everything I remember about 3DO recently. I mean, I do find it rather remarkable that they held on for so long after that console with their name on kind of didn't do so well ... but between then and now, have they done anything interesting? Remarkable? Something that makes this death tragic? This is not a rhetorical question, I really wanna know.
3 Dollars Only.
Nope, they've got a new template!!! It's no longer blank, but if you have all the sections compressed to the main page like I have mine set to, or maybe it the article finds it way normally to the main page from the game section... anyways... I can't tell the difference, but the heading is nicely purple for articles from the game section now! So awesome, no I don't have to look at the editor that posted it to figure out which section it belongs to... or the title, but color coding is much more fun!
I touch computers in naughty places
I find it strange how the last article I read about Trip Hawkins(which was in the newspaper) mentioned his passion for the game business, and I suppose that shows in how he was trying to prop it up with his own cash at the end. But did he really just do that bad a job managing it?
Is it just me, or did this story appear blue on the frontpage, while the rest uses standard slashdot aqua or whatever that colour is.
D.
You can tell how powerful someone is by the magnitude of the crime they can commit and be able to get away with.
That horse needed to be shot a long time ago. They only decent thing they did was Road Rash for the 3DO console.
As some of you have noticed, we've had a couple of strange technical problems on this post (specifically, the post initially looking blank, for those logged-in with sections collapsed on the mainpage, and some other weird display issues.)
:P
Thanks to people for mentioning it so fast, though - we're working on fixing it. Please continue discussing 3DO as if your life depended on it?
I should try and work up something vaguely resembling sympathy for this company, but quite frankly, I find it impossible. They've had it coming for a long time, with the string of bad Army Men titles, and the implosion of the Might and Magic series, both of which are their own fault. 3DO serves as a perfect study for the case against firing the highly skilled designers and programmers in order to cut costs.
My heart does go out to those displaced by the meltdown though. I wish the industry was at the point where they could find work at somewhere with better treatment of their employees.
This site is pretty funny, and pretty accurate too. Shame the message board doesn't work anymore, there were some hilarious posts from former employees.
Note to self: use preview next time. :)
While Might and Magic itself wasn't a really interesting game to me, Heroes of Might and Magic (the turn based strategy game) was always a favourite of mine. Thanks to the also defunct Loki games, I can play it under Linux as well.
Heroes 3 was the first game I noticed to use MP3 encoding for the background music/sound effects. This made it chug on the low end machines of the time, but it was still awesome.
They've also touched on a few other things that did well. The problem was that they had nothing to back it up with, except for another stupid Army Men game.
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
In my opinion the Heroes of Might and Magic series were the only good games they made. It's too bad if HOMM5 would never be made since I really loved the previous games.
Hopefully some company will purchase the rights to the HOMM-series and release HOMM5.
Man this is disappointing. The Four Horsemen of the Apocolypse game had serious potentional. I'd imagine the game will still get released because it was pretty far along but now I got this feeling they're gonna cut corners to get it out cheaper. :/
Ah crap. My uncaffeinated morning eyes read this as "SCO Files for Bankruptcy." I guess that will have to wait a month.
It's completely coincidental but just two days ago FreeDO (a 3DO emulator dev team) released the public beta of the first 3DO emulator to see daylight. I haven't tried it because I don't have any original 3DO games anymore nor have i access to bootlegs. I am really interested in the quality of the emulated games because i really think the 3D0 console is one of the most underestimated consoles of the early nineties. Back in those days it was pretty hip, just like the NeoGeo, but it suffered from the same drawbacks. That big black box was darn expensive for kids! Anyway it's really weird when you think that for almost every console there has been built an emu while the 3DO had to wait till 2003 before somebody compiled a working emulator! You can find the emulator and information about it here:
http://www.freedo.org/
Wasn't 3DO responsible for the HOMM series, which consistently did well? I've enjoyed all the HOMM games that I've played so far, and I'd be gutted if the franchise perished.
What's going to happen then?
I recall Trip Hawkins being quoted liberally in the press around the time of the xbox launch. He unequivocally stated that the xbox would fail, and most likely within a year. The man has true vision. I remember reading it and the only thing I could get from it was that a) He was still bitter about his console flopping b) He was trying to say something controversial to get press c) He was trying to suck up to Sony People may not like the xbox but it's not going anywhere anytime soon. Trip, you can find them refurbished for about $140 if you change your mind!
3DO as a company sucked. It Sucks so bad in fact, that it actually causes me to use the word "Suck" to describe it and I hate that word.
I know some of you are big fans of the "Heros of might and magic" series, but that is the single only product that 3DO carries that isnt a piece of crap.
3do's strategy has been to flood the market with sequel after sequel of whatever game they manage to sell more than 12 of. There are over 30 Army Men games and they are all garbage. You have the "world destruction league" sequels and these are junk too. Need I even mention "legends" and "crusaders" of might and magic? Goodbye, so long and good riddance to you hopefully some other company that has more than just monkeys pounding on keyboards can use the shelf space your products will no longer need.
On Wall Street they say "buy low, sell high" On the pad we say, "buy high, sell high" Isn't that somehow better?