Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and I love all things tech and Back in three
Speaker 1: a new video game console created by the founder of
Speaker 1: Electronic Arts launched, and just three years later that console
Speaker 1: would be discontinued and essentially taken off the market. It
Speaker 1: was a massive failure. The company that made the console
Speaker 1: would stick around a little longer, ultimately closing up shop
Speaker 1: in two thousand three. This is the story of the
Speaker 1: three d O Company and the console that wasn't meant
Speaker 1: to be. Now, for this episode, We're going to focus
Speaker 1: a lot early on at some prehistoric and Eastern terms
Speaker 1: of three d OH information, because I think it's helpful
Speaker 1: to get an understanding of the man who championed the
Speaker 1: idea of the three d O to kind of see
Speaker 1: where he was coming from, what his thought process was.
Speaker 1: If I just focused on the console or even the
Speaker 1: company all by itself, it would be kind of unusual, strange.
Speaker 1: You wouldn't understand why anyone would make these decisions. So
Speaker 1: it's helpful to have the background. Also, I just think
Speaker 1: it's kind of an an interesting story with lots of
Speaker 1: ups and downs. And that story begins with William M. Hawkins,
Speaker 1: the third a k a. Trip Hawkins. He was born
Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty four. He grew up in California, and
Speaker 1: his mother, Dr. Helen Hawkins, was a producer and host
Speaker 1: at a California public broadcast station. She was also a
Speaker 1: prominent feminist and a publications director, very much a influential woman.
Speaker 1: And his father, William Hawkins Jr. Had earned a degree
Speaker 1: in physics before becoming a sales and marketing executive for
Speaker 1: various companies in California, primarily those in the tech sector.
Speaker 1: In the late fifties and then into the sixties. Trips
Speaker 1: father would take a job with a company called Spectral
Speaker 1: Dynamics Corporation, which employed another person who will be an
Speaker 1: important figure early on for the young Trip, that being
Speaker 1: a man named Lane Hawk. But we'll get back to him. So,
Speaker 1: as a kid, Trip loved games, not just playing them,
Speaker 1: but kind of learning how they worked right, What were
Speaker 1: the mechanics behind the games? What was the theory behind
Speaker 1: the games? What led to making a game a fun
Speaker 1: playing experience? You know, it's not easy to develop an
Speaker 1: actual game that is rewarding that balances everything out, and
Speaker 1: he was really interested in that model, and when in
Speaker 1: high school, he would attempt to make his own version
Speaker 1: of various types of games, like he would take inspiration
Speaker 1: from games that existed that he enjoyed and try to
Speaker 1: make his own. He was particularly interested in games that
Speaker 1: simulated sports. He himself loved sports, and so these games
Speaker 1: kind of gave him an outlet to kind of imagine
Speaker 1: himself being part of, like a top class athletic team.
Speaker 1: According to later interviews, Hawkins enjoyed board games but saw
Speaker 1: that many of his friends preferred to spend their spare
Speaker 1: time watching stuff on television, and during a visit to
Speaker 1: the home of his father's coworker that the aforementioned Lane Hawk,
Speaker 1: he saw something that would spark his imagination for a
Speaker 1: future industry. So Lane was fascinated with games as well,
Speaker 1: just like young Trip Hawkins. And he was also really
Speaker 1: into computer systems, which at the time were not a
Speaker 1: consumer product. This is the early seventies. This was even
Speaker 1: before there were hobbyist kits to purchase. Lane had spent
Speaker 1: a lot of money, like more than five grand, which
Speaker 1: in the nineteen seventies, wasn't even more princely some than
Speaker 1: we would think of today, And five thousand dollars is
Speaker 1: a lot of money, but he spent that to buy
Speaker 1: what today would be an incredibly primitive mini computer. But
Speaker 1: at the time it was well, it was kind of
Speaker 1: showing its age at the time, but it was at
Speaker 1: one point state of the art. It was called the
Speaker 1: PDP eight. Now, when this computer first debuted in the
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties, when it really was, you know, cutting edge
Speaker 1: type of technology, it costs a whopping eighteen thousand, five
Speaker 1: hundred dollars, but this was well beyond the heyday of
Speaker 1: the PDP eight. And it was also a really big computer.
Speaker 1: It was like the size of like a cabinet, like
Speaker 1: a wardrobe, or a small refrigerator. It was a twelve
Speaker 1: bit machine, meaning it could handle a range of in
Speaker 1: jurors from zero to four thousand ninety five, or you
Speaker 1: could do from negative two thousand forty eight to two
Speaker 1: thousand forty seven. Zero would be taking up that pesky
Speaker 1: spot in the middle. And programming for the machine was,
Speaker 1: from what I understand anyway, not intuitive. It was not
Speaker 1: an easy thing to program for. But Lane wanted something
Speaker 1: that he could kind of work on in his spare
Speaker 1: time to putter around with. It was almost like a
Speaker 1: project car for someone who's a gear head. For Lane,
Speaker 1: it was a PDP eight and he hooked up this
Speaker 1: computer to a teletype printer. There was no display, There
Speaker 1: was no monitor for the PDP eight, so you couldn't,
Speaker 1: you know, look at a screen and see what you
Speaker 1: were working on. And instead you used a teletype printer
Speaker 1: and the printer would print out the information that you
Speaker 1: were working on. With the computer, you would read it,
Speaker 1: you would make changes, it would print on a new page.
Speaker 1: It's a pretty painstaking process. Well, Lane created a game
Speaker 1: he called MoU Oo, as in what cows say, at
Speaker 1: least in the United States, and the game was pretty simple.
Speaker 1: The game would generate a four digit number and it
Speaker 1: would keep that number secret. So the game has a
Speaker 1: four digit number and it was your job as the
Speaker 1: player to figure out what that four digit number was,
Speaker 1: and you would submit your own guests. You would put
Speaker 1: in a four digit number and the computer would tell
Speaker 1: you how many digits, if any, you got right, and
Speaker 1: whether or not any of those digits were in the
Speaker 1: right place. So let's say that the secret number the
Speaker 1: computer comes up with is eight to nine five, and
Speaker 1: my guess is one five nine three. The system would
Speaker 1: tell me I got one correct digit in the right
Speaker 1: location because I got the nine correct and it's in
Speaker 1: the right spot. And I got a second digit correct,
Speaker 1: but it's not in the right spot. My five is
Speaker 1: in the wrong position of that four digit number. So
Speaker 1: it's similar to a board game that would come out
Speaker 1: a little later called Mastermind. That one uses colors, not numbers,
Speaker 1: but it's a similar idea. Now, move did this using
Speaker 1: moves and cows. A cow would indicate that you had
Speaker 1: the right digit, but it was in the wrong place.
Speaker 1: A move would indicate that you had a right digit,
Speaker 1: but and it was in the right place. But you
Speaker 1: wouldn't be told which one was which right. You wouldn't
Speaker 1: be told which of the digits was the correct one.
Speaker 1: You would just know, Oh, I've got, you know, two
Speaker 1: moves and a cow, and then my fourth digit is wrong.
Speaker 1: So I've got to start changing this out and narrowing
Speaker 1: down what that four digit number could possibly be. And
Speaker 1: I assume you had to do it in a certain
Speaker 1: number of turns, But none of my research found anything
Speaker 1: about that. But for our story, The important part is
Speaker 1: when Trip Hawkins saw Lanes set up, something must have
Speaker 1: switched on in Trip's brain. He saw the potential for
Speaker 1: computers to bring together the world's of television and bore
Speaker 1: to games. He imagined a world where one day people
Speaker 1: could play games on computers with displays, and that's what
Speaker 1: he wanted to do. He wanted to make games for computers.
Speaker 1: There was no real way to do that at that time.
Speaker 1: There was no way for the average consumer to even
Speaker 1: get hold of a computer at that stage, but Hawkins
Speaker 1: was certain this was where things were going to go,
Speaker 1: and Lane Hawk would go on to develop some early
Speaker 1: arcade games, but that's a story for another time. According
Speaker 1: to Trip Hawkins himself, around nineteen seventy five, he laid
Speaker 1: out a long term plan that would lead towards the
Speaker 1: founding of a computer game company by the year nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty two, but he had a lot of challenges to
Speaker 1: overcome to actually make that happen. Now. He applied and
Speaker 1: was accepted at Harvard and he was a student there
Speaker 1: in the early nineteen seventies, and he wanted to work
Speaker 1: in an industry that just didn't exist yet, and that
Speaker 1: also meant he face a love challenges when it came
Speaker 1: to his studies. It's not like there were degrees and
Speaker 1: what he wanted to do, because the thing he wanted
Speaker 1: to do wasn't a thing yet. So he started to
Speaker 1: kind of put together his studies in a piecemeal fashion,
Speaker 1: you know, taking classes and computer science and programming and
Speaker 1: related topics. And at the end of his stay at
Speaker 1: Harvard he hadn't just earned a degree, he had essentially
Speaker 1: invented a degree in applied game theory and design. Hawkins
Speaker 1: then went on to pursue postgraduate work at Stanford, where
Speaker 1: he earned an NBA in nineteen seventy eight. By this time,
Speaker 1: technology was slowly starting to build the foundation that Hawkins
Speaker 1: would need to pursue his dream of creating a video
Speaker 1: game company. UH the twenty hundred he debuted the year
Speaker 1: before he got his m b A, and that took
Speaker 1: a leading position in the new field of home video
Speaker 1: game consoles. That same year, in nineteen seventy seven, Apple
Speaker 1: would unveil the Apple two computer, which was the first
Speaker 1: personal computer from Apple that took aim beyond the relatively
Speaker 1: small harp hobbyist market. The original Apple computer was a
Speaker 1: kit you might even see pictures of old Apple one
Speaker 1: computers in wooden cabinets. That's the original Apple. But the
Speaker 1: Apple two was the first real consumer personal computer, and
Speaker 1: it was still too soon for Hawkins to really pursue
Speaker 1: his plans to make a video game company. In addition,
Speaker 1: while in college, Hawkins had made, marketed, and sold his
Speaker 1: own board game after taking a loan from his father.
Speaker 1: His father loaned him the princely some of five thousand dollars,
Speaker 1: which again that's a lot of money. And people liked
Speaker 1: the game that Hawkins made, but there weren't enough people
Speaker 1: who actually bought it to make it a success. It
Speaker 1: was a failure. And that failure, I think convinced Hawkins
Speaker 1: that he really needed to be methought iCal and patient
Speaker 1: before launching his business. It would be a bad idea
Speaker 1: to rush into things. He had already seen what you know,
Speaker 1: a misstep could do. It could be a very expensive mistake.
Speaker 1: So Hawkins would conduct the first complete study of the
Speaker 1: personal computer market in nine and that's back when it
Speaker 1: was a very young field. There were a lot of
Speaker 1: different computers out there, the Apples, the trs a D
Speaker 1: or trash a D computer, the you know, the Tandy,
Speaker 1: the Commodore sixty four. Those were coming out around this time,
Speaker 1: some of them a little later, and he started to
Speaker 1: get a feel for where things were headed and how
Speaker 1: he might best be able to take part in a
Speaker 1: technological revolution. While in school, he attended a computer fair
Speaker 1: and he actually saw the Apple two debut in person.
Speaker 1: He was at that computer fair and he decided that
Speaker 1: he would apply to work for a computer company upon graduating,
Speaker 1: and he did. He applied to a lot of different places,
Speaker 1: and the one that gave him an offer that he
Speaker 1: accepted was Apple. The company was happy to bring him
Speaker 1: on board. He was the first MBA in the company,
Speaker 1: which he joking Lee said, is always a scary thing.
Speaker 1: You never want to be the first NBA in a company.
Speaker 1: But he joined when there were somewhere between twenty five
Speaker 1: and fifty people working there. Sources don't fully agree on this,
Speaker 1: which is often the case when I researched stuff in
Speaker 1: computer history, though Hawkins himself has said there were about
Speaker 1: fifty employees. However, twenty five of them were primarily responsible
Speaker 1: for physically assembling the computers, so maybe really the sources
Speaker 1: kind of agree. It's just that some of the sources
Speaker 1: ignore the assembly line workers and only focus on the
Speaker 1: you know, the Apple management and officers. That seems a
Speaker 1: bit elitist to me, but maybe that's what's going on anyway.
Speaker 1: This was right as the Apple two started to get
Speaker 1: some traction. As one of the earliest successful personal computers
Speaker 1: that was available on the market. At Apple, Hawkins would
Speaker 1: gain a lot of real world experience while taking on
Speaker 1: an increasing amount of responsibility. He helped guide Apple's efforts
Speaker 1: to getting computers into workplaces, and he encouraged the development
Speaker 1: of various productivity applications like spreadsheet programs. Hawkins has said,
Speaker 1: quote I didn't invent the spreadsheet, but I did bring
Speaker 1: the first spreadsheet apps into Apple end quote. This would
Speaker 1: allow Apple to compete in markets where previously IBM was
Speaker 1: really the king of the castle. Four years after joining
Speaker 1: Apple Trip, Hawkins was the director of Strategy and Marketing, Which,
Speaker 1: you know, that's a heck of an achievement to go
Speaker 1: to a director level position within four years, even if
Speaker 1: you and you know, take into account the fact that
Speaker 1: the office staff had really only numbered twenty five employees
Speaker 1: when he joined the company and Apple had just held
Speaker 1: its initial public offering, and that ended up making Hawkins
Speaker 1: a pretty healthy amount of cash. But this means that
Speaker 1: we were just getting up to two. And if you
Speaker 1: remember what I said a little earlier in this episode,
Speaker 1: that was the year that Hawkins had predicted way back
Speaker 1: in n that he would launch a computer game company,
Speaker 1: or at least that's what his plan had called for,
Speaker 1: and other computer game companies were already getting off the
Speaker 1: ground around this time. At home video game consoles like
Speaker 1: the AD had spawned numerous game development companies. Hawkins made
Speaker 1: his move to follow through on his plan that his
Speaker 1: younger self had created, and he left Apple to found
Speaker 1: his computer game company, now Trip. Hawkins says that at
Speaker 1: the time, he thought video game developers were, on the
Speaker 1: whole not treated so well. They were frequently treated like
Speaker 1: cheap contract labor on a game by game basis, and
Speaker 1: Hawkins aimed to create a company that turned that on
Speaker 1: its head. And that was the birth of Electronic Arts
Speaker 1: better known today as e A. And it was back
Speaker 1: in two. When we come back, we'll give a super
Speaker 1: high level overview of hawkins vision of e A and
Speaker 1: how that would lead him to found another company, the
Speaker 1: three D O Company. But first let's take a quick break. Today.
Speaker 1: The name E A has I guess it's fair to
Speaker 1: say a little bit of baggage along with it. The
Speaker 1: company has a reputation for doing some stuff that rubs
Speaker 1: gamers the wrong way, the big one being that it
Speaker 1: has a history of scooping up smaller video game developers
Speaker 1: and then kind of sapping the intellectual property those video
Speaker 1: game developers had created and just draining it dry and
Speaker 1: having the developers anguish a bit before shutting them down.
Speaker 1: U e A has done this to companies like Origin,
Speaker 1: which made The Wing Commander and Ultimate Series, Maxis Pandemic
Speaker 1: Bull Rug Studios. The list is long. In two thousand
Speaker 1: and twelve, e A even made headlines for a really
Speaker 1: not super awesome reason. It was voted the worst company
Speaker 1: in the entire United States. But back in two it
Speaker 1: was a very different company. Hawkins said that he funded
Speaker 1: e A out of his own pocket for the first
Speaker 1: six months, and at the very beginning he was the
Speaker 1: only employee and he was working out of his home
Speaker 1: until he was able to secure some office space in California,
Speaker 1: and then he started to hire on employees, and it
Speaker 1: was only in October, months after he had started. He
Speaker 1: got started in the spring of nineteen eighty two. So
Speaker 1: the fall of nine two he got together with his
Speaker 1: twelve employees. This is starting sound a little biblical, and
Speaker 1: together they brainstormed up the name of the company Electronic Arts.
Speaker 1: And Hawkins had really wanted to stress that games can
Speaker 1: be a form of art and that video game developers
Speaker 1: are artists and they should be recognized as such, and
Speaker 1: Electronic Arts was born. E a's early identities centered around
Speaker 1: compensating and crediting game developers above and beyond what the
Speaker 1: competition offered. You know, like most video games at the time,
Speaker 1: you had no idea who worked on that game. If
Speaker 1: you found out, it was only because some industry magazine
Speaker 1: wrote up an article about the person. Chances are you
Speaker 1: just knew which titles went with which companies, if you
Speaker 1: were even paying that close attention. Hawkins wanted to change that.
Speaker 1: He wanted to say, no, you will start to recognize
Speaker 1: the work of specific video game developers and the ones
Speaker 1: that make the stuff you like, you'll know to keep
Speaker 1: getting their stuff. That was the idea, and the company
Speaker 1: launched early titles like Mule m u l E. It
Speaker 1: was a combat simulation game, and Our Con, which was
Speaker 1: one of my favorite early computer games. It was a
Speaker 1: chess like game in which players would control pieces that
Speaker 1: represented different sort of magical and mythological creatures and characters,
Speaker 1: and you were trying to take control of a board
Speaker 1: by controlling the space occupied by your opponent. So you
Speaker 1: can move a piece into an opponent's square, and that
Speaker 1: would initiate an arcade style dual where you would try
Speaker 1: to beat the other player or your computer opponent in
Speaker 1: a little arcade style game, a little shootout, and different
Speaker 1: pieces had different abilities. Some of them were super fast
Speaker 1: but not very powerful. Some shot very powerful beams but
Speaker 1: moved slowly, and so on. Anyway, I'm getting off track,
Speaker 1: but it was a great game. It's again one of
Speaker 1: my favorites. Any ar Con fans out there give it
Speaker 1: a shout out. The as Man that was one of
Speaker 1: my favorite early computer games. Hawkins, however, his favorite games
Speaker 1: were still sports titles. One early e A sports game
Speaker 1: was Dr J and Larry Bird Go One on One, which,
Speaker 1: if you're not you know, up on the sports ball,
Speaker 1: it's a basketball game. Uh you know. Dr J and
Speaker 1: Larry Bird both famous basketball players, amazing basketball players, and
Speaker 1: Hawkins himself designed the game, or at least was very
Speaker 1: heavily involved in the design of the game, and he
Speaker 1: also brought both of the basketball stars into the design
Speaker 1: phase and the marketing of the title, and that gave
Speaker 1: it some prestige in the market to actually, you know,
Speaker 1: attach real world athletes to this video game title. And
Speaker 1: if you know your video game history, you also know
Speaker 1: that this early period of e A coincided with a
Speaker 1: catastrophic market event around the home video game market began
Speaker 1: to wobble, and by it was in the shambles. And
Speaker 1: I've done full episodes about the video game crash of
Speaker 1: eight three, but the short version is that there were
Speaker 1: a confluence of problems from a flood of bad games
Speaker 1: by fly by Night developers. There were a series of
Speaker 1: terrible business decisions at multiple companies. There was the overproduction
Speaker 1: of titles that meant that the once lucrative industry imploded.
Speaker 1: Then there are other elements to like licensing popular games
Speaker 1: or or entertainment franchises that ended up being a cost
Speaker 1: that you could never recoup that kind of thing. There
Speaker 1: are a lot of really bad decisions and entire companies
Speaker 1: disappeared within a year, and video games in general we're
Speaker 1: seen as a failure so much so that retailers didn't
Speaker 1: want to carry video games or video game consoles. And
Speaker 1: it was only by kind of pivoting toward computers that
Speaker 1: companies related to the video game space could stay afloat.
Speaker 1: And you know, e A had primarily been developing titles
Speaker 1: for computers, but it wasn't immune to this problem either.
Speaker 1: The company shifted a little bit in its initial strategy.
Speaker 1: You know again that was originally to promote games by
Speaker 1: associating those games with the designers who made them. But
Speaker 1: now e A was focusing more on promoting specific game
Speaker 1: titles and making franchises out of them, rather than saying, oh,
Speaker 1: this is a game by so and so. The company
Speaker 1: focused exclusively on developing games for various computer platforms like
Speaker 1: the Apple computers you know, IBM PCs, the Commodore sixty four,
Speaker 1: and others at that time. Then Nintendo came along and
Speaker 1: managed to do what most analysts thought was impossible. Nintendo
Speaker 1: was able to bring consoles back from the dead. The
Speaker 1: Nintendo Entertainment System here in the United States, also know
Speaker 1: as the Famicom, became a Grand slam home run of
Speaker 1: a hit. I thought I would use an analogy that
Speaker 1: Trip Hawkins himself would probably appreciate, but it would take
Speaker 1: many years for e A to start to develop games
Speaker 1: for console systems in earnest because Hawkins was one he
Speaker 1: was wary of consoles after the Crash of three and two.
Speaker 1: He was pretty sure the PC was going to be
Speaker 1: the future of gaming. When Sega launched the Sega Genesis
Speaker 1: a k a. The Mega Drive in nineteen eighty nine,
Speaker 1: at least in North America, it launched in different parts
Speaker 1: of the world at different times. It launched in Japan earlier,
Speaker 1: for example, but trip Hawkins would relent a bit and
Speaker 1: negotiated a favorable but not perfect deal with Sega for
Speaker 1: the e E for e A tow to publish games
Speaker 1: on Sega's console, and at that point e A would
Speaker 1: also develop a few games for the Nintendo Entertainment System
Speaker 1: and got a little bit out of that niche market
Speaker 1: of just developing computer games. Now we get to a
Speaker 1: point where we start to see where the three D
Speaker 1: O company idea starts to creep into hawkins mind. Now
Speaker 1: to understand why Hawkins would try to get into the
Speaker 1: console market after he had kind of grown wary of
Speaker 1: it after the Crash of three, you have to know
Speaker 1: a bit about the relationship between video game developers and
Speaker 1: the companies that actually manufacture the hardware that those games
Speaker 1: run on, the main the console manufacturers. In other words,
Speaker 1: Sega in particular was kind of a thorn in the
Speaker 1: industry side, particularly for Trip Hawkins. Sega would insist on
Speaker 1: steep royalties. Now that meant that game publishers would have
Speaker 1: to pay a certain amount of money per game sold
Speaker 1: back to Sega in order to have the games run
Speaker 1: on Sega machines. So let's say that you, as a consumer,
Speaker 1: are going out to buy an e A game for
Speaker 1: the Sega Genesis. Who is getting paid, Well, it turns
Speaker 1: out a lot of people are getting paid. First, there's
Speaker 1: the brick and mortar store where you bought your game,
Speaker 1: because again this is back in the late eighties, there's
Speaker 1: not really any other opportunity. But those merchants in turn
Speaker 1: had to spend money to get the stock to sell
Speaker 1: in the first place. So they would buy their copies
Speaker 1: of the games that they sell to consumers like you
Speaker 1: from e A or from a video game distributor. But
Speaker 1: let's not get too complicated. E A in turn would
Speaker 1: have to share a portion of each of those sales
Speaker 1: two retailers back with Sega. Sega demanded high royalties, so
Speaker 1: that meant a smaller percentage of the money would go
Speaker 1: to e A. E A would develop the games, but
Speaker 1: some of that money was gonna go to Sega, not
Speaker 1: to e A. And Hawkins felt that there was a
Speaker 1: big power imbalance there and he wanted a way to
Speaker 1: address it. And he thought if he could make a
Speaker 1: company that designed video game systems and he didn't impose
Speaker 1: such high royalties on publishers, then creators would have a
Speaker 1: later degree of freedom and a large incentive to develop
Speaker 1: games for that system, and it would usher in a
Speaker 1: new era of amazing games. This was keyed back into
Speaker 1: that artist's first mentality and let's face it, a desire
Speaker 1: to keep more of the revenue for the publisher, not
Speaker 1: send it off to, you know, the console maker. The
Speaker 1: three D O model was to impose a flat three
Speaker 1: dollar royalty rate per games sold, which was much lower
Speaker 1: than the royalties that were being imposed by Sega or
Speaker 1: Nintendo at the time. Hawkins had a fairly radical idea. Now,
Speaker 1: the standard practice for console hardware is for a single
Speaker 1: company like Nintendo or Sega or Sony to design and
Speaker 1: manufacture the systems themselves. These companies could have their own
Speaker 1: in house development studios, but they would also negotiate deals
Speaker 1: with external video game studios to publish titles on those consoles.
Speaker 1: And Hawkins wanted to kind of turn that model on
Speaker 1: its head, and his idea was to create a company
Speaker 1: that would design the specs and architecture for a video
Speaker 1: game console, but then that company would license out the
Speaker 1: design for other manufacturers to actually make to fabricate those consoles.
Speaker 1: So if you listen to my episode about ARM processors,
Speaker 1: you'll recognize this model as ARM followed the same pathway.
Speaker 1: It's something that in Vidio does with graphics cards, although
Speaker 1: in Video also will manufacture cards in house in addition
Speaker 1: to licensing out the designs to other fabricators. To focus
Speaker 1: on three d O, Hawkins stepped down as the CEO
Speaker 1: of e A, which would come back to haunt him later.
Speaker 1: He would remain the chairman of the Board of Directors
Speaker 1: for a while, but he would become the CEO of
Speaker 1: three d O now and all these initialisms are really
Speaker 1: wearing me out. Beyond the goal of creating a design
Speaker 1: for a new console, there were a few other considerations
Speaker 1: going in to the three d OH. But it helps
Speaker 1: if we take a snapshot look of where the video
Speaker 1: game console industry was in ninete. That was the year
Speaker 1: of three d O s founding. So what was going
Speaker 1: on with video game consoles in ninety one, Well, generally speaking,
Speaker 1: the consoles of we're in what we would refer to
Speaker 1: as the fourth generation of video game consoles. The first generation,
Speaker 1: which started in the nineteen seventies, had largely been consoles
Speaker 1: with games that were hardwired onto the systems, meaning you
Speaker 1: couldn't switch out games or anything. The console would have
Speaker 1: one or more games programmed on it and that was that.
Speaker 1: That was what you were limited to. The second generation
Speaker 1: of consoles is the one that had the Atari twenty
Speaker 1: hundred in it. That was part of the second generation.
Speaker 1: This was the generation that was around during the Crash
Speaker 1: of nineteen eighty three. A lot of these consoles had,
Speaker 1: you know, cartridge based system so you could switch out
Speaker 1: games and that kind of stuff. The third generation included
Speaker 1: the Nintendo Entertainment System, the Sega Master System, and a
Speaker 1: few other consoles. Now keep in mind, these generations aren't
Speaker 1: like hard and fast with solid boundaries. It's not like,
Speaker 1: you know, after seven you go from one generation to
Speaker 1: the next, they're a little more fuzzy. But while Hawkins
Speaker 1: was working on the design of the three D O,
Speaker 1: the leading consoles on the market included the Super Nintendo
Speaker 1: Entertainment System which came out in nine, the Sega Genesis,
Speaker 1: which had actually come out in nine, and the Turbo
Speaker 1: Graphics sixteen. These were all fourth generation video game consoles. Uh.
Speaker 1: There were others that were on the market as well,
Speaker 1: they just weren't as popular. There was the Phillips c
Speaker 1: D I UH, Sega would include the Sega c D
Speaker 1: as a type of system, and there were a couple
Speaker 1: of other systems that were on the horizon in nine
Speaker 1: one when three D A was coming together. But while
Speaker 1: the systems like the S and E S, the Genesis,
Speaker 1: and the base Turbo Graphics six team, we're all cartridge
Speaker 1: based games where the game is you know, hard coded
Speaker 1: onto the circuit board of a video game cartridge. The
Speaker 1: future was moving toward optical discs compact discs in the
Speaker 1: game space. That was clearly where things were going, although
Speaker 1: some companies cough Nintendo cough would resist that longer than others.
Speaker 1: Now the standard of the time, the fourth generation consoles
Speaker 1: was for sixteen bit graphics with processors that ranged on
Speaker 1: the low end with eight bit CPUs. The Turbo Graphics
Speaker 1: sixteen had an eight bit CPU, and eventually the fourth
Speaker 1: generation would include a couple of systems that had thirty
Speaker 1: two bit CPUs with like the sake of thirty two X.
Speaker 1: Although thirty two bit systems saw limited release in the
Speaker 1: fourth generation and limited success, they really came in on
Speaker 1: the tail end of the fourth generation that would play
Speaker 1: a bigger part in the fifth generation of games. It
Speaker 1: would take a couple of years to design the three
Speaker 1: d O and land licensing deals with manufacturers interested in
Speaker 1: making the new console. The launch of the three d
Speaker 1: O would put it in direct competition with consoles that
Speaker 1: belonged to the fifth generation of game systems. More in
Speaker 1: those in a minute, so the pressure was on. The
Speaker 1: three d O would need to be better than the
Speaker 1: existing consoles in the fourth generation or it would quickly
Speaker 1: be left behind by the next generation of systems from
Speaker 1: other manufacturers. So the lead designers for the three d
Speaker 1: O were a couple of guys named Dave Needle and R. J. Michael,
Speaker 1: both of whom had worked on systems or other companies together.
Speaker 1: In fact, Needle and Michael had both worked with Commodore
Speaker 1: to design the Amiga computer system. I've done episodes about Amiga,
Speaker 1: and that story is pretty darn interesting. I really recommend
Speaker 1: you look into it. It's a fascinating story. So I
Speaker 1: recommend checking out those episodes. In particular, I think I
Speaker 1: did a bang up job, if I don't mind saying so,
Speaker 1: And you can see how that particular project came about
Speaker 1: and how it gradually faded away. But the two had
Speaker 1: also designed the Links handheld system for Atari. That's l
Speaker 1: y n X because Atari was naming their systems after
Speaker 1: cats for a while, and now they would be designing
Speaker 1: the three D O specs for trip Hawkins now. According
Speaker 1: to at least some versions of the story, the design
Speaker 1: for the three D O really got to start in
Speaker 1: nine nine, when Needle and Michael had sketched out their
Speaker 1: ideas on a napkin and Trip Hawkins had known these
Speaker 1: two for for years, and after learning about what they
Speaker 1: had in mind, he decided he wanted to join forces
Speaker 1: with them in an effort to shape this into the
Speaker 1: three D O idea he was kind of thinking on.
Speaker 1: So together they formed the three D O Company. The
Speaker 1: full name for the console would become the three d
Speaker 1: O Interactive Multiplayer, but a lot of people just call
Speaker 1: it the three d O. That does make things a
Speaker 1: little confusing because that was also the name of the
Speaker 1: company as well, and we'll learn the company managed to
Speaker 1: stick around a little longer than the console did, so
Speaker 1: it gets a little, you know, fuzzy when used to
Speaker 1: just use three d O as the name. Hawkins looked
Speaker 1: to partner with different electronics manufacturers to license the design
Speaker 1: for the actual production of the three d O Building
Speaker 1: a hardware company would have been monumentally expensive, so he
Speaker 1: decided that licensing it just made more sense, and he
Speaker 1: approached in particular Panasonic, Sony and Sego. Now, Sony had
Speaker 1: recently had a really bad experience with Nintendo. The two
Speaker 1: companies were supposed to introduce a CD ROM peripheral that
Speaker 1: was intended for the Super Nintendo system and Sony was
Speaker 1: gonna make it, and they had gone really far in
Speaker 1: the in the whole process, but then Nintendo backed out
Speaker 1: of the deal. Worse than that, they backed out uh
Speaker 1: in public at CS and switched to a different company.
Speaker 1: They chose Phillips instead, and ultimately that didn't really go anywhere.
Speaker 1: That product just kind of faded away, so it was
Speaker 1: all for nothing. But Ken Kutaragi, a Sony executive who
Speaker 1: was in charge of this super disc project, pivoted with
Speaker 1: the intent to use the super disc technology as the
Speaker 1: backbone of a new product from Sony, the first PlayStation prototype,
Speaker 1: which actually was very different from the PlayStation that would
Speaker 1: officially debut a couple of years later. But not surprisingly,
Speaker 1: Sony declined Hawkins's offer to license the three d O
Speaker 1: design for manufacture because they already had their PlayStation in development. Sega,
Speaker 1: which if you recall, was the company that had kind
Speaker 1: of inspired Hawkins to pursue the three d O project
Speaker 1: in the first place, also passed on the opportunity to
Speaker 1: make the three D O. Apparently, Sega executives felt it
Speaker 1: would have been too expensive with too small of a
Speaker 1: profit margin to really get into the three d OH
Speaker 1: manufacturing game. And this is one of those cases where
Speaker 1: Sega made the right call. Uh. Those often can seem
Speaker 1: few and far between if you know a lot about
Speaker 1: Sega's history, but this was the right decision. Panasonic, however,
Speaker 1: was a different story. This electronics company was one of
Speaker 1: the biggest in the world, but they didn't have a
Speaker 1: video game console. They didn't develop those. There was an
Speaker 1: entire sector of the electronics market out there that Panasonic
Speaker 1: was not serving. So the company became the first to
Speaker 1: license the three D O design and start on fabrication.
Speaker 1: A little bit later, another Japanese electronics company called Sanio
Speaker 1: would start making their own three D O consoles. They
Speaker 1: also licensed it from three d O. Now. Snio started
Speaker 1: off in n during what was effectively a purge at Panasonic.
Speaker 1: It was a post World War two purge of the
Speaker 1: Japanese company. For that whole story, you should listen to
Speaker 1: my episodes about the history of Panasonic because I mentioned
Speaker 1: it there. I just find it interesting that the first
Speaker 1: two companies that would sign on to to fabricate three
Speaker 1: D O s also shared d n A in their
Speaker 1: corporate history. Also, while this doesn't really play into our
Speaker 1: three D O story, I thought I would just go
Speaker 1: ahead and mention it. Those two companies would join up
Speaker 1: in two thousand nine when Panasonic would acquire Sanio, which
Speaker 1: is just evidence that we live in a really weird world.
Speaker 1: And there was a third company that would manufacture three
Speaker 1: D O consoles and this one was gold Star, a
Speaker 1: South Korean company. Gold Star is still around today, except
Speaker 1: it's by a totally different name, and it's a name
Speaker 1: that you would recognize. That name is LG Electronics. It
Speaker 1: changed its name in so the company is still around,
Speaker 1: but under a different name. While Panasonic, Sanio and gold
Speaker 1: Star would produced three D O consoles, there were a
Speaker 1: few other companies that had agreed to license the design
Speaker 1: and build their own three D O s, but those
Speaker 1: consoles just never materialized in the marketplace. Uh. Game Pro
Speaker 1: magazine was a great resource for this episode when I
Speaker 1: was looking into this. According to one issue, Samsung was
Speaker 1: one of the companies that signed on to produce three
Speaker 1: D O s, although they didn't announce any sort of
Speaker 1: timeline for production and ultimately it didn't go anywhere. Another
Speaker 1: Game Pro issue revealed that the electronics company Toshiba had
Speaker 1: secured a licensing deal they were going to actually manufacture
Speaker 1: a handheld or portable three D O system that also
Speaker 1: never went anywhere. And and yet another issue of Game
Speaker 1: Pro but they were really big into covering the development
Speaker 1: of three D O back in the day. But I
Speaker 1: found that A T and T apparently showed off a
Speaker 1: prototype three d O system of their own at the
Speaker 1: Consumer Electronics Show. But uh, as far as I know,
Speaker 1: nothing beyond the prototypes that A T and T made
Speaker 1: ever got produced. I do wonder if there are any
Speaker 1: of those A T and T three d O s
Speaker 1: floating around out there anyway. Gold Star, Panasonic, and Sonio
Speaker 1: would each release a few different versions of the three
Speaker 1: d O s they produced. Some were never meant to
Speaker 1: be consumer products. They were rather designed to help game
Speaker 1: developers who needed, you know, actual hardware to test their
Speaker 1: games on, essentially debug kits for their games. Others would
Speaker 1: swap out basic parts on the systems. A lot of
Speaker 1: the early three d O s had a motorized c
Speaker 1: D tray, which is both expensive and it's a point
Speaker 1: of failure. You know, eventually the motor is going to
Speaker 1: give out and the tray is not going to extend
Speaker 1: or go back in, and so some of them in
Speaker 1: the subsequent models of the three D O replace that
Speaker 1: with a top loading c D tray, so you just
Speaker 1: flip open the top and put a c D in
Speaker 1: that way, as opposed to ejecting a tray. Now, when
Speaker 1: we come back, I'll run down what the basic spects
Speaker 1: were for the three d O console, what set it
Speaker 1: apart from other consoles of that era, and why the
Speaker 1: console ultimately failed, as well as give a brief rundown
Speaker 1: on what happened to the company three d O, which
Speaker 1: again hung on for a few years after the death
Speaker 1: of the console. We'll get to that after this quick
Speaker 1: break So what makes a three d O a three
Speaker 1: d O? Let's learn about the specs of the console. Now.
Speaker 1: For the purposes of this breakdown, I'm really just gonna
Speaker 1: focus on the first consumer model of the three d
Speaker 1: O console to hit the market. That would be the
Speaker 1: Panasonic three d O Interactive Multiplayer f Z one. This
Speaker 1: is the system that first debuted. In the rains of
Speaker 1: the machine was a thirty two bit CPU that was
Speaker 1: a risk style processor r I s C that is
Speaker 1: reduced instruction set computer. Now I talked about this with
Speaker 1: the story of ARM, but basically, it means that the
Speaker 1: instructions that this style of CPU handles are relatively simple,
Speaker 1: and that means that each step, each instruction is easy
Speaker 1: to carry out and therefore it goes pretty fast. More
Speaker 1: complicated instructions might require lots more steps, and that slows
Speaker 1: things down. The clock speed, or the number of pulses
Speaker 1: the CPU has per second to carry out instructions, was
Speaker 1: twelve point five mega hurts. That's twelve million, five hundred
Speaker 1: thousand pulses per second. That sounds like it's really fast,
Speaker 1: but by comparison these days, we talked about processors that
Speaker 1: are in the giga hurts range with more than a
Speaker 1: billion pulses per second, so we've come a long way.
Speaker 1: Paired with the CPU were a couple of video coprocessors
Speaker 1: meant to offload some of the heavy lifting when it
Speaker 1: comes to graphics processing. In a way, it's similar to
Speaker 1: what graphics cards would do for PCs in the late
Speaker 1: nineteen nineties. By handing off tasks like texture mapping to coprocessors,
Speaker 1: the CPU could focus on other tasks while running games
Speaker 1: on the three D O. It also had a math
Speaker 1: coprocessor in addition to those to also kind of spread
Speaker 1: out the load. Now, this was in the dark times
Speaker 1: before h D t V was even a thing, though
Speaker 1: Hawkins has said on occasion that the three d O
Speaker 1: could have been upgraded to h D t V. I
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's true based on what I've seen. However,
Speaker 1: as it was sold. The three d O would generate
Speaker 1: images that would be shown at a resolution of sixty
Speaker 1: pixels by FO pixels you know, essentially, you know, standard definition.
Speaker 1: It was capable of replicating sixteen point seven million colors.
Speaker 1: The three d os of or did Dolby surround sound.
Speaker 1: It had two megabytes of d RAM, one megabyte of
Speaker 1: v RAM, and of s RAM. But what the heck
Speaker 1: does that mean? Well, d RAM stands for dynamic RAM,
Speaker 1: which at the time was the standard RAM of machines.
Speaker 1: It must be continually refreshed, or rather occasionally refreshed I
Speaker 1: should say, not continually occasionally refreshed by the microprocessor or
Speaker 1: else the memory deterior rates. V RAM is video RAM,
Speaker 1: a type of RAM that the computer can actually read
Speaker 1: and write to simultaneously, and it was particularly useful for
Speaker 1: handling graphics. And s RAM stands for static RAM, which
Speaker 1: was a much faster form of RAM than d RAM.
Speaker 1: But if it's better, why don't just why don't you
Speaker 1: just use s RAM? Man? Well, it's because it was
Speaker 1: also way more expensive, so it would drive up the
Speaker 1: cost of productions. That's why the three d O also
Speaker 1: had some expansion ports and had a single control part,
Speaker 1: but it allowed for daisy chain can actions of up
Speaker 1: to eight peripherals, so you could have multiple controllers plugged
Speaker 1: into it. But it had the one port that you
Speaker 1: used to do that with. Uh now when the system
Speaker 1: went on sale. Oh and it also had a CD
Speaker 1: ROM drive. I mentioned that earlier, but you know I
Speaker 1: should throw that in there too. When I went on sale.
Speaker 1: It did so for six hundred nine nine dollars. That
Speaker 1: is a lot of money. If we adjust for inflation
Speaker 1: in today's US dollars, it would be equivalent to about
Speaker 1: one thousand, two hundred sixty bucks or so. So imagine
Speaker 1: that you go into a store and you see a
Speaker 1: video game console and its ticket prices one thousand, two
Speaker 1: hundred sixty dollars. This is not a fully fledged computer.
Speaker 1: It's not like a gaming rig or anything. It is
Speaker 1: a video game console akin to something like the PlayStation.
Speaker 1: By comparison, the Sega Genesis, which was again already on
Speaker 1: the market. It had been since the late eighties that
Speaker 1: one cost a hundred eighty nine dollars winn't launch, and
Speaker 1: the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, which was the reigning champ
Speaker 1: at the time, had cost one when it launched, so
Speaker 1: the three d O cost more than both of those combined.
Speaker 1: It almost cost twice as much as both of those
Speaker 1: put together. Now, granted, the three d O was a
Speaker 1: thirty two bit system, whereas the S and E S
Speaker 1: and the Sega Genesis the regular Sega Genesis were sixteen
Speaker 1: met systems, So the three d O could run more
Speaker 1: sophisticated games with better graphics. But at that steep price point,
Speaker 1: would anyone actually buy one? And why was that price
Speaker 1: so high? Well, it goes back to the three d
Speaker 1: O business model. See Hawkins idea was to leave the
Speaker 1: manufacturing to other people, and then to make money through
Speaker 1: licensing the technology to those manufacturers and later to develop
Speaker 1: games for the system itself and to collect on royalties
Speaker 1: for all the consoles and games that were sold for
Speaker 1: the manufacturers. That meant that the three d O was
Speaker 1: inherently more expensive than if those companies had actually developed
Speaker 1: their own hardware in house. Manufacturers, we're going to have
Speaker 1: to pay three d O for every console they sold
Speaker 1: to consumers. So to make up for that cost, that
Speaker 1: loss and revenue, they increased the price of the consoles,
Speaker 1: but that ended up pricing the systems well out of
Speaker 1: the budgets of most video game fans who are out
Speaker 1: there now. Typically, the way video game console manufacturers make
Speaker 1: money is through software, not hardware. Most companies will actually
Speaker 1: sell the hardware the consoles and a loss, so the
Speaker 1: retail price will actually be below what it costs to
Speaker 1: make and ship those consoles to consumers. Now why would
Speaker 1: you do this, Well, it's because consoles are really no
Speaker 1: good without content to play on those consoles, so the
Speaker 1: manufacturers would use the consoles to secure customers for stuff
Speaker 1: like video games and other content. Microsoft and Sony and
Speaker 1: Nintendo can stand to lose money on console sales if
Speaker 1: they can make it back by selling enough first party
Speaker 1: games or making royalties off of games that are licensed
Speaker 1: to run on those systems. But since these manufacturers, like
Speaker 1: Panasonic didn't own the i P, they couldn't rely on
Speaker 1: that same model. They weren't going to make royalties off
Speaker 1: of game sales the way that three d O would. Heck,
Speaker 1: if if Panasonic had made a game for the console
Speaker 1: that they were manufacturing, they would have to pay a
Speaker 1: royalty to three d OH. Now, sure it was a
Speaker 1: lower royalty than what it would be if you were
Speaker 1: to make a game for Saga or Nintendo. But since
Speaker 1: Panasonic was actually fabricating the three d O, that's a
Speaker 1: big difference, and so the company passed the costs onto
Speaker 1: the consumer. Understandably, that meant that the sales of the
Speaker 1: three d O were modest at best, while the Royal
Speaker 1: lt fees meant that, you know, developers were interested in
Speaker 1: making games for the console. The fact that the consoles
Speaker 1: weren't really selling well was a huge problem. Developing a
Speaker 1: game is a time consuming and expensive process, and if
Speaker 1: you see that very few people have bought the console
Speaker 1: in the first place, well there's not a lot of
Speaker 1: incentive for you to make games for it. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you do spend that time and money, there's a
Speaker 1: really good chance you won't see a return on that investment.
Speaker 1: There's literally not enough people with the console out there
Speaker 1: to buy enough copies of your game for you to
Speaker 1: make a profit. So the three d O had sort
Speaker 1: of defeated itself. Now this wasn't because of the hardware, though,
Speaker 1: to be fair, other systems that could go toe to
Speaker 1: toe with the three d O were soon on the
Speaker 1: market afterwards, like the Sony PlayStation, But the failure was
Speaker 1: more in the business model. Hawkins, for his part, has
Speaker 1: said that most retailers actually marked the price down to
Speaker 1: five dollars, not six, because the ret oller said, we'll
Speaker 1: never be able to sell these things if it's that expensive,
Speaker 1: So I guess that's something. But even so, at five
Speaker 1: nine it was far more expensive than the consoles that
Speaker 1: competitors on the market had. Heck, when the Sony PlayStation
Speaker 1: would debut in two years after the three d O
Speaker 1: at first hit the market, Sony priced it at two
Speaker 1: hundred nine dollars, and like the three d O, the
Speaker 1: PlayStation had a thirty two bit processor and had comparative
Speaker 1: amounts of RAM. The f Z one would be the
Speaker 1: most expensive three d O console to hit the market,
Speaker 1: that was the first one, but even the less expensive
Speaker 1: ones were still more expensive than the competition. Gold Stars
Speaker 1: three d O would debut at three dollars. Even the
Speaker 1: expensive f Z one would drop to four dollars later,
Speaker 1: but the damage had been done. Adding to the enormous
Speaker 1: problem of a high price was the fact that developing
Speaker 1: games for the system was a new process. It was
Speaker 1: a brand new set of hardware, and that meant that
Speaker 1: game development was gonna a little more slowly than what
Speaker 1: the three d O team had hoped, and that meant
Speaker 1: that some titles that had been intended to be launch titles,
Speaker 1: like a Jurassic Park game, trailed behind by several months
Speaker 1: as developers tried to work out bugs in their code.
Speaker 1: In fact, the only title that was available at launch
Speaker 1: was a game called Crash and Burn, a futuristic racing game.
Speaker 1: The console would fare a little bit better in Japan,
Speaker 1: where there were six whole launch titles to go along
Speaker 1: with it when it went on sale in n but
Speaker 1: after an initial interest in three d O, that interest
Speaker 1: in Japan died down and sales died with it. And
Speaker 1: one bitter part of the story is that e A,
Speaker 1: the company that Trip Hawkins had founded back in two,
Speaker 1: ultimately bailed on three d O to develop more software
Speaker 1: for Sony play station. Hawkins found out his old company
Speaker 1: would not be developing exclusive titles for the three d
Speaker 1: O console, but they would be doing it for the
Speaker 1: Sony PlayStation, and that had to be a knife in
Speaker 1: the back to see the company he had founded undercut
Speaker 1: the next company he had found it yikes, the three
Speaker 1: d O company was looking at a new console design
Speaker 1: to try and salvage things They code named it the
Speaker 1: M two. This was going to be the successor to
Speaker 1: the three d O and it was intended to be
Speaker 1: backwards compatible with the three d O systems, so that,
Speaker 1: you know, you wouldn't totally irritate all the three d
Speaker 1: O fans out there. And the M two was needed
Speaker 1: because other game consoles were hitting the market that could
Speaker 1: compete on a technical level pretty effectively with the three
Speaker 1: d O and they were much cheaper, and that, unfortunately,
Speaker 1: was just never meant to be. The company stopped development
Speaker 1: of the M two and sold it off to Panasonic.
Speaker 1: It's probably a good thing because they avoided the sunken
Speaker 1: cost fallacy. By the writing was on the wall and
Speaker 1: the three d O system was discontinued. The three d
Speaker 1: O Company switched gears and instead of designing hardware specs
Speaker 1: and then licensing those out the fabricators, the company would
Speaker 1: focus solely on developing software for other existing consoles like
Speaker 1: the Sega Saturn and even the Sony PlayStation, as well
Speaker 1: as for other computer platforms. The company restructured, layoffs followed.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's no need for the hardware design teams
Speaker 1: at that point, and by the company had sold off
Speaker 1: its hardware business division to Samsung. Hugh Martin, who had
Speaker 1: been president while Hawkins was serving as CEO and chairman,
Speaker 1: left the company at that time, leaving Hawkins with the
Speaker 1: full leadership of the three D O Company. The three
Speaker 1: DO Company would go on to develop games like the
Speaker 1: Army Men franchise, the Mind and Magic Series, and High
Speaker 1: Heat Major League Baseball, which was possibly another nod to
Speaker 1: hawkins love of sports. But while some those franchises would
Speaker 1: do well, ultimately the company was unable to stay in business,
Speaker 1: and in two thousand three, ten years after they had
Speaker 1: founded the company, Three D O had to file for
Speaker 1: Chapter eleven bankruptcy protection. Its assets were sold off, with
Speaker 1: different franchises going to other game developers, and our story
Speaker 1: comes to an end. Well. As for Trip Hawkins, he
Speaker 1: ran to some other challenges. In two thousand eleven, the
Speaker 1: i r S, that is, the Internal Revenue Service in
Speaker 1: the United States, the agency kind of in charge of
Speaker 1: overseeing federal taxes. They alleged that Hawkins owed around twenty
Speaker 1: million dollars in back taxes and that number would steadily
Speaker 1: go up. A judge said that Hawkins quote continued to
Speaker 1: spend money extravagantly with knowledge of his liabilities. In the quote,
Speaker 1: essentially he was saying that Hawkins was using a personal
Speaker 1: bankruptcy to kind of shield his wealth and was still
Speaker 1: spending money like crazy on a lavish lifestyle, or, as
Speaker 1: an old timey type person might say, he was making
Speaker 1: hay while the sun was Shannon. He was doing this
Speaker 1: with the help of a little accounting company called KPMG.
Speaker 1: By the way, this sort of financial gymnastics that Hawkins
Speaker 1: was accused of performing are not that dissimilar from the
Speaker 1: allegations leveled against a certain United States president. Right now,
Speaker 1: Hawkins would go on to pay some of those back
Speaker 1: taxes back, but he would be embroiled in various legal
Speaker 1: proceedings regarding the bulk of those taxes. As for Electronic
Speaker 1: Arts or e A, it is now the second largest
Speaker 1: video game publisher in the world, right behind Activision Blizzard,
Speaker 1: another behemoth in video game publishing, and as I mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: EA has built up a pretty spotty reputation over the years.
Speaker 1: Oh and as for Apple, you know, the first employer
Speaker 1: of Trip Hawkins after he got out of college. Well,
Speaker 1: Apple is still doing pretty good these days. I hear
Speaker 1: they actually have a new phone out so good on them.
Speaker 1: And that wraps up the tragic tale of the three
Speaker 1: d O and the three d O Company and the
Speaker 1: misadventures of Trip Hawkins, which I think would make a
Speaker 1: great title of a choose your own adventure novel. What's
Speaker 1: next for Hawkins? I don't know. He founded another company
Speaker 1: called Digital Chocolate, which well maybe I'll talk about in
Speaker 1: another episode. Uh, and you know he's still active out there.
Speaker 1: But yeah, this was one of those stories where like
Speaker 1: he had some great ideas and he had a real
Speaker 1: passion for games, something that I think is is really noteworthy. Um,
Speaker 1: and he made some great moves, but not everybody you know,
Speaker 1: bats a thousand. In fact, very few people do, and
Speaker 1: this is a reminder of that. Anyway, that wraps up
Speaker 1: this episode. If you have suggestions for future episodes of
Speaker 1: tech Stuff, reach out to me. You can find me
Speaker 1: on Twitter to handle his text Stuff hs W and
Speaker 1: I'll talk to you again really soon. Yeah. Text Stuff
Speaker 1: is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.