Do you guys think all consoles from the 90's deserve the rep they have? Since collecting I have noticed that while most failed consoles from the 90's do somewhat deserve the bad rep they have and deserved to fail. Does this apply to all of them, were all of them rubbish or were there a few that deserved to do well and just had bad luck or came out at the wrong time? Two I always think of that deserved better would be the PC engine in the US and the 3DO.
For the latter it seemed to pave the way for latter consoles like the PS1, bringing up the PS1 if you count in the fact that Sony could make money off the games and in turn keep the price down on the PS1 while the 3DO manufactures could not they cost the same to make.
Though it was originally overpriced it did have good hardware for the time. Had good games that just seemed to come to late with too little marketing Hawkings explains" Personally I think to much is made of the initial price, in my view bigger problems were lack of good software launch and we had locked into a low license fee(3 dollars compared to the 9 SEGA charged) and could not subsidize lower price's or do much real marketing, key titles were as much as a year late, neither did the lack of piracy protection help also far too few of the Japanse game made it to the US such as the Alone in the Dark inspired game Doctor hauzer help". and did something not many American consoles do, which is being popular over in Japan.
It is an interesting note that the system had more models either released or planned in Japan and had quit a few interesting exclusives other there that never mad it to the US. This is a important anomaly while others American systems like the Atari Jaguar and Microsoft's consoles have all failed in Japan.
The 3DO had some degree of success. Hawkins explain " Your manufacturing partners were global companies and them and us had global hopes. Partners included Matsushita, Sanyo, LG, Samgun, Creative labs and Toshiba. Some of the more interesting peripheral's and merchandise were only released in Japan, while instead of looking at the system with distain like they do Microsoft's machines Japanese developers released many good games. Like warp which released titles like D, another developer that deserves mention is RPG loving microcabin, while they were not up with square but with a system starved of good RPG's they were a god send. Happly 2 of there RPG's made it to the west. Lucians Quest and Guardian war. Oddly many western games were localized for Japan even if they were not suitable, star control 2 which contains many hours of English dialogue had its text and voice over redone in Japanese. For a game built around communicating to many strangely voiced alien races to have all of the text and speech translated is a surprise, more surprisingly they did a good job.
But why did Japan support Trip Hawkins dream so strongly, one was price. Japanese business is polarized there is the big players like Sony then the more experimental little guys like Warp. The 3DO represented to little guys a opportunity to cheaply develop games on CD for the latest 32bit hardware, it was a excellent way to experiment safely on the medium and technology in preparation for later development on the Saturn and PS1. While there early 3DO efforts might have been rough around the edges the experience gained would be helpful later on. The second reason was that Japanese manufacturers were making it, tailoring it slightly which helped with gaining public acceptance the 3DO had ideals and Japanese involvement conversely the Xbox is unmistakeably American and far from idealistic. It's not that Japan is anti-American just pro-Japanese, when Matsushita was the first manufacture of the Machine the Japanese took noticed and assumed it to have Maurits.
Game estimates put the final game count at 200 though when including Japanese exclusives it jumps to more around 320 titles. In the beginning everyone had been optimistic but the reasons for the collapse were complex, 3DO was the first high tech company to go public without a real operating business preceding the dot come bubble.
The irony of this is that by going public and achieving a market value of more then 1 billion dollars, 3DO first lost it's strategic partners because they had a highly profitable exit and then 3DO failed because it access to capital dried up. Many people think of a IPO as a victory, but for the 3DO it was a death sentence.
While the PC engine was defiantly one that deserved better, it was a good price, had excellent games, and looked good for it's time but ultimately come down to less capital to spend on marketing unlike Nintendo.
Here is a video history look at the 3DO
3DO - History Overview Of The Console Pt 1
3DO - History Overview Of The Console Pt 2
Sapphire(PC Engine)
