3DO's Last Stand

The ten-minute intermission vanished in the blink of an eye.

The countdown on the big screen hit zero.

The star of today's final press conference took the stage.

3DO.

The attendance was down by a third compared with Sony and Electronic Arts.

Quite a few reporters from Europe and Japan had left early to rush out their articles, and most of those who remained looked worn out.

After a nonstop barrage of high-intensity information, these media workers' attention had been pushed to its limit.

3DO's situation these past few years had been extremely awkward.

Back then, Trip Hawkins had ambitiously proposed the idea of a "unified hardware standard," trying to become the VHS tape of the games industry.

Electronics giants such as Panasonic and Sanyo had responded one after another, manufacturing 3DO consoles as contractors.

The logic of real-world business had dealt Hawkins a heavy blow.

With no first-party software to escort it, the launch lineup had been pieced together entirely by third parties.

The steep hardware price had directly scared off the vast majority of households.

Its launch price of 699 US dollars in 1993 had become a classic negative example in video game history.

Over the past few years, under market pressure, 3DO had cut its price again and again.

It dropped to 399 US dollars at the end of 1994, and in 1995 fell even further to 299 US dollars.

Even so, the market response remained bleak.

David had looked through the industry reports from the past few days.

As of May 1996, 3DO's cumulative global sales had not broken 1.4 million units.

Of that, the Japanese market had contributed more than 700,000 units, while its home turf in North America had not even sold 500,000.

If not for Hawkins's status as the founder of Electronic Arts,