3DO featured in top 10 worst consoles on gametrailers.com

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UnholyTancred
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3DO featured in top 10 worst consoles on gametrailers.com

Post by UnholyTancred » Mon May 07, 2007 1:19 am

Yes I've been gone for several months due to laziness. I did find this though which motivated me enough to come back here and talk of how awesome the 3DO is.

http://www.gametrailers.com/player.php? ... v&id=19205

These guys are buffoons.

"3DO... pfft... no CD copy protection"

Yea well you guys touted the PS1 to be the best console of all time and it's copy protection was piss poor.

Also the Sega CD bit pissed me off. I have played so many high quality Sega CD games and I still have not played 1 FMV game. Why? Because the console isn't cluttered with FMV games ffs!
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Post by ninjagowoo » Mon May 07, 2007 2:59 am

I believe they were using the fact that the 3do has no copy protection as an extra reason for it's failure. After all, if people can just copy games, they're much less likely to buy them. At least the psx copy protection had to bypassed. (all though in total honesty, how many people had a cd burner back when the 3do was released :P) Also the 3do was only No7 on the worst list, which I wouldn't really dispute very much.

I don't have much experience with the SCD, but I agreed with most of what they said in the video.

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Post by bonefish » Mon May 07, 2007 4:09 am

Haha complete lack of copy protection... thats great! I mean importing could've been an issue from 93-96 but in all seriousness I don't think many people were making copies back then.

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Post by UnholyTancred » Mon May 07, 2007 5:09 am

Exactly and considering the PS1 simply needed an easy swap... it's ridiculous...
"Democracy for an insignificant minority, democracy for the rich — that is the democracy of capitalist society."
-Vladimir Lenin

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Post by 3DOKid » Mon May 07, 2007 6:14 am

A CD writer was beyond most peoples pockets. What was the reason for it's failure then in other peoples opinion?


EDIT: Also having just watched that - it was worse than a great many homemade Youtube gaming videos. Pfft.

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Post by ninjagowoo » Mon May 07, 2007 7:23 am

Obviously (and arguably) the game library. In my opinion, a console is only as good as it's games. At launch, the 3DO didn't really have very many exclusives, coupled with the insane price tag...not many people bought one.

Actually wikipedia has an entire subsection devoted to the 3do's demise:
By the early 1990s, the video game market had become overcrowded. Sega, Nintendo, Commodore, SNK, and Atari each had a video game system on the market. When viewed internationally, the chief competition for the 3DO during its peak had been Nintendo's SNES, the Sega Genesis and NEC's PC Engine platforms. The success and quality of subsequent next generation systems which began coming onto the market in the mid-90s, the limited library of titles, the lack of third-party support, and a refusal to reduce pricing until almost the end of the product's life were among the many issues that led to the platform's demise.

For a significant period of the product's life cycle, 3DO's official stance on pricing was that the 3DO was not a video game console, it was a high-end audio-visual system and was priced accordingly, so no price adjustment was needed. Price drops announced in February of 1996 were perceived in the industry to be an effort to improve market penetration before the release of the promised M2, heavy promotional efforts on the YTV variety show It's Alive and a stream of hinted product expandability items supported that idea.

...
Actually, if you read the 3do page on wikipedia, it's remarkably striking to what's going on now with the ps3. Poor Sony has their work cut out for them.

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Post by bonefish » Mon May 07, 2007 12:54 pm

PS"3do"wn3d

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Post by NikeX » Mon May 07, 2007 2:44 pm

Everbody is telling a different fairy tale of and
from his point of view. Theyre talking and writing,
as everybody in the virtual world. 3DO was
overhyped but dominated the market for, lets say,
a year. 3DO development was full of creative &
intelligent people. I love the 3DO and its story,
best retro feeling ever.

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Post by Dryden » Mon May 07, 2007 3:12 pm

What is often overlooked in the 3DOs demise in the US was how it was presented at retail. There was a major shift in the 90s, thanks to Nintendo going mainstream in the 80s, and 3DO failed to take advantage.

If anyone remembers the good ole days of the 70s and early 80s (again, from my US point of reference, when outdoor strip malls and plazas were still city centers), video game buyers only had a few avenues where they could go to shop, places such as Radio Shack, Sears or their JCPenney catalog. In 1985, Nintendo's NES, thanks to the genius of bundling the 'R.O.B.', brought home consoles into toy stores. Within three to four years, you could buy video games anywhere: toy stores, department stores and electronics stores. This was a big deal in the 80s when multi-department general stores flourished, and often times you would have three or four retailers in the same mall price competing with each other on the exact same NES carts. The NES was ubiquitous. You saw "World of Nintendo" in every store you entered, and you realized it was something you were supposed to own, like a VCR.

The 3DO Company took advantage of none of that. Combine the steep $700 price AND being an electronics start up with no name recognition and you've suddenly built yourself a huge barrier to entry at retail. At least around here, the only place to find a 3DO was a mom-and-pop video game trading store or EB. EB did not market the 3DO well, it was competing for shelf space with about nine other console systems at the time, and the games were packaged in the outdated CD longboxes, which meant that fewer games could be displayed, because the individual game boxes took twice as much shelf space.

It was the right system at the wrong time. It came around at a period when the industry was at its most competitive, and to stand out in the crowd the 3DO Co took the high road and attempted to win by appealing to sophisticated game players.

There aren't that many sophisticated game players.

There's a cautionary lesson in there for Sony.

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Post by 3DOKid » Mon May 07, 2007 8:15 pm

Trip Hawkins always blames the lack of marketing. he says Sony, Sega, et al. All came to market with $billions and 3DO simply didn't have enough to compete.

I don't think the games let the 3Do down. There were some great games. But they let the industry focus on the rubbish. CD interactive multimedia was a bubble - a bubble which burst and there were a lot of casulties. Sega, Commodore, Atari and 3DO. Sega scrapped through by the skin of their teeth but only managed another 4 years after the 3DO died.

3Do missed loads of opportunities. Why didn't they convert Amiga/ST fans to the cause? Why didn't they make more of the RJ Mical link? Why didn't they make more of games like immercenary and Luciennes Quest and Guardian Wars? Why didn't they push the 2D capabilities. Adult games? We all snigger, but it was a niche right? IMHO there were enough niches for 3DO to have carved a living. Party games? 3DO sewed that one up and then let it go? Why didn't they do a Nintendo Wii? Don't fight Sony on their own ground. 3D. Fight them in the niches. ;)

...ah well.

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