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/vr/ - Retro Games


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File: 9 KB, 300x300, Platform_-_3DO.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
5733115 No.5733115 [Reply] [Original]

Why did it fail? Practically anyone with credentials of any kind touted it up as the next big thing and were sure it would sell gangbusters.

Was it just boomers the kind you see in the Computer Chronicles being disconnected from what gamers of the time were actually looking for?

>> No.5733128

Ridiculous price point and no track record.

>> No.5733185

>>5733115
>700 dollars
So would you rather have a Nintendo or a Sega system and a crapton of games or a 3DO with some early 3d horrible framerate garbage?

>> No.5733187

Uh, Gex was cool!
I liked mine a bit, but it lacked a flagship game, and I could never find SFIIT.

>> No.5733213

Initial price
Hardware was quickly overshadowd

>> No.5733228

As a third worlder I was really surprised that in our game magazines they had entries for 3DO and Jaguar games

I mean, what the fuck. No one could afford that. Doubt it was even sold here

>> No.5733254

>>5733115
The concept was intrinsically stupid since the intention was for 3DO to be a "standard" technology that could be produced by any electrical goods manufacturers, meaning
1. the profits from video games come from the games, not the systems the games are played on.
2. having "standard" technology meant hardware manufacturers couldn't add new features to their products to distinguish them from competitors

>> No.5733605

>>5733115
Expensive as fuck and little worthwhile stuff to play.
For the price of a 3DO you could get a SNES or Genesis, an extra controller, and a whole stack of good games.

Insult to injury is that the SNES port of Doom ran better than the 3DO version.

>>5733228
I didn't even know they marketed the Jaguar outside of the US?

>> No.5733626

>>5733254
It also meant that some versions of the 3do couldn’t play some games because every manufacturer had different standards even with a standard build model.

>> No.5733645

>>5733254
That's like the opposite of why it was stupid. The profits from video games always come from the games. In fact, game sales are SO profitable that video game companies would often produce the consoles at a loss (selling them for less than their cost to produce) to establish an installed user base that would then buy the games that manufacturer produced which is why consoles are usually closed platforms - which also reduces shovelware like what caused the 1983 American console crash.

The 3DO had no such guarantee nay even a realistic HOPE of recovering the sunk hardware cost through software publication unless you happened to own your own CD factories which is why Panasonic/Goldstar (Philips) were the primary manufacturers of 3DOs but they still couldn't manage to get them out the door at a reasonable price.

Interestingly Sony actually adopted a lot of the 3DO model when developing the Playstation, which one could look at as basically a Nintendo CD-Rom+3DO console. 3DO was even down to the same price point by launch but Sony waited until a pivotal moment when they could produce similar but (barely) superior enough hardware to be obvious, got some good third party devs under contract and then launched a HUGE marketing campaign for it. They could easily have made the Playstation 3DO compatible but why would they? They just ended up making unbeatable offers to all the publishers of any good 3DO games to port to Playstation.

tl;dr - Sony was able to do everything good about 3DO better and entirely on their own

>> No.5733659

>>5733605
>SNES port of Doom ran better than the 3DO version.
Did it really? The SNES port is fucking awful.

>> No.5733672

>>5733115
>Practically anyone with credentials of any kind
Which youtube told you that?

>> No.5733701

There's a few systems from my childhood I vaguely heard of at the time 3DO, Jaguar, Neo they sounded cool and advanced....and I'll also couldn't tell you a single game on any of those systems when I was a kid. So whatever was going on with their marketing, they missed. I had no incentive to ever ask for one for Christmas, but I had plenty of incentive to ask for a bunch of SNES and gameboy games.

The price would have been a huge factor, there's no way my father would have considered (or even be able to) to pay $700 for a console. But it never got to that point, I, and I'm sure most other people, never even considered asking for one because there was no reason to. I had nothing against the system, but they didn't really let me know what games I needed to have and could only get on their platform.

Now after PlayStation came out I would have had no reason to ask for one...except the magazines were covered with pictures of resident evil, crash bandicoot, twisted metal, and other cool looking games I could only play on PlayStation, so I got one. It's really that simple - games sell consoles.

>> No.5733747

Too expensive, I never knew anyone who had one and there was like one store near me that even carried it.

>> No.5733770

>>5733672
Decent thread by this boards standards, but yeah, you really have to take a second to think about that sentence and how absolutely stupid it and its implication is.

>> No.5733773

>>5733701
I don't quite agree about those systems having no memorable games, especially the 3DO. I was a kid too around that time and I remember quite clearly the impressive arcade ports of Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo or Samurai Shodown (two really big games at that time), the "photorealistic" Road Rash, the first Need for Speed, the impressive video quality of Jurasic Park (the game was reallly awful, though), the exclusive port of Another World, the weird fighting game with big digitized sprites "Way of the Warrior", etc.

I mean, it was never a very desired console for me, and Saturn or Playstation had much better libraries, but having a Mega Drive or Snes around 1992-1993 and seeing 3DO game pictures in magazines, it was difficult not being impressed by them. I sure was.

>> No.5733778

Trip Hawkins was an idiot. Sega was THIS close to buying out 3DO but the deal went sour because he demanded as one of the terms that they make him president of SoA.
Also the dev tools were atrocious. In a flash of stupidity someone decided to make the 3DO SDK run on classic Mac OS only... you know, the one without multitasking. It was so unstable and crashy that artists were forced to save their edits PIXEL BY PIXEL in some cases.

>> No.5733781

>>5733701
The Neo Geo was never really intended to be a home console. It was literally an arcade system that they decided to convert to console form.

>> No.5733835 [DELETED] 

>>5733254
>1. the profits from video games come from the games, not the systems the games are played on
Console makers always do that and as explained sometimes sell the console at a loss.
>>5733254
I don't know what you mean, but I'm pretty sure the current consoles use the same type of architecture for the past few generations.

>> No.5733836 [DELETED] 

>>5733254
>1. the profits from video games come from the games, not the systems the games are played on
Console makers always do that and as explained sometimes sell the console at a loss.
2. having "standard" technology meant hardware manufacturers couldn't add new features to their products to distinguish them from competitors
Not clear on what you mean, but I'm pretty sure the current consoles use the same type of architecture for the past few generations.

>> No.5733839

>>5733254
>1. the profits from video games come from the games, not the systems the games are played on
Console makers always do that and as explained sometimes sell the console at a loss.
>2. having "standard" technology meant hardware manufacturers couldn't add new features to their products to distinguish them from competitors
Not clear on what you mean, but I'm pretty sure the current consoles use the same type of architecture for the past few generations.

>> No.5733854

>>5733115
who hyped it up?

>> No.5734005

>>5733659
It was rushed out in ten weeks by one contractually obligated programmer after it came to light that the originally contracted dev team at Art Data didn't know what the fuck they were doing, and hadn't actually gotten any work done.
When asking them to give him the source code so he could get to work, they gave him a commercial copy of the game, so he had to go ask Carmack for help.
Carmack, looking at the situation and seeing it for the crazy bullshit that it was, and finding out the publisher they licensed the 3DO port to had simply taken Art Data at their word that they could do it in time and left it at that, gave him a copy of the source code for the Atari Jaguar port, presumably this was the most expedient path.
So working day and night for less than 10 weeks, he could hammer out a basic port of Doom that technically ran, the publisher, having been promised all kinds of new exclusive content by Art Data settled for just normal Doom, as they had promised 3DO a port of Doom.
So the port comes out, it sucks, but the programmer and the publisher are out of trouble, the port did end up having a pretty good recorded soundtrack, as the Jaguar code had no provisions for playing .mus/.midi during gameplay, and the head of Art Data was a guitarist in a pretty decent garage band.

This is the story Burger Bill (now Becky) tells, at least. Some people who worked at Art Data have said this wasn't exactly how it happened.

>> No.5734008

>>5733781
Wasn't it marketed as a deluxe product for enthusiasts? Like it really wasn't trying to compete with normal consoles or something.

>> No.5734343

>>5733770
>>5733672
It was featured the Time Magazine machine of the fucking year for crying out loud. Major news networks covered it and interviewed Trip Hawkins. Computer Chronicles seemed convinced it would blow the video game competition out of the water. I wasn't there for it naturally, but it seems to me that 3DO was a big deal at the time.

>> No.5734515

>>5733773

I also remember the 3DO when it came out, and I also was impressed by the game screenshots in magazines. I got to try a lot of the games, and with just a few exceptions (SSF2, Samurai Shodown, etc.), most of the games felt like tech demos to me. They looked good in still shots, but often had bad framerates and the lacked polish. Game menus often felt slapped together at the last minute, and many of them just felt incomplete. I felt like almost all of the Jaguar library suffered from this problem, too. The games rarely felt complete and polished like first-party offerings from Nintendo and Sega or prestigious third-party offerings like Konami or Capcom. Even as a kid, after playing many of them for just a few minutes, it was easy to go back to SNES and Genesis.

>> No.5734529

Why do people even ask questions like this? It cost 699.99 usd.

Funny thing about it is for that 699.99 you get a console that is less capable than the SNES at displaying any sort of scrolling graphic.

>> No.5734532

>>5734008
It was advertised as an expensive console for enthusiasts willing to pay high prices for the actual arcade experience at home. It was never meant to compete with the Genesis or SNES, it was not in the same market.

>> No.5734627

>>5734008
It was marketer as a competitor to the CDI. Who the hell bought a CDI?

>> No.5734726

Aside from the obvious shit like the price point, it's EXTREMELY difficult to break into the console market. Sony was only able to do it because both Nintendo and Sega happened to fuck up at just the right time for them to capitalize on it. Microsoft had the fortune of the Dreamcast, the only other console that realized online play was the future, flopping hard and creating an easy niche in the market they could get in on. 3DO had no such luck.

>> No.5734732

>>5733187
>3DO
>best game on the system is 2D
what did they mean by this

>> No.5734883
File: 103 KB, 356x500, Sega_Genesis_Tower_of_babel_truespacemoth_form.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
5734883

>>5733254
>>5733645
Okay so if I get it right:
1. 3DO didn't actually have the manpower to do proper hardware R&D inhouse
2. So the 3DO itself won't be price efficient when produced by third parties, who is in it for the gains of printing CDs and license money?
3. So in the end 3DO is too expensive, but where any costs they could have recouped gets eaten by having a third party doing the sales of the rather expensive units?
4. Default Devkit is trash tier. But there is no Naughty Dog or the alike to start unfucking it. And the console didn't last long enough for devkit revisions

Meanwhile:
-Hardware is okay
-They did their PR work right. I.e >>5734343 and >>5733228
-They had bought out a lot of companies that produced A+ games, like NWC, to ensure first party quality

>> No.5734920

>>5734883
There's nothing wrong with the R&D of the hardware, it's good straight forward and capable hardware. Sony just had the advantage of a few years of time for the actual cost of hardware to go down and power to go up even if it was only a little bit, combined with the money to produce their own proprietary architecture.

The 3DO wasn't a "bad" system at all its just that the idea of an open source video game console wasn't competitive. Sony was able to just let other people suffer all the pitfalls associated with producing something like that and at the right point step in and pull the carpet out from under them. You might say that if Sony hasn't done that, the 3DO would have ended up occupying that niche that it had already begun carving out already but really if Sony hadn't done it someone else would have.

>> No.5735405

>>5733605
Yes, wish I could find my old magazines.

Had 'tips & tricks' for pc, ps, saturn, n64, 3do, jaguar, older consoles, and that's that. No turbographix or neo geo though.

>> No.5735415

>>5733605
Is this a brit thing? Can you formulate a proper interrogative sentence?

>> No.5735451

Is was not advertised or shown with demos in many stores, it didn't have a launch game to show off the machine. 3do games fixed the frame rate issues in later games but by that time ps1 was around. You just had to look at ridge racer for 5 seconds to realize it was 100 times more powerful than the current consoles and even then it took awhile for ps1 to get really popular.

>> No.5735456
File: 17 KB, 400x286, InigoMontoya.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
5735456

>>5733672
>credentials
>paid editorial
>shills
>founder
I was there for it and I wasn't the only one who knew it was hype doomed to fail

>> No.5735482

>>5733115
It was like $1500 in todays money. I got one when PlayStation came out and rich kids were selling them off. great system at the time

>> No.5735484

>>5733605
The Wolfenstein port was fucking awesome tho

>> No.5735556

>>5735415
How fucking dare you call me British?

>> No.5735576

>>5735456
20 years from now, someone will ask why the Google Stadia failed.

>> No.5735603

>>5733128
Literally this
700 dollars in 1994 for Chrissake

>> No.5735629

Once you filter through the people who could actually afford it, then filter through the people who enjoyed the games on it, you find out just how little could actually be saved to the onboard memory. Some models couldn't even access the damn thing directly just booting without a disc, so if you didn't have a memory manager or game that had that option, you're SOL.

Oh, and daisy chain those controllers too. Because nothing terrible could ever happen from everyone being plugged into each other. The entire thing is a massive shitshow.

>> No.5735635
File: 226 KB, 800x1528, 44346-slayer-3do-front-cover.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
5735635

Only one cool game...

>> No.5735664
File: 124 KB, 467x498, XMxdJ.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
5735664

oh cool, a 3do thread.

ctrl+f star control

not found

>> No.5735893
File: 2.12 MB, 3196x2113, Way-of-the-Warrior-1[1].jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
5735893

>>5734883

>there is no Naughty Dog or the alike to start unfucking it

Got some bad news for you.

>> No.5735906

>>5734008
>>5734532
The Neo Geo home console was originally intended for hotels. SNK decided to let Joe Average buy it too after dozens of Joe Averages screamed "take my money dammit" at them.

But yeah, it was meant for people that actually WANTED it, not for random kids that just wanted a video game system.

>> No.5735946

Does the 3DO have any good games? I impulse bought a 3DO years ago because I'm retarded and all of the "awesome" games I get recommended are abject shit. Crash N Burn which was the pack in game from what I've read at least rises to the level of "a game" but it's not something is put effort into.

>> No.5735962

>>5735946
Gex is great, but it got ported to the Playstation (and Saturn?) later, so...

>> No.5735981

>>5735576
Do I really have to wait 20 years for zoomers to stop fantasizing about how they could have saved Sega and move on to something else?

>> No.5736000

>>5735962
Yeah I already played the "fixed" version.

Gotta admit this Immercenary game looks wacky ass I'm gonna try it.

>> No.5736003

>>5733626
Untrue
>>5733645
That's exactly my point, there was no incentive for hardware manufacturers to jump on the 3DO bandwagon because the margins on the systems themselves are razor thin or nonexistent, the profits are in the games. Unless they cranked up the price of the hardware. Which made the system uncompetitive.

>> No.5736006

>>5735664
Fantastic port, but now available as freeware so hard to brag about as a 3DO exclusive

>> No.5736104

>>5735962
Too bad the PS1 and Saturn versions don't have a save function and rely solely on passwords.

>> No.5736143

>>5735946
Lucienne's Quest I guess? It's several hundred dollars though obviously

>> No.5736621

>>5735893
Man this ying yang desing is kino. Is this game worth playing ?

>> No.5736627

>>5735946
>Does the 3DO have any good games?
Yes

Does it have good exclusives? No. Anything worth playing on it was later ported to the Playstation, PC, and often Saturn.

>> No.5736634

>>5734920
>The 3DO wasn't a "bad" system at all

Disagree there. While the Playstation isn't "designed" to play traditional platformers, it is powerful enough to run them at 60 fps with smooth scrolling. The 3DO isn't. It was not a powerful enough console to play the dominant genre at the time of its release.

>> No.5736639

>>5736627

that's not entirely true.there's slayer, killing time, lucienne's quest, immercenary. certainly not a lot though

>> No.5736664

>>5734920
>but really if Sony hadn't done it someone else would have.
Like who? The N64 was being endlessly delayed, the Saturn was plagued with problems. The NeoGeo was doing its own thing. I see no reason the 3DO couldn't have attracted third party developers and then come back for the next generation after it had made its mark.

>> No.5736676

>>5736664
The Saturn is plagued with problems compared to the Playstation. It was still both cheaper and much more powerful than the 3DO.

>> No.5736731

>>5736676
The Saturn was released in North America almost two year after the 3DO and at $399. By that time it's reasonable to think 3DO could have lowered the cost to at least less than the Saturn. It also had some library already built up, hence carving out a niche. I'm not saying it would beat the Saturn.

>> No.5736736

>>5733115
no games and expensive

>> No.5736794

>>5733773
I honestly could not have told you one game at the time. I'm not saying the games weren't memorable, but back then I didn't know what they were and I'm sure I wasn't the only one.

>> No.5736804

Thoughts on Total Eclipse?

>> No.5736848

>>5736804
>>5736736
Graphics are nice, but boring. Also not an exclusive, its on Playstation.

Check out the sequel, Solar Eclipse on Saturn. Not great, but better.

>> No.5736993

>>5736848
Solar Eclipse isn't really a sequel. The name was changed by marketing at the last minute.

>> No.5737921

>>5736639
Killing Time was available on PC, though with less fancy graphics.

>> No.5738067

>>5736627
Wrong on both counts sport

>> No.5738337

>>5736621
it's laughably bad I remember playing it in the 90s. There's little recorded catchphrases and it's got this B movie sense of humor.

The soundtrack is great tho, old-school white zombie

>> No.5738339

>>5737921
>less fancy
wtf did they have to dumb down?

>> No.5738378

>>5733773
samurai showdown was really well done, the need for speed game was the first one ever and great, road rash was a lot better than the Genesis ones. The wolf3d port is really well done too and there were a lot interesting experimental games but nothing that really stands out

>> No.5739147

>>5738339
If I recall right, the PC version used hideous prerendered 3D graphics for weapon sprites, the 3DO version used digitized photos for sprites.

>> No.5740530

>>5733115
It looked good on paper: powerful technology made by several manufacturers with a laissez-faire approach to software publishing, theoretically assuring an ample supply of both hardware and software.

>> No.5740559
File: 68 KB, 470x234, 110721_mmx3do.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
5740559

>>5736634
The dominant genres at the time of its release were fighting games and racing games both of which it ran just fine.
>muh 60 fps
This has never been a thing actual consumers cared about

>> No.5740591

The texture warping in every single 3D game for 3DO is fucking unbearable and makes me physically sick. Just walking up close to a wall makes it distort like crazy. This is why John Carmack didnt allow similar 3D tech to be used for the Saturn port of Doom.

>> No.5740728

>>5740559
30fps was considered smooth back then and frequently used in marketing. 3DO games chug along at about 15.

>> No.5740890

>>5740559
>>muh 60 fps
>This has never been a thing actual consumers cared about

As a little shithead in training, I distinctly remember being put off by both the original StarFox and OOT due to their frame rates, although I did not know the term at the time.

Of course, browsing /vr/ implies that, while an actual consumer, I probably did have more 'tism than most.

>> No.5741168

>>5740890
SEAMLESS 12 FPS

>> No.5741728

>>5741168
6 if the game supported the expansion pak

>> No.5741767

>>5740559
people would complain about choppiness and slowdown all the time back then
the term "framerate" didn't come up in casual conversation too much, but it was still a concern

>> No.5742875

>>5740559
Is that pic real?

>> No.5742885

>>5741767
Slowdown is a separate issue. Most games with slowdown are still running at 60 fps, just in slow motion.

Actual low framerates for sidescrollers can be seen in games like Gex on the 3DO. It is choppy as hell compared to the Playstation version.

>> No.5742924

>>5740591
https://twitter.com/optimus6128/status/1147933244928811010

>> No.5744248

>>5740591
Carmack also admitted this was a mistake on his part, because the Saturn port of Doom runs like absolute dogshit and is barely playable.
I'd rather have some warping/wobble and good framerate than solid graphics in a slideshow.

>> No.5744270

>>5733115
Too expensive at the beginning
Didn't actually have proper 3D accelerated hardware(yes really)
Completely outdated after the PS1 was released

>> No.5744447

>>5744270
what does proper mean? it had a math co-processor and a chip (was it 2? I forget) dedicated to drawing polygons.

>> No.5744494
File: 18 KB, 544x368, 3do.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
5744494

>>5734532
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRF8rttT0P8

Except for the commercial where it attempts to step on The Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis by calling them "toys" in contrast to the 3DO.

>> No.5745197

it was expensive because they thought it'd be a good idea to not sell it for a loss like with most consoles that aren't underpowered.