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Major Game Companies Bid For 3DO Assets

Posted by simoniker on from the wolves-have-attorneys-and-large-deposits dept.

Thanks to an anonymous reader for pointing to a Reuters/Yahoo report revealing that seven video game companies have qualified to bid in the auction for the assets of bankrupt publisher 3DO Co. The assets of the recently defunct developer/publisher are being displayed at the 3DOinfo.com website, and the article indicates that "In a notice filed with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in San Francisco, 3DO's attorneys said Microsoft, Eidos, Ubi Soft, JoWooD Productions Software AG, Namco Hometek Inc., Turbine Entertainment Software Corp. and Crave Entertainment filed by Wednesday's deadline to bid in the Aug. 14 auction." Their specific targets weren't revealed, but it's easy to speculate that companies such as Turbine might be interested in the Heroes Of Might And Magic license - other assets up for sale include High Heat Baseball and Army Men.

25 comments

  1. It's kind of sad... by double-oh+three · · Score: 1, Informative

    It's kind of sad that one of the only companies where the CEO used his own private capital to try and keep it afloat went belly-up.

    --
    "For years, I struggled with reality... but I'm happy to say I finally won out over it." -- Elwood P. Dowd
    1. Re:It's kind of sad... by mahdi13 · · Score: 2, Informative

      Bryon Fargo used his pocket money to keep Interplay going...then Targus bought them and fired Bryon
      Talk about sad =(

      --
      "Some things have to be believed to be seen." - Ralph Hodgson
    2. Re:It's kind of sad... by Colonel+Blimp · · Score: 1

      More than sad, I still own stock from long ago in this trainwreck. At least I can write some of it off hopefully....

  2. My Turkey-Baster Pregnancy With Hemos by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    I am a lesbian, deeply involved with a woman of lusty beauty such as most men will never know. Her hair is short and blonde. Her face is bold, with a nice sexy square jaw. She has small breasts, and muscular arms and legs, and even a slight hint of a six-pack. Just the mere thought of her body gets my juices flowing.

    She and I have been carpet munching for well over five years now. We love each other deeply, but it seems we've reached an impasse in our relationship. Every night, I lick and I lick and I lick. I finger, finger, finger. I also get the attention back with all sorts of creative ideas from my partner. Everything from dildos, to finger paints (when I am on my period), to meat tenderizer. However, no matter how much sexual gratification we exchange, it seems to be wearing down.

    One day, while surfing on Slashdot, I learned about an interesting technique involving a turkey baster. The basic idea is that you fill a turkey baster with semen, then insert that tool into the vagina, and squeeze out its contents. With this in mind, I contemplated the idea of getting pregnant with this method, and having a baby with my partner.

    I approached my beautiful mate and asked him if she wanted to have a baby. Her face lit up! She seemed to be excited; imbued with new life! However, the euphoria rapidly dissipated when she came to the realization that she did not possess the proper equipment to get me pregnant. I quickly responded that "indeed you do have the right equipment! It's in the kitchen, I'll show you." Promptly, we waltzed into the kitchen and out of a drawer, I produced the turkey baster that would bring a new life into world.

    The next job was to find a source of sperm. Sperm is not hard to come by. Men ejaculate tens of thousands of gallons of it every day. We figured it'd be easy to acquire a nice hot, steaming load of cum from virtually any man. One day, I stood outside the door of our home, close to the sidewalk, top-less, and perking my lively breasts at any man who passed. Most simply gawked, but some actually tried to touch, but quickly walked away before doing so. Pretty soon, a nice young man came along who took such an interest in my tits that he seemed to forget about all else! Before long, I had him in our house and I was giving him a blowjob before he even knew what happened. As soon as he shot a big load into my mouth, I grabbed the baster and spit the load into it. He looked puzzled, but quickly realized the bizarre situation he was in and left immediately. I paid him no mind.

    "Quickly," I shouted to my lover, "fuck me with this thing!" My lover grabbed the baster, thrust it into my eager beaver, and began to thrust like she was a man. I rubbed her clit and fingered her and she tweaked my boobs and fondled my own clit. When we were both about to climax, she squeezed the bulb of the turkey baster, squirting the whole load deep into my uterus. The warm, thick feeling of it drove me wild! When we were done, we rubbed oil all over each other's bodies, praying to the Lord Jesus that we would get pregnant.

    Over the next few weeks, signs of something unusual began to show. As it turns out, I was not only pregnant, I had herpes too. Fucking Hemos! My life was turned upside down, but that story is for another day...

  3. Good! by kmak · · Score: 1

    I hate it when these big companies buys a small company with a good franchise, like Heroes of Might and Magic, and just keep pumping out crap sequels...

    All they kept on doing was improving the graphics, and the gameplay was more or less the same - no new innovations whatsoever.

    They also did the same to High Heat Baseball.. the 2002 version was like rated the best baseball game.. and then they just got lazy, and now that honor goes to MVP Baseball of EA Sports...

    I just don't like how they handled all these franchises which I actually enjoyed at one time.. ah well..

    --

    I'm not the devil.. just his advocate.
    1. Re:Good! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Flamebait

      All reasonable and rationale people know that World Series Baseball 2K3 is better than MVP Baseball. The fact that you think the exact opposite makes me question exactly what it is you do around here.

    2. Re:Good! by kmak · · Score: 1

      That's probably true, but I was referring to PC version, which there isn't a World Series Baseball..

      --

      I'm not the devil.. just his advocate.
    3. Re:Good! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Flamebait

      Now how the fuck am I supposed to discern that from your original post kmak? You made no mention of that in any way whatsoever, for Christ's sake! Be a bit more clear in all your future posts. I will be monitoring you.

    4. Re:Good! by kmak · · Score: 0, Offtopic

      I apologize, but hey, if you were going to troll me on what's a better game, you'll always find something when you try really hard anyhow.. I'm an idiot, and just trying to make a point..

      (You don't happen to work for 3DO, do you?)

      --

      I'm not the devil.. just his advocate.
    5. Re:Good! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll
      I'm not trolling you; I merely corrected you on what the best baseball game out there right now is. We both know this is true. You then responded that you were limiting your survey to the PC market. Now, this was not evident in your original post and I merely wanted to inform you that in your future encounters with humans, you should try to be a bit more clear. I am doing this for you son.

      (No. Do you?)

    6. Re:Good! by kmak · · Score: 0, Offtopic

      Now I'm getting off-topic (actually, to be more clear, that was a few post ago), but sure.

      (I wish I had, I loved HoMM...)

      --

      I'm not the devil.. just his advocate.
    7. Re:Good! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll
      Here's the thing about Heroes of Might and Magic: it was for pussies. All these fucking games that are faggy like that are really designed for the guys that can't get laid. I mean, come on. Here's a list of faggy games from least faggy (but still faggy) to most faggy.

      1. Starcraft - very homosexual, people play for a long time because they have nothing better to do.
      2. Final Fantasy Series - again, another game where you spend way too much time doing mundane things like talking to animals and butt-fucking men.
      3. Everquest - holy shit!, be gay in really large groups and pretend you're not a pathetic loser living in your pants basement but instead a great warrior. HORSESHIT!
      4. Heroes of Might and Magic - dice-rolling faggotry without the dice
      5. Full Throttle - I place it this high in the faggy list because of all the fanboys who can't stop saying who good it was. Get a fucking life and buy a game this decade for Christ's sake, you fucking fucktards.

      There are more, perhaps I'll write something in my journal that chronicles the most homosexual games of all time. I'll call it something subversive that won't upset the liberals though - like biggest social life killers for faggots with AIDS...wait, maybe that's no good either. I'll be working on this.

    8. Re:Good! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Don't feed the trolls!

  4. fighting over 3DO by chill182 · · Score: 2, Funny

    Company 1: I want the crappy Army Men franchise!
    Company 2: No I want it! You can't have it.
    C1: But with 3DO's sucky lineup of games I could release twice as much video game vomit a year!
    C2: If I don't get 3DO I'll have go back to punching kids in the gut and stealing their lunch money. Granted, it's not as morally apprehensible as releasing Army Men games but it's also not nearly as lucrative.

  5. My two cents by NetDanzr · · Score: 1

    I'm personally torn between Microsoft and JoWooD. The former is slowly getting known for very stable releases; unlike with other big publishers, it seems like you need much fewer patches with Microsoft gaming products. The problem here is the lack of interraction with the fan community. JoWooD is not as technically proficient, but their fan interraction is second to none in this group. And considering what they did with Arx Fatalis (even though they were only the publishers), I can see some future for Might and Magic here.

    I'm not really sure what Namco does in this group at all, and I'm pretty much indifferent to them. Don't remember ever playing one of their games.Same with Crave. As for Turbine, their only claim to fame is Asheron's Call, and I don't want to see Might and Magic going MMORPG. I'm not very fond of Eidos, either. I can't see them publishing a turn-based strategy or a RPG game at all. The worst of the group is without any doubt UBI Soft. I wish they dies a slow, horrible death for all their crap they published.

    And as my luck has it, UBI Soft has been designated as the lead bidder for the Might and Magic franchise with a $1.3 million bid.

    1. Re:My two cents by PainKilleR-CE · · Score: 3, Informative

      I'm not really sure what Namco does in this group at all, and I'm pretty much indifferent to them. Don't remember ever playing one of their games

      Most recently they've been doing fighting games, Tekken and Soul Calibur are Namco franchises. Namco goes pretty far back, though, buying Atari (Japan) from Atari US back in the 70's and releasing arcade games such as Galaga, Galaxian, Pac-Man, Pole Position, and Xevious (Namco didn't sell coin-op arcade machines directly in the US until the 90's, so most of these games aren't normally associated with them here, Pac-Man, for instance, was distributed by Midway in the US). During the 90's they acquired Atari's arcade division and Aladdin's Castle Inc., which made them the largest arcade operator in the US.

      Also made Ridge Racer for the PS1, and Ridge Racer V for the PS2. They're also currently working with Nintendo on a couple of titles (Donkey Kong Racer and Star Fox), and they were rumoured to have been involved with Square and Enix before the SquareEnix merger.

      http://www.namco.co.jp/eg/history.html
      has most of the above and a bit more (like the information on their various Japanese amusement parks).

      --
      -PainKilleR-[CE]
    2. Re:My two cents by NetDanzr · · Score: 1

      Many thanks for the information; the site you mentioned proved to be very helpful. I never thought a non-PC gaming publisher would be interested in the 3DO franchises, which is why I assumed Namco was some obscure PC publisher. I'm ashamed to show my complete lack of console-based knowledge once again :(.

    3. Re:My two cents by Docktor · · Score: 1

      What's your major gripe with Ubi Soft? They had one of the best titles of last year in Splinter Cell. They are responsible for the strong Rainbow Six and Rayman franchises. This year at E3, they had some great new titles in XIII, Prince of Persia, and Beyond Good & Evil. That's a much stronger lineup than the third-tier products of JoWooD.

    4. Re:My two cents by NetDanzr · · Score: 1

      My main problem is their total disregard for their fans. They are the first to drop support of their older titles. For games that they still officially support, getting technical help is even harder than when dealing with Westwood. They are also responsible for one of the worst games of all time (from a technical perspective) - Pool of Radiance. Worst of all, however, they sell game boxes that contain CDs in paper sleeves and manuals in electronic format for full price. For example, they handled the distribution of Morrowind and its expansions in a few overseas markets. They left out the map and put the manual on the CD, yet they still sold it for the rough equivalent of $50, and not as a budget release.

    5. Re:My two cents by Radius9 · · Score: 1

      Namco was also the original developer of games like PacMan, even though Midway distributed it in the US. As for acquiring Atari's arcade division in the 90's, I do believe that is wrong. WMS Industries (Williams/Midway) acquired it, hence games like San Francisco Rush being released under the Atari name when in the arcades. Someone else owned the Atari name for home releases (not Namco), and everything that was Atari in the arcades was rebranded as a Midway game when released for the home. The Atari that was owned by Midway was all headquartered in Atari's original location in the San Francisco Bay Area, and had many of the original employees, including Ed Logg of Asteroids fame.

    6. Re:My two cents by PainKilleR-CE · · Score: 1

      From the site I referenced in my previous post:

      1974 Entered coin-operated videogame market through acquisition of Atari (Japan) Corp. from Atari Corp. of the U.S.

      1990
      Namco America Inc. began direct sales of coin-operated games in the U.S. and acquired Atari Operations Inc. to commence amusement arcade operations in the U.S. Established Namco Hometek Inc. as a U.S. distribution base for home videogame software.

      They didn't buy the name afaik, but they definitely bought assets that were needed to become a major US arcade operator (since they had no previous US arcade operations).

      --
      -PainKilleR-[CE]
    7. Re:My two cents by Chris+Mattern · · Score: 1

      Let's not forget Chessmaster or Conquest (A very underrated RTS, in my opinion).

      Chris Mattern

  6. HotGen also by pommiekiwifruit · · Score: 1
    HotGen Studios closed their doors recently and the boss of that lost a lot of personal money. Not that the former employees were happy about the closure either.

    And that probably applies to most of the other smaller companies that have shut recently.

  7. Close Call by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    THANK GOD!!!!

    I was so worried that i wouldn't get to play "Armymen: Sarge's amazing shore leave adventure in the time eating zombie dimension"

    Its nice to know that somebody out there recognizes how important the franchises established by 3DO are to the future of gaming.

  8. Army Men by Kris_J · · Score: 1

    Just let the Army Men property die, for crying out loud.