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Microsoft, UbiSoft, Namco Buy 3DO Assets
Steve Shewchuk writes "3DO, the publisher known for its Might and Magic, Army Men, and High Heat Baseball franchises, has successfully auctioned off a number of its assets after its transition into bankruptcy protection. High Heat Baseball has been purchased by Microsoft, while the Might and Magic series went to Ubisoft. Street Racing Syndicate sold to Namco Hometek, but there's no word on Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, one of the biggest 'in production' games before 3DO went bankrupt."
Great -- there goes High Heat baseball. The franchise has suffered in years past: 3DO had a single-minded focus on getting the product out the door, and then would abandon it. The user community would release all kinds of cool add-ons, such as stadiums, uniforms, etc., but we never got so much as a patch from 3DO.
Microsoft Baseball from the late 90s was OK for the time, but it's arcade style was worlds away from the true-to-life experience that HH provided. This is a sad day for baseball sims. I'm glad EA took a step in the right direction with this year's offering, but for me, now it's the only game in town.
It could be worse, Microsoft might have got it instead, in which case it would probably be only available on XBox
I'm not sure about that. Microsoft has released some very good games in the past and hasn't tried to transition to Xbox those that wouldn't be very good in a console (flight sim, age of empire, et al.)
Games are about the only MS software I don't flinch about when it comes to purchasing decisions.
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Yes it was.
Didn't 3DO have some really interesting hardware patents? - I know that after Commodore went bust, a lot of Amiga hardware designers went to work for 3DO, and as a result 3DO had some cool Amiga style custom-chip trickery.
Does anyone know what's happenned to any hardware patents 3DO might have had?