3DO Auction Yields Disappointing Financials

Posted by simoniker on Tuesday August 19, 2003 @09:56AM from the microsoft-make-out-like-bandit dept.

Thanks to Yahoo!/Daily Deal for revealing the final bidding prices for 3DO's assets, totalling a mere $4.6 million, following the company's bankruptcy auction last week. The article indicates the main winning bidders were "...UbiSoft Holdings Inc. for the fantasy games 'Might and Magic' and 'Heroes of Might and Magic,' for $1.3 million; Namco Hometek Inc. for 'Street Racing Syndicate' at $1.515 million; JoWooD Productions Software AG for the 'Jacked' motorcycle game for $90,000; Crave Entertainment Inc. for 'Army Men' for $750,000; and Microsoft Corp. which paid $450,000 for the intellectual property for 'High Heat Baseball'." 3DO founder Trip Hawkins also bought an Internet patent and much of 3DO's back-catalog for $400,000. 3DO's lawyers claimed that the SEC investigation of games companies launched last month made possible suitors back off, saying: "It probably cost us $10 million easily."

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Re:Crunching the numbers by simoniker · 2003-08-19 11:30 · Score: 4, Insightful

Very interesting analysis indeed - but I believe that UbiSoft bought the rights to all the old Might and Magic games, even those that have already been developed, and which they can essentially now sell without sinking much/any new money into them. That's good for starters. And the Might and Magic name still has some prestige value, and if you figure that you can pay up to $5 million just for the right license, then paying $1 million to get your own intellectual property/license forever seems half-decent.

I think everyone got very good deals out of this, actually, considering the average game costs $3-5 million dollars, especially Microsoft, who got a respected and fully-developed baseball franchise for under $500,000 - crazy.