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Speaker 1: Welcome to tex Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.

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Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tex Stuff. I'm your host,

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Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio,

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Speaker 1: and how the tech are you. I'm still on vacation myself,

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Speaker 1: so it's time for a rerun. This episode originally published

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Speaker 1: on October. It is titled The Tragedy of Three d Oh. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: This was a fun one to cover because I do

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Speaker 1: enjoy video games quite a bit, and three d Oh

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Speaker 1: was one of those systems I was always curious about

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Speaker 1: and never well, frankly, I never had the cash on

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Speaker 1: me at the time to be able to buy something

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Speaker 1: like that. But yeah, let's sit back and listen. Back

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Speaker 1: in three a new video game console created by the

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Speaker 1: founder of Electronic Arts launched and US Three years later,

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Speaker 1: that console would be discontinued and essentially taken off the market.

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Speaker 1: It was a massive failure. The company that made the

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Speaker 1: console would stick around a little longer, ultimately closing up

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Speaker 1: shop in two thousand three. This is the story of

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Speaker 1: the three d O Company and the console that wasn't

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Speaker 1: meant to be. Now, for this episode, we're going to

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Speaker 1: focus a lot early on at some prehistoric, at least

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Speaker 1: in terms of three d OH information, because I think

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Speaker 1: it's helpful to get an understanding of the man who

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Speaker 1: championed the idea of the three D O, to kind

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Speaker 1: of see where he was coming from, what his thought

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Speaker 1: process was. If I just focused on the console or

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Speaker 1: even the company all by itself, it would be kind

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Speaker 1: of unusual, strange. You wouldn't understand why anyone would make

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Speaker 1: these decisions. So it's helpful to have the background. Also,

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Speaker 1: I just think it's kind of an interesting story with

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Speaker 1: lots of ups and downs. And that story begins with

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Speaker 1: William M. Hawkins the third a k a. Trip Hawkins.

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Speaker 1: He was born in nineteen fifty four. He grew up

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Speaker 1: in California, and his mother, Dr. Helen Hawkins, was a

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Speaker 1: producer and host at a California public broadcast station. She

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Speaker 1: was also a prominent feminist and a publications director, very

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Speaker 1: much a influential woman. And his father, William Hawkins Jr.

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Speaker 1: Had earned a degree in physics before becoming a sales

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Speaker 1: and marketing executive for various companies in California, primarily those

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Speaker 1: in the tech sector. In the late fifties and then

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Speaker 1: into the sixties. Trips father would take a job with

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Speaker 1: a company called Spectral Dynamics Corporation, which employed another person

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Speaker 1: who will be an important figure early on for the

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Speaker 1: young Trip, that being a man named Lane Hawk. But

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Speaker 1: we'll get back to him. So, as a kid, Trip

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Speaker 1: loved games, not just playing them, but kind of learning

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Speaker 1: how they worked, right, What were the mechanics behind the games,

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Speaker 1: What was the theory behind the games? What led to

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Speaker 1: making a game a fun playing experience? You know, it's

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Speaker 1: not easy to develop an actual game that is rewarding,

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Speaker 1: that balances everything out, and he was really interested in

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Speaker 1: that model. And when in high school, he would attempt

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Speaker 1: to make his own version of various types of games.

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Speaker 1: Like he would take inspiration from games that existed that

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Speaker 1: he enjoyed and try to make his own. He was

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Speaker 1: particularly interested in games that simulated sports. He himself loved sports,

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Speaker 1: and so these games kind of gave him an outlet

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Speaker 1: to kind of imagine himself being part of, like a

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Speaker 1: top class athletic team. According to later interviews, Hawkins enjoyed

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Speaker 1: board games but saw that many of his friends preferred

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Speaker 1: to spend their spare time watching stuff on television, and

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Speaker 1: during a visit to the home of his father's coworker

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Speaker 1: that the aforementioned Lane Hawk. He saw something that would

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Speaker 1: spark his imagination for a future industry. So Lane was

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Speaker 1: fascinated with games as well, just like young Trip Hawkins.

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Speaker 1: And he was also really into computer systems, which at

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Speaker 1: the time were not a consumer product. This is the

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Speaker 1: early seventies. This was even before there were hobbyist kits

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Speaker 1: to purchase. Lane had spent a lot of money, like

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Speaker 1: more than five grand, which in the nineteen seventies wasn't

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Speaker 1: even more princely some than we would think of today,

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Speaker 1: And five thousand dollars is a lot of money, but

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Speaker 1: he spent that to buy what today would be an

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Speaker 1: incredibly primitive mini computer. But at the time it was well,

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Speaker 1: it was kind of showing its age at the time,

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Speaker 1: but it was at one point state of the art.

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Speaker 1: It was called the PDP eight. Now, when this computer

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Speaker 1: first debuted in the nineteen sixties, when it really was

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Speaker 1: you know, cutting edge type of technology, it costs a

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Speaker 1: whopping eighteen thousand, five hundred dollars, but this was well

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Speaker 1: beyond the heyday of the PDP eight. And it was

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Speaker 1: also a really big computer. It was like the size

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Speaker 1: of like a cabinet like a wardrobe or a small refrigerator.

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Speaker 1: It was a twelve bit machine, meaning it could handle

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Speaker 1: a range of integers from zero to four thousand ninety five,

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Speaker 1: or you could do from negative two thousand forty eight

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Speaker 1: to two thousand forty seven. Zero would be taking up

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Speaker 1: that pesky spot in the middle. And programming for the

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Speaker 1: machine was, from what I understand anyway, not intuitive. It

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Speaker 1: was not an easy thing to program for. But Lane

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Speaker 1: wanted something that he could kind of work on in

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Speaker 1: his spare time to putter around with. It was almost

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Speaker 1: like a project car for someone who's a gear head.

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Speaker 1: For Lane, it was a PDP eight and he hooked

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Speaker 1: up this computer to a teletype printer. There was no display.

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Speaker 1: There was no monitor for the PDP eight, so you couldn't,

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Speaker 1: you know, look at a screen and see what you

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Speaker 1: were working on. And instead you used a teletype printer

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Speaker 1: and the printer would print out the information that you

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Speaker 1: were working on with the computer. You would read it,

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Speaker 1: you would make changes, it would print on a new page.

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Speaker 1: It's a pretty painstaking process. Well, Lane created a game

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Speaker 1: he called MoU m oo, as in what cows say.

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Speaker 1: At least in the United States, and the game was

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Speaker 1: pretty simple. The game would generate a four digit number

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Speaker 1: and it would keep that number secret. So the game

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Speaker 1: has a four digit number, and it was your job

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Speaker 1: as the player to figure out what that four digit

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Speaker 1: number was, and you would submit your own guests. You

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Speaker 1: would put in a four digit number, and the computer

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Speaker 1: would tell you how many digits, if any, you got right,

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Speaker 1: and whether or not any of those digits were in

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Speaker 1: the right place. So let's say that the secret number

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Speaker 1: the computer comes up with is eight to nine five,

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Speaker 1: and my guess is one five nine three. The system

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Speaker 1: would tell me I got one correct digit in the

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Speaker 1: right location because I got the nine correct and it's

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Speaker 1: in the right spot. And I got a second digit correct,

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Speaker 1: but it's not in the right spot. My five is

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Speaker 1: in the wrong position of that four digit number. So

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Speaker 1: it's similar to a board game that would come out

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Speaker 1: a little later called Mastermind. That one uses colors, not numbers,

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Speaker 1: but it's a similar idea. Now, move did this using

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Speaker 1: moves and cows. A cow would indicate that you had

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Speaker 1: the right digit, but it was in the wrong place.

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Speaker 1: A move would indicate that you had a right digit,

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Speaker 1: but and it was in the right place, but you

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Speaker 1: wouldn't be told which one was which right. You wouldn't

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Speaker 1: be told which of the digits was the correct one.

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Speaker 1: You would just know, Oh, I've got, you know, two

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Speaker 1: moves and a cow, and then my fourth digit is wrong.

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Speaker 1: So I've got to start changing this out and narrowing

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Speaker 1: down what that four digit number could possibly be. And

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Speaker 1: I assume you had to do it in a certain

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Speaker 1: number of turns, But none of my research found anything

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Speaker 1: about that. But for our story, the important part is

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Speaker 1: when Trip Hawkins saw Lanes set up, something must have

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Speaker 1: switched on in Trip's brain. He saw the potential for

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Speaker 1: computers to bring together the world's of television and board games.

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Speaker 1: He imagined a world where one day people could play

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Speaker 1: games on computers with displays, and that's what he wanted

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Speaker 1: to do. He wanted to make games for computers. There

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Speaker 1: was no real way to do that at that time.

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Speaker 1: There was no way for the average consumer to even

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Speaker 1: get hold of a computer at that stage, but Hawkins

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Speaker 1: was certain this is where things were going to go,

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Speaker 1: and Lane Hawk would go on to develop some early

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Speaker 1: arcade games, but that's a story for another time. According

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Speaker 1: to Trip Hawkins himself, around nineteen seventy five, he laid

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Speaker 1: out a long term plan that would lead towards the

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Speaker 1: founding of a computer game company by the year nineteen

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Speaker 1: eighty two, but he had a lot of challenges to

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Speaker 1: overcome to actually make that happen. Now, he applied and

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Speaker 1: was accepted at Harvard, and he was a student there

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Speaker 1: in the early nineteen seventies, and he wanted to work

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Speaker 1: in an industry that just didn't exist yet, and that

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Speaker 1: also meant he faced a lot of challenges when it

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Speaker 1: came to his studies. It's not like there were degrees

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Speaker 1: and what he wanted to do, because the thing he

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Speaker 1: wanted to do wasn't a thing yet. So he started

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Speaker 1: to kind of put together his studies in a piecemeal fashion,

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Speaker 1: you know, taking classes and computer science and programming and

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Speaker 1: related topics. And at the end of his stay at Harvard,

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Speaker 1: he hadn't just earned a degree, he had essentially invented

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Speaker 1: a degree in applied game theory and design. Hawkins then

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Speaker 1: went on to pursue postgraduate work at Stanford, where he

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Speaker 1: earned an NBA in nineteen seventy eight. By this time,

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Speaker 1: technology was slowly starting to build the foundation that Hawkins

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Speaker 1: would need to pursue his dream of creating a video

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Speaker 1: game company. UH. The twenty hundred he debuted the year

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Speaker 1: before he got his m b A, and that took

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Speaker 1: a leading position in the new field of home video

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Speaker 1: game consoles. That same year, nineteen seventy seven, Apple would

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Speaker 1: unveil the Apple to computer, which was the first personal

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Speaker 1: computer from Apple that took aim beyond the relatively small

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Speaker 1: harp hobbyist market. The original Apple computer was a kit uh.

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Speaker 1: You might even see pictures of old Apple one computers

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Speaker 1: in wooden cabinets. That's the original Apple. But the Apple

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Speaker 1: two was the first real consumer personal computer, and it

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Speaker 1: was still too soon for Hawkins to really pursue his

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Speaker 1: plans to make a video game company. In addition, while

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Speaker 1: in college, Hawkins had made, marketed, and sold his own

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Speaker 1: board game after taking a loan from his father. His

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Speaker 1: father loaned him the princely some of five thousand dollars,

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Speaker 1: which again that's a lot of money. And people liked

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Speaker 1: the game that Hawkins made, but there weren't enough people

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Speaker 1: who actually bought it to make it a success. It

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Speaker 1: was a failure, and that failure, I think convinced Hawkins

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Speaker 1: that he really needed to be methodical and patient before

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Speaker 1: launching his business. It would be a bad idea to

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Speaker 1: rush into things. He had already seen what you know,

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Speaker 1: a misstep could do. It could be a very expensive mistake.

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Speaker 1: So Hawkins would conduct the first complete study of the

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Speaker 1: personal computer market in nine that's back when it was

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Speaker 1: a very young field. There were a lot of different

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Speaker 1: computers out there. The Apples, the trs a D or

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Speaker 1: trash a D computer, the you know, the Tan Indie,

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Speaker 1: the Commodore sixty four. Those were coming out around this time,

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Speaker 1: some of them a little later, and he started to

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Speaker 1: get a feel for where things were headed and how

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Speaker 1: he might best be able to take part in a

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Speaker 1: technological revolution. While in school, he attended a computer fair

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Speaker 1: and he actually saw the Apple two debut in person.

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Speaker 1: He was at that computer fair and he decided that

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Speaker 1: he would apply to work for a computer company upon graduating,

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Speaker 1: and he did. He applied to a lot of different

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Speaker 1: places and the one that gave him an offer that

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Speaker 1: he accepted was Apple. The company was happy to bring

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Speaker 1: him on board. He was the first MBA in the company,

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Speaker 1: which he joking Lee said, is always a scary thing.

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Speaker 1: You never want to be the first m B a

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Speaker 1: in a company, but he joined when there were somewhere

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Speaker 1: between twenty five and fifty people working. Their sources don't

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Speaker 1: fully agree on this, which is often the case when

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Speaker 1: I researched stuff in computer history. The Hawk himself has

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Speaker 1: said there were about fifty employees. However, twenty five of

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Speaker 1: them were primarily responsible for physically assembling the computers. So

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Speaker 1: maybe really the sources kind of agree. It's just that

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Speaker 1: some of the sources ignore the assembly line workers and

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Speaker 1: only focus on the you know, the Apple management and officers.

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Speaker 1: That seems a bit elitist to me, but maybe that's

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Speaker 1: what's going on anyway. This was right as the Apple

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Speaker 1: two started to get some traction. As one of the

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Speaker 1: earliest successful personal computers that was available on the market.

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Speaker 1: At Apple, Hawkins would gain a lot of real world

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Speaker 1: experience while taking on an increasing amount of responsibility. He

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Speaker 1: helped guide Apple's efforts to getting computers into workplaces, and

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Speaker 1: he encouraged the development of various productivity applications like spreadsheet programs.

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Speaker 1: Hawkins has said, quote, I didn't invent the spreadsheet, but

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Speaker 1: I did bring the first spreadsheet apps into Apple end quote.

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Speaker 1: This would allow Apple to compete in markets where previously

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Speaker 1: IBM was real the king of the castle. Four years

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Speaker 1: after joining Apple, Trip Hawkins was the director of Strategy

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Speaker 1: and Marketing, which, you know, that's a heck of an

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Speaker 1: achievement to go to a director level position within four years,

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Speaker 1: even if you and you know take into account the

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Speaker 1: fact that the office staff had really only numbered twenty

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Speaker 1: five employees when he joined the company, and Apple had

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Speaker 1: just held its initial public offering and that ended up

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Speaker 1: making Hawkins a pretty healthy amount of cash. But this

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Speaker 1: means that we were just getting up to two And

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Speaker 1: if you remember what I said a little earlier in

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Speaker 1: this episode, that was the year that Hawkins had predicted

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Speaker 1: way back in that he would launch a computer game company,

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Speaker 1: or at least that's what his plan had called for,

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Speaker 1: and other computer game companies were already getting off the

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Speaker 1: ground around this time. At home video game consoles like

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Speaker 1: the Atred had spawned numerous game develop companies. Hawkins made

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Speaker 1: his move to follow through on his plan that his

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Speaker 1: younger self had created, and he left Apple to found

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Speaker 1: his computer game company, now Trip. Hawkins says that at

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Speaker 1: the time he thought video game developers were on the

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Speaker 1: whole not treated so well. They were frequently treated like

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Speaker 1: cheap contract labor on a game by game basis, and

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Speaker 1: Hawkins aim to create a company that would turn that

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Speaker 1: on its head, and that was the birth of Electronic Arts,

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Speaker 1: better known today as e A. And it was back

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Speaker 1: in two When we come back, we'll give a super

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Speaker 1: high level overview of hawkins vision of e A and

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Speaker 1: how that would lead him to found another company, the

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Speaker 1: three D O Company. But first let's take a quick break. Today,

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Speaker 1: the name e A has I guess it's fair to

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Speaker 1: say a little bit of baggage along with it. The

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Speaker 1: company has a reputation for doing some stuff that rubs

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Speaker 1: gamers the wrong way, the big one being that it

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Speaker 1: has a history of scooping up smaller video game developers

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Speaker 1: and then kind of sapping the intellectual property those video

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Speaker 1: game developers had created and just draining it dry and

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Speaker 1: having the developers languish a bit before shutting them down.

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Speaker 1: E A has done this to companies like Origin, which

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Speaker 1: made The Wing Commander and Ultimate Series, Maxis, Pandemic bul

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Speaker 1: Rug Studios. The list is long. In two thousand twelve,

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Speaker 1: e A even made headlines for a really not super

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Speaker 1: awesome reason. It was voted the worst company in the

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Speaker 1: entire United States, but back in two it was a

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Speaker 1: very different company. Hawkins said that he funded e A

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Speaker 1: out of his own pocket for the first six months,

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Speaker 1: and at the very beginning he was the only employee

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Speaker 1: and he was working out of his home until he

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Speaker 1: was able to secure some office space in California, and

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Speaker 1: then he started to hire on employees, and it was

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Speaker 1: only in October, months after he had started. He got

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Speaker 1: started in the spring of nineteen eight two. So the

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Speaker 1: following night two he got together with his twelve employees.

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Speaker 1: This is starting to sound a little biblical, and together

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Speaker 1: they brainstormed up the name of the company, Electronic Arts.

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Speaker 1: And Hawkins had really wanted to stress that games can

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Speaker 1: be a form of art and that video game developers

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Speaker 1: are artists and they should be recognized as such, and

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Speaker 1: Electronic Arts was born. E A's early identity centered around

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Speaker 1: compensating and crediting game developers above and beyond what the

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Speaker 1: competition offered. You know, like most video games at the time,

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Speaker 1: you had no idea who worked on that game. If

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Speaker 1: you found out, it was only because some industry magazine

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Speaker 1: wrote up an article about the person. Chances are you

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Speaker 1: just knew which titles went with which companies if you

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Speaker 1: were even paying that close attention. Hawkins wanted to change that.

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Speaker 1: He wanted to say, no, you will start to recognize

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Speaker 1: the work of specific video game developers, and the ones

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Speaker 1: that make the stuff you like, you'll know to keep

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Speaker 1: getting their stuff. That was the idea, and the company

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Speaker 1: launched early titles like Mule m u l E. It

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Speaker 1: was a combat simulation game, and our Con, which was

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Speaker 1: one of my favorite early computer games. It was a

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Speaker 1: chess like game in which players would control pieces that

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Speaker 1: represented different sort of magical and mythological creatures and characters,

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Speaker 1: and you were trying to take control of a board

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Speaker 1: by controlling the space occupied by your opponent. So you

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Speaker 1: can move a piece into an opponent's square, and that

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Speaker 1: would initiate an arcade style duel where you would try

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Speaker 1: to beat the other player or your computer opponent in

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Speaker 1: a little arcade style game, a little shootout, and different

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Speaker 1: pieces had different abilities. Some of them were super fast

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Speaker 1: but not very powerful, some shot very powerful beams but

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Speaker 1: moved slowly, and so on. Anyway, I'm getting off track,

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Speaker 1: but it was a great game. It's again one of

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Speaker 1: my favorites. Any ar Con fans out there, give it

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Speaker 1: a shout out, because, man, that was one of my

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Speaker 1: favorite early computer games. Hawkins, however, his favorite games were

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Speaker 1: still sports titles. One early e A sports game was

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Speaker 1: Dr J and Larry Bird Go One on One, which,

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Speaker 1: if you're not you know, up on the sports ball,

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Speaker 1: it's a basketball game. Uh you know. Dr J and

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Speaker 1: Larry Bird both famous basketball players, amazing basketball players, and

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Speaker 1: Hawkins himself designed the game, or at least was very

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Speaker 1: heavily involved in the design of the game, and he

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Speaker 1: also brought both of the basketball stars into the design

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Speaker 1: phase and the marketing of the title, and that gave

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Speaker 1: it some prestige in the market to actually, you know,

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Speaker 1: attach real world athletes to this video game title. And

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Speaker 1: if you know your video game history, you also know

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Speaker 1: that this early period of e A coincided with a

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Speaker 1: catastrophic market event around the home video game market began

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Speaker 1: to wobble and by it was in the shambles. And

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Speaker 1: I've done full episodes about the video game crash of

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Speaker 1: eight three, but the short version is that there were

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Speaker 1: a confluence of problems from a flood of bad games

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Speaker 1: by fly by Night developers. There were a series of

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Speaker 1: terrible business decisions at multiple companies. There was the overproduction

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Speaker 1: of titles that meant that the once lucrative industry imploded.

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Speaker 1: Then there are other elements to like licensing popular games

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Speaker 1: or or entertainment franchises that ended up being a cost

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Speaker 1: that you could never recoup that kind of thing. There

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Speaker 1: are a lot of really bad decisions, and entire companies

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Speaker 1: disappeared within a year, and video games in general we're

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Speaker 1: seen as a failure, so much so that retailers didn't

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Speaker 1: want to carry video games or video game consoles. And

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Speaker 1: it was only by kind of pivoting toward computers that

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Speaker 1: companies related to the video game space could stay afloat.

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Speaker 1: And you know, e A had primarily been developing titles

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Speaker 1: for computers, but it wasn't immune to this problem either.

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Speaker 1: The company shifted a little bit in its initial strategy.

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Speaker 1: You know again that was originally to promote games by

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Speaker 1: associating those games with the designers who made them. But

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Speaker 1: now e A was focusing more on promoting specific game

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Speaker 1: titles and making franchises out of them, rather than saying, oh,

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Speaker 1: this is a game by so and so. The company

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Speaker 1: focused exclusively on developing games for various computer platforms like

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Speaker 1: the Apple computers you know, IBM PCs, the Commodore sixty four,

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Speaker 1: and others at that time. Then Nintendo came along and

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Speaker 1: managed to do what most analysts thought was impossible. Nintendo

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Speaker 1: was able to bring consoles back from the dead. The

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Speaker 1: Nintendo Entertainment System here in the United States, also known

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Speaker 1: as the Famicom, became a grand slam home run of

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Speaker 1: a hit. I thought I would use an analogy that

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Speaker 1: Trip Hawkins himself would probably appreciate, But it would take

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Speaker 1: many years for e A to start to develop games

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Speaker 1: for console systems in earnest because Hawkins was one he

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Speaker 1: was wary of consoles after the crash of three and two,

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Speaker 1: he was pretty sure the PC was going to be

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Speaker 1: the future of gaming. When Sega launched the Sega Genesis

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Speaker 1: a k a. The Mega Drive in nineteen eighty nine,

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Speaker 1: at least in North America, launched in different parts of

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Speaker 1: the world at different times. It launched in Japan and earlier,

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Speaker 1: for example. But Trip Hawkins would relent a bit and

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Speaker 1: negotiated a favorable but not perfect deal with Sega for

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Speaker 1: the E E free a tow to publish games on

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Speaker 1: Sega's console and at that point, e A would also

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Speaker 1: develop a few games for the Nintendo Entertainment System and

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Speaker 1: got a little bit out of that niche market of

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Speaker 1: just developing computer games. Now we get to a point

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Speaker 1: where we start to see where the three D O

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Speaker 1: Company idea starts to creep into hawkins mind. Now, to

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Speaker 1: understand why Hawkins would try to get into the console

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Speaker 1: market after he had kind of grown wary of it

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Speaker 1: after the Crash of three, you have to know a

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Speaker 1: bit about the relationship between video game developers and the

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Speaker 1: companies that actually manufacture the hardware that those games run on.

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Speaker 1: The main the console manufacturers. In other words, Sega in

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Speaker 1: particular was kind of a thorn in the industry side,

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Speaker 1: particularly for Trip Hawkins. Sega would insist on steep royalties.

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Speaker 1: Now that meant that game publishers would have to pay

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Speaker 1: a certain amount of money per games sold back to

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Speaker 1: Sega in order to have the games run on Sega machines.

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Speaker 1: So let's say that you, as a consumer, are going

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Speaker 1: out to buy an e A game for the Sega Genesis.

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Speaker 1: Who is getting paid, Well, it turns out a lot

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Speaker 1: of people are getting paid. First, there's the brick and

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Speaker 1: mortar store where you bought your game, because again this

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Speaker 1: is back in the late eighties, there's not really any

401
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Speaker 1: other opportunity. But those merchants in turn had to spend

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Speaker 1: money to get the stock to sell in the first place.

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Speaker 1: So they would buy their copies of the games that

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Speaker 1: they sell to consumers like you from e A or

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Speaker 1: from a video game distributor. But let's not get too complicated.

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Speaker 1: E A in turn would have to share a portion

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Speaker 1: of each of those sales two retailers. Back with Sega,

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00:24:58,440 --> 00:25:03,720
Speaker 1: Sega demanded high royalties, so that meant a smaller percentage

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Speaker 1: of the money would go to e A. E A

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Speaker 1: would develop the games, but some of that money was

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Speaker 1: gonna go to Sega, not to e A. And Hawkins

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Speaker 1: felt that there was a big power imbalance there and

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Speaker 1: he wanted a way to address it. And he thought

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Speaker 1: if he could make a company that designed video game

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Speaker 1: systems and he didn't impose such high royalties on publishers,

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Speaker 1: then creators would have a greater degree of freedom and

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Speaker 1: a large incentive to develop games for that system, and

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Speaker 1: it would usher in a new era of amazing games.

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Speaker 1: This was keyed back into that artist's first mentality, and

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Speaker 1: let's face it a desire to keep more of the

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Speaker 1: revenue for the publisher, not send it off to, you know,

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Speaker 1: the console maker. The three D O model was to

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Speaker 1: impose a flat three dollar royalty rate per games sold,

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Speaker 1: which was much lower than the royalties that were being

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Speaker 1: in posed by Sega or Nintendo at the time. Hawkins

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Speaker 1: had a fairly radical idea. Now, the standard practice for

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Speaker 1: console hardware is for a single company like Nintendo or

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Speaker 1: Sega or Sony to design and manufacture the systems themselves.

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Speaker 1: These companies could have their own in house development studios,

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Speaker 1: but they would also negotiate deals with external video game

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Speaker 1: studios to publish titles on those consoles. And Hawkins wanted

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Speaker 1: to kind of turn that model on its head, and

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Speaker 1: his idea was to create a company that would design

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Speaker 1: the specs and architecture for a video game console, but

435
00:26:39,520 --> 00:26:43,200
Speaker 1: then that company would license out the design for other

436
00:26:43,280 --> 00:26:47,880
Speaker 1: manufacturers to actually make to fabricate those consoles. So if

437
00:26:47,880 --> 00:26:52,240
Speaker 1: you listen to my episode about ARM processors, you'll recognize

438
00:26:52,240 --> 00:26:55,960
Speaker 1: this model as ARM followed the same pathway. It's something

439
00:26:56,000 --> 00:26:58,960
Speaker 1: that in Vidio does with graphics cards, although in video

440
00:26:59,040 --> 00:27:02,320
Speaker 1: also will manufact acture cards in house. In addition to

441
00:27:02,480 --> 00:27:06,320
Speaker 1: licensing out the designs to other fabricators to focus on

442
00:27:06,359 --> 00:27:10,560
Speaker 1: three d O, Hawkins stepped down as the CEO of

443
00:27:10,600 --> 00:27:13,400
Speaker 1: e A, which would come back to haunt him later.

444
00:27:13,760 --> 00:27:15,920
Speaker 1: He would remain the chairman of the Board of Directors

445
00:27:15,960 --> 00:27:19,040
Speaker 1: for a while, but he would become the CEO of

446
00:27:19,200 --> 00:27:22,360
Speaker 1: three d O now and all these initialisms are really

447
00:27:22,400 --> 00:27:26,080
Speaker 1: wearing me out. Beyond the goal of creating a design

448
00:27:26,160 --> 00:27:29,119
Speaker 1: for a new console, there were a few other considerations

449
00:27:29,160 --> 00:27:31,920
Speaker 1: going into the three D O. But it helps if

450
00:27:31,960 --> 00:27:35,000
Speaker 1: we take a snapshot look of where the video game

451
00:27:35,040 --> 00:27:39,439
Speaker 1: console industry was in nine that was the year of

452
00:27:39,600 --> 00:27:42,080
Speaker 1: three d o's founding. So what was going on with

453
00:27:42,200 --> 00:27:46,440
Speaker 1: video game consoles in ninety one, Well, generally speaking, the

454
00:27:46,480 --> 00:27:50,720
Speaker 1: consoles of we're in what we would refer to as

455
00:27:50,800 --> 00:27:55,399
Speaker 1: the fourth generation of video game consoles. The first generation,

456
00:27:55,680 --> 00:27:59,040
Speaker 1: which started in the nineteen seventies, had largely been consoles

457
00:27:59,119 --> 00:28:03,240
Speaker 1: with games that were hardwired onto the systems, meaning you

458
00:28:03,280 --> 00:28:06,639
Speaker 1: couldn't switch out games or anything. The console would have

459
00:28:06,760 --> 00:28:11,040
Speaker 1: one or more games programmed on it and that was that.

460
00:28:11,040 --> 00:28:13,880
Speaker 1: That was what you were limited to. The second generation

461
00:28:13,920 --> 00:28:16,880
Speaker 1: of consoles is the one that had the atar twenty

462
00:28:16,920 --> 00:28:19,400
Speaker 1: shundred in it. That was part of the second generation.

463
00:28:20,080 --> 00:28:22,679
Speaker 1: This was the generation that was around during the crash

464
00:28:22,680 --> 00:28:25,520
Speaker 1: of nineteen eight three. A lot of these consoles had,

465
00:28:25,720 --> 00:28:28,200
Speaker 1: you know, cartridge based system so you could switch out

466
00:28:28,240 --> 00:28:31,720
Speaker 1: games and that kind of stuff. The third generation included

467
00:28:31,760 --> 00:28:35,679
Speaker 1: the Nintendo Entertainment System, the Sega Master System, and a

468
00:28:35,720 --> 00:28:39,560
Speaker 1: few other consoles. Now keep in mind, these generations aren't

469
00:28:39,720 --> 00:28:42,800
Speaker 1: like hard and fast with solid boundaries. It's not like,

470
00:28:43,280 --> 00:28:46,320
Speaker 1: you know, after seven you go from one generation to

471
00:28:46,360 --> 00:28:49,280
Speaker 1: the next. They're a little more fuzzy. But while Hawkins

472
00:28:49,320 --> 00:28:51,160
Speaker 1: was working on the design of the three d OH,

473
00:28:51,680 --> 00:28:54,760
Speaker 1: the leading consoles on the market included the Super Nintendo

474
00:28:54,880 --> 00:28:59,520
Speaker 1: Entertainment System, which came out in, the Sega Genesis, which

475
00:28:59,520 --> 00:29:04,000
Speaker 1: it act come out in, and the Turbo Graphics sixteen.

476
00:29:05,120 --> 00:29:09,320
Speaker 1: These were all fourth generation video game consoles. Uh. There

477
00:29:09,320 --> 00:29:11,160
Speaker 1: were others that were on the market as well, they

478
00:29:11,200 --> 00:29:13,960
Speaker 1: just weren't as popular. There was the Phillips c D

479
00:29:13,960 --> 00:29:17,800
Speaker 1: i UH, Sega would include the Sega c D as

480
00:29:17,840 --> 00:29:19,640
Speaker 1: a type of system, and there were a couple of

481
00:29:19,720 --> 00:29:22,760
Speaker 1: other systems that were on the horizon in nine one

482
00:29:22,800 --> 00:29:25,520
Speaker 1: when three d A was coming together. But while the

483
00:29:25,560 --> 00:29:28,080
Speaker 1: systems like the S and E S, the Genesis, and

484
00:29:28,200 --> 00:29:32,440
Speaker 1: the Base Turbo Graphics sixteen were all cartridge based games,

485
00:29:32,960 --> 00:29:35,920
Speaker 1: where the game is you know, hard coded onto the

486
00:29:36,000 --> 00:29:40,600
Speaker 1: circuit board of a video game cartridge. The future was

487
00:29:41,360 --> 00:29:46,280
Speaker 1: moving toward optical discs compact discs in the game space.

488
00:29:46,360 --> 00:29:48,920
Speaker 1: That was clearly where things were going, although some companies

489
00:29:49,200 --> 00:29:53,880
Speaker 1: cough Nintendo cough would resist that longer than others. Now

490
00:29:53,920 --> 00:29:57,000
Speaker 1: the standard of the time the fourth generation consoles was

491
00:29:57,040 --> 00:30:01,000
Speaker 1: for sixteen bit graphics with processors that ranged on the

492
00:30:01,040 --> 00:30:04,760
Speaker 1: low end with eight bit CPUs. The Turbographics sixteen had

493
00:30:04,760 --> 00:30:09,000
Speaker 1: an eight bit CPU, and eventually the fourth generation would

494
00:30:09,000 --> 00:30:11,800
Speaker 1: include a couple of systems that had thirty two bit

495
00:30:11,920 --> 00:30:15,360
Speaker 1: CPUs with like the sake of thirty two X. Although

496
00:30:15,400 --> 00:30:18,040
Speaker 1: thirty two bit systems saw limited release in the fourth

497
00:30:18,040 --> 00:30:21,480
Speaker 1: generation and limited success, they really came in on the

498
00:30:21,520 --> 00:30:23,320
Speaker 1: tail end of the fourth generation that would play a

499
00:30:23,320 --> 00:30:26,280
Speaker 1: bigger part in the fifth generation of games. It would

500
00:30:26,320 --> 00:30:28,840
Speaker 1: take a couple of years to design the three d

501
00:30:28,960 --> 00:30:32,880
Speaker 1: O and land licensing deals with manufacturers interested in making

502
00:30:32,880 --> 00:30:35,760
Speaker 1: the new console. The launch of the three d O

503
00:30:35,840 --> 00:30:39,160
Speaker 1: would put it in direct competition with consoles that belonged

504
00:30:39,200 --> 00:30:42,240
Speaker 1: to the fifth generation of game systems. More in those

505
00:30:42,280 --> 00:30:46,800
Speaker 1: in a minute, So the pressure was on. The three

506
00:30:46,880 --> 00:30:49,600
Speaker 1: d O would need to be better than the existing

507
00:30:49,600 --> 00:30:52,680
Speaker 1: consoles in the fourth generation or it would quickly be

508
00:30:52,800 --> 00:30:57,280
Speaker 1: left behind by the next generation of systems from other manufacturers.

509
00:30:57,280 --> 00:30:59,480
Speaker 1: So the lead designers for the three d O were

510
00:30:59,480 --> 00:31:02,959
Speaker 1: a couple of is named Dave Needle and R. J. Michael,

511
00:31:03,440 --> 00:31:06,840
Speaker 1: both of whom had worked on systems or other companies together.

512
00:31:07,320 --> 00:31:10,120
Speaker 1: In fact, Needle and Michael had both worked with Commodore

513
00:31:10,480 --> 00:31:15,240
Speaker 1: to design the Amiga computer system. I've done episodes about Amiga,

514
00:31:15,560 --> 00:31:19,320
Speaker 1: and that story is pretty darn interesting. I really recommend

515
00:31:19,360 --> 00:31:22,960
Speaker 1: you look into it. It's a fascinating story. So I

516
00:31:23,000 --> 00:31:25,440
Speaker 1: recommend checking out those episodes. In particular, I think I

517
00:31:25,480 --> 00:31:28,440
Speaker 1: did a bang up job, if I don't mind saying so,

518
00:31:28,960 --> 00:31:31,200
Speaker 1: And you can see how that particular project came about

519
00:31:31,240 --> 00:31:33,600
Speaker 1: and how it gradually faded away. But the two had

520
00:31:33,640 --> 00:31:38,120
Speaker 1: also designed the Links handheld system for Atari. That's l

521
00:31:38,440 --> 00:31:42,080
Speaker 1: y n X because Atari was naming their systems after

522
00:31:42,200 --> 00:31:45,440
Speaker 1: Cats for a while, and now they would be designing

523
00:31:45,480 --> 00:31:49,680
Speaker 1: the three d O specs for trip Hawkins. Now, according

524
00:31:49,720 --> 00:31:54,120
Speaker 1: to at least some versions of the story. The design

525
00:31:54,200 --> 00:31:57,200
Speaker 1: for the three d O really got start in nineteen nine,

526
00:31:57,520 --> 00:32:01,400
Speaker 1: when Needle and Michael had sketched their ideas on a

527
00:32:01,520 --> 00:32:05,800
Speaker 1: napkin and trip. Hawkins had known these two for for years,

528
00:32:06,000 --> 00:32:08,760
Speaker 1: and after learning about what they had in mind, he

529
00:32:08,840 --> 00:32:11,920
Speaker 1: decided he wanted to join forces with them in an

530
00:32:11,920 --> 00:32:15,560
Speaker 1: effort to shape this into the three d O idea

531
00:32:15,680 --> 00:32:19,760
Speaker 1: he was kind of thinking on. So together they formed

532
00:32:19,800 --> 00:32:22,719
Speaker 1: the three d O Company. The full name for the

533
00:32:22,760 --> 00:32:26,520
Speaker 1: console would become the three d O Interactive Multiplayer, but

534
00:32:26,760 --> 00:32:28,800
Speaker 1: a lot of people just call it the three d O.

535
00:32:29,640 --> 00:32:32,120
Speaker 1: That does make things a little confusing because that was

536
00:32:32,160 --> 00:32:34,640
Speaker 1: also the name of the company as well, and we'll

537
00:32:34,720 --> 00:32:37,560
Speaker 1: learn the company managed to stick around a little longer

538
00:32:37,600 --> 00:32:40,800
Speaker 1: than the console did, so it gets a little, you know,

539
00:32:41,400 --> 00:32:43,440
Speaker 1: fuzzy when you used just to use three d O

540
00:32:43,520 --> 00:32:46,920
Speaker 1: as the name. Hawkins looked to partner with different electronics

541
00:32:46,920 --> 00:32:50,240
Speaker 1: manufacturers to license the design for the actual production of

542
00:32:50,280 --> 00:32:53,200
Speaker 1: the three d O. Building a hardware company would have

543
00:32:53,240 --> 00:32:58,040
Speaker 1: been monumentally expensive, so he decided that licensing it just

544
00:32:58,120 --> 00:33:02,680
Speaker 1: made more sense, and he approached in particular Panasonic, Sony

545
00:33:02,720 --> 00:33:07,600
Speaker 1: and Sego. Now Sony had recently had a really bad

546
00:33:07,640 --> 00:33:11,960
Speaker 1: experience with Nintendo. The two companies were supposed to introduce

547
00:33:12,080 --> 00:33:15,400
Speaker 1: a CD ROM peripheral that was intended for the Super

548
00:33:15,480 --> 00:33:19,440
Speaker 1: Nintendo system, and Sony was gonna make it, and they

549
00:33:19,480 --> 00:33:21,960
Speaker 1: had gone really far in the in the whole process,

550
00:33:22,000 --> 00:33:25,200
Speaker 1: but then Nintendo backed out of the deal. Worse than that,

551
00:33:25,240 --> 00:33:29,400
Speaker 1: they backed out uh in public at cs and switched

552
00:33:29,400 --> 00:33:34,640
Speaker 1: to a different company. They chose Phillips instead, and ultimately

553
00:33:34,720 --> 00:33:37,280
Speaker 1: that didn't really go anywhere. That product just kind of

554
00:33:37,280 --> 00:33:41,200
Speaker 1: faded away, so it was all for nothing. But Ken Kutaragi,

555
00:33:41,280 --> 00:33:44,600
Speaker 1: a Sony executive who was in charge of this super

556
00:33:44,640 --> 00:33:48,200
Speaker 1: disc project, pivoted with the intent to use the super

557
00:33:48,240 --> 00:33:52,920
Speaker 1: disc technology as the backbone of a new product from Sony,

558
00:33:53,000 --> 00:33:57,680
Speaker 1: the first PlayStation prototype, which actually was very different from

559
00:33:57,760 --> 00:34:00,760
Speaker 1: the PlayStation that would officially debut a cup of years later.

560
00:34:01,000 --> 00:34:06,000
Speaker 1: But not surprisingly, Sony declined Hawkins's offer to license the

561
00:34:06,040 --> 00:34:08,799
Speaker 1: three D O design for manufacture because they already had

562
00:34:08,840 --> 00:34:13,239
Speaker 1: their PlayStation in development. Sega, which if you recall, was

563
00:34:13,360 --> 00:34:16,440
Speaker 1: the company that had kind of inspired Hawkins to pursue

564
00:34:16,480 --> 00:34:19,160
Speaker 1: the three D O project in the first place, also

565
00:34:19,280 --> 00:34:23,680
Speaker 1: passed on the opportunity to make the three d O. Apparently,

566
00:34:23,719 --> 00:34:27,120
Speaker 1: Sega executives felt it would have been too expensive with

567
00:34:27,400 --> 00:34:30,280
Speaker 1: too small of a profit margin to really get into

568
00:34:30,320 --> 00:34:33,080
Speaker 1: the three d OH manufacturing game. And this is one

569
00:34:33,080 --> 00:34:36,960
Speaker 1: of those cases where Sega made the right call. Uh.

570
00:34:37,120 --> 00:34:40,000
Speaker 1: Those often can seem few and far between if you

571
00:34:40,040 --> 00:34:42,480
Speaker 1: know a lot about Sega's history, but this was the

572
00:34:42,560 --> 00:34:46,960
Speaker 1: right decision. Panasonic, however, was a different story. This electronics

573
00:34:47,000 --> 00:34:50,080
Speaker 1: company was one of the biggest in the world, but

574
00:34:50,160 --> 00:34:54,080
Speaker 1: they didn't have a video game console. They didn't develop those.

575
00:34:54,600 --> 00:34:57,799
Speaker 1: There was an entire sector of the electronics market out

576
00:34:57,800 --> 00:35:01,680
Speaker 1: there that Panasonic was not serving. So the company became

577
00:35:01,719 --> 00:35:04,719
Speaker 1: the first to license the three d O design and

578
00:35:04,880 --> 00:35:09,520
Speaker 1: start on fabrication. A little bit later, another Japanese electronics

579
00:35:09,520 --> 00:35:13,160
Speaker 1: company called Sanio would start making their own three d

580
00:35:13,280 --> 00:35:17,319
Speaker 1: O consoles. They also licensed it from three d O. Now.

581
00:35:17,400 --> 00:35:21,960
Speaker 1: Snio started off in n during what was effectively a

582
00:35:22,040 --> 00:35:25,640
Speaker 1: purge at Panasonic. It was a post World War Two

583
00:35:25,880 --> 00:35:28,800
Speaker 1: purge of the Japanese company. For that whole story, you

584
00:35:28,800 --> 00:35:31,319
Speaker 1: should listen to my episodes about the history of Panasonic

585
00:35:31,440 --> 00:35:34,120
Speaker 1: because I mentioned it there. I just find it interesting

586
00:35:34,320 --> 00:35:39,879
Speaker 1: that the first two companies that would sign on to

587
00:35:39,880 --> 00:35:43,680
Speaker 1: to fabricate three D O s also shared d n

588
00:35:43,719 --> 00:35:47,200
Speaker 1: A in their corporate history. Also, while this doesn't really

589
00:35:47,239 --> 00:35:49,440
Speaker 1: play into our three D O story, I thought I

590
00:35:49,440 --> 00:35:52,040
Speaker 1: would just go ahead and mention it. Those two companies

591
00:35:52,040 --> 00:35:54,839
Speaker 1: would join up in two thousand nine when Panasonic would

592
00:35:54,880 --> 00:35:58,360
Speaker 1: acquire Sanio, which is just evidence that we live in

593
00:35:58,360 --> 00:36:02,800
Speaker 1: a really weird world. And there was a third company

594
00:36:02,840 --> 00:36:06,640
Speaker 1: that would manufacture three D O consoles, and this one

595
00:36:06,840 --> 00:36:11,080
Speaker 1: was gold Star, a South Korean company. Gold Star is

596
00:36:11,120 --> 00:36:14,279
Speaker 1: still around today, except it's by a totally different name,

597
00:36:14,400 --> 00:36:17,080
Speaker 1: and it's a name that you would recognize. Uh. That

598
00:36:17,160 --> 00:36:23,120
Speaker 1: name is LG Electronics. It changed its name in so

599
00:36:23,280 --> 00:36:25,680
Speaker 1: the company is still around, but under a different name.

600
00:36:26,120 --> 00:36:30,560
Speaker 1: While Panasonic, Sanio, and gold Star would produce three D

601
00:36:30,680 --> 00:36:33,919
Speaker 1: O consoles, there were a few other companies that had

602
00:36:33,960 --> 00:36:37,080
Speaker 1: agreed to license the design and build their own three

603
00:36:37,160 --> 00:36:40,560
Speaker 1: d O s, but those consoles just never materialized in

604
00:36:40,600 --> 00:36:44,920
Speaker 1: the marketplace. Uh. Game Pro magazine was a great resource

605
00:36:45,080 --> 00:36:47,840
Speaker 1: for this episode when I was looking into this. According

606
00:36:47,920 --> 00:36:51,000
Speaker 1: to one issue, Samsung was one of the companies that

607
00:36:51,120 --> 00:36:53,520
Speaker 1: signed on to produce three D O s, although they

608
00:36:53,560 --> 00:36:56,600
Speaker 1: didn't announce any sort of timeline for production, and ultimately

609
00:36:56,600 --> 00:37:00,879
Speaker 1: it didn't go anywhere. Another Game Pro issue revealed that

610
00:37:01,000 --> 00:37:05,480
Speaker 1: the electronics company Toshiba had secured a licensing deal they

611
00:37:05,480 --> 00:37:08,960
Speaker 1: were going to actually manufacture a handheld or portable three

612
00:37:09,040 --> 00:37:13,440
Speaker 1: D O system that also never went anywhere. And and

613
00:37:13,600 --> 00:37:16,919
Speaker 1: yet another issue of Game Pro. But they were really

614
00:37:16,960 --> 00:37:19,520
Speaker 1: big into covering the development of three D O back

615
00:37:19,520 --> 00:37:21,880
Speaker 1: in the day. But I found that A T and

616
00:37:21,960 --> 00:37:25,480
Speaker 1: T apparently showed off a prototype three D O system

617
00:37:25,520 --> 00:37:30,359
Speaker 1: of their own at the Consumer Electronics Show. But as

618
00:37:30,440 --> 00:37:33,520
Speaker 1: far as I know, nothing beyond the prototypes that A

619
00:37:33,600 --> 00:37:37,520
Speaker 1: T and T made ever got produced. I do wonder

620
00:37:37,800 --> 00:37:39,520
Speaker 1: if there are any of those A T and T

621
00:37:39,760 --> 00:37:44,480
Speaker 1: three d O s floating around out there anyway. Gold Star, Panasonic,

622
00:37:44,600 --> 00:37:48,200
Speaker 1: and Sonio would each release a few different versions of

623
00:37:48,239 --> 00:37:51,200
Speaker 1: the three D O s they produced. Some were never

624
00:37:51,239 --> 00:37:54,120
Speaker 1: meant to be consumer products. They were rather designed to

625
00:37:54,160 --> 00:37:57,600
Speaker 1: help game developers who needed, you know, actual hardware to

626
00:37:57,680 --> 00:38:01,920
Speaker 1: test their games on, essentially d bug kits for their games.

627
00:38:02,360 --> 00:38:06,440
Speaker 1: Others would swap out basic parts on the systems. A

628
00:38:06,440 --> 00:38:08,719
Speaker 1: lot of the early three D O s had a

629
00:38:08,760 --> 00:38:13,319
Speaker 1: motorized c D tray, which is both expensive and it's

630
00:38:13,320 --> 00:38:15,440
Speaker 1: a point of failure. You know, eventually the motor is

631
00:38:15,440 --> 00:38:17,279
Speaker 1: going to give out and the tray is not going

632
00:38:17,320 --> 00:38:21,040
Speaker 1: to extend or go back in, and so some of

633
00:38:21,080 --> 00:38:23,920
Speaker 1: them in the subsequent models of the three d O

634
00:38:24,239 --> 00:38:27,360
Speaker 1: replace that with a top loading c D tray, so

635
00:38:27,400 --> 00:38:29,840
Speaker 1: you just flip open the top and put a c

636
00:38:30,000 --> 00:38:33,719
Speaker 1: D in that way, as opposed to ejecting a tray. Now,

637
00:38:33,760 --> 00:38:36,360
Speaker 1: when we come back, i'll run down what the basic

638
00:38:36,480 --> 00:38:40,000
Speaker 1: spects were for the three d O console, what set

639
00:38:40,040 --> 00:38:43,319
Speaker 1: it apart from other consoles of that era, and why

640
00:38:43,360 --> 00:38:46,400
Speaker 1: the console ultimately failed, as well as give a brief

641
00:38:46,440 --> 00:38:49,640
Speaker 1: rundown on what happened to the company three d O,

642
00:38:49,880 --> 00:38:52,200
Speaker 1: which again hung on for a few years after the

643
00:38:52,239 --> 00:38:54,880
Speaker 1: death of the console. We'll get to that after this

644
00:38:54,960 --> 00:39:07,200
Speaker 1: quick break. So what makes a three d O a

645
00:39:07,320 --> 00:39:11,319
Speaker 1: three d O. Let's learn about the specs of the console. Now,

646
00:39:11,360 --> 00:39:14,480
Speaker 1: for the purposes of this breakdown, I'm really just going

647
00:39:14,560 --> 00:39:17,879
Speaker 1: to focus on the first consumer model of the three

648
00:39:17,920 --> 00:39:20,080
Speaker 1: d O console to hit the market. That would be

649
00:39:20,120 --> 00:39:24,160
Speaker 1: the Panasonic three d O Interactive Multiplayer f Z one.

650
00:39:24,760 --> 00:39:29,960
Speaker 1: This is the system that first debuted in the brains

651
00:39:30,080 --> 00:39:33,480
Speaker 1: of the machine was a thirty two bit CPU. That

652
00:39:33,680 --> 00:39:37,480
Speaker 1: was a risk style processor r I s C that

653
00:39:37,600 --> 00:39:41,480
Speaker 1: is reduced instruction set computer. Now I talked about this

654
00:39:41,560 --> 00:39:44,400
Speaker 1: with the story of ARM, but basically, it means that

655
00:39:44,560 --> 00:39:49,440
Speaker 1: the instructions that this style of CPU handles are relatively simple,

656
00:39:49,640 --> 00:39:53,400
Speaker 1: and that means that each step each instruction is easy

657
00:39:53,480 --> 00:39:57,080
Speaker 1: to carry out, and therefore it goes pretty fast. More

658
00:39:57,120 --> 00:40:01,160
Speaker 1: complicated instructions might require lots more steps and that slows

659
00:40:01,200 --> 00:40:05,200
Speaker 1: things down. The clock speed, or the number of pulses

660
00:40:05,280 --> 00:40:09,880
Speaker 1: the CPU has per second to carry out instructions, was

661
00:40:09,960 --> 00:40:13,240
Speaker 1: twelve point five mega hurts. That's twelve million, five hundred

662
00:40:13,239 --> 00:40:17,320
Speaker 1: thousand pulses per second. That sounds like it's really fast,

663
00:40:17,400 --> 00:40:20,560
Speaker 1: but by comparison these days we talked about processors that

664
00:40:20,560 --> 00:40:23,000
Speaker 1: are in the giga hurts range with more than a

665
00:40:23,040 --> 00:40:26,400
Speaker 1: billion pulses per second, so we've come a long way.

666
00:40:26,800 --> 00:40:31,000
Speaker 1: Paired with the CPU were a couple of video coprocessors

667
00:40:31,040 --> 00:40:34,279
Speaker 1: meant to offload some of the heavy lifting when it

668
00:40:34,480 --> 00:40:37,440
Speaker 1: comes to graphics processing. In a way, it's similar to

669
00:40:37,480 --> 00:40:40,479
Speaker 1: what graphics cards would do for PCs in the late

670
00:40:40,600 --> 00:40:45,480
Speaker 1: ninety nineties by handing off tasks like texture mapping to coprocessors,

671
00:40:45,800 --> 00:40:49,640
Speaker 1: the CPU could focus on other tasks while running games

672
00:40:49,680 --> 00:40:52,120
Speaker 1: on the three d O. It also had a math

673
00:40:52,239 --> 00:40:56,080
Speaker 1: coprocessor in addition to those to also kind of spread

674
00:40:56,080 --> 00:40:59,680
Speaker 1: out the load. Now, this was in the dark times

675
00:41:00,040 --> 00:41:02,839
Speaker 1: for h D t V was even a thing, though

676
00:41:02,880 --> 00:41:05,319
Speaker 1: Hawkins has said on occasion that the three d O

677
00:41:05,400 --> 00:41:08,400
Speaker 1: could have been upgraded to h D t V. I

678
00:41:08,400 --> 00:41:11,240
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's true based on what I've seen. However,

679
00:41:11,800 --> 00:41:14,480
Speaker 1: as it was sold, the three d O would generate

680
00:41:14,520 --> 00:41:16,920
Speaker 1: images that would be shown at a resolution of six

681
00:41:17,640 --> 00:41:23,440
Speaker 1: pixels by pixels you know, essentially, you know, standard Definition.

682
00:41:23,520 --> 00:41:27,960
Speaker 1: It was capable of replicating sixteen point seven million colors.

683
00:41:28,640 --> 00:41:31,600
Speaker 1: The three d O supported Dolby surround sound. It had

684
00:41:31,640 --> 00:41:35,319
Speaker 1: two megabytes of d RAM, one megabyte of v RAM,

685
00:41:35,480 --> 00:41:39,600
Speaker 1: and thirty s RAM. But what the heck does that mean? Well,

686
00:41:39,719 --> 00:41:43,240
Speaker 1: d RAM stands for dynamic RAM, which at the time

687
00:41:43,920 --> 00:41:49,560
Speaker 1: was the standard RAM of machines. It must be continually refreshed,

688
00:41:49,600 --> 00:41:53,120
Speaker 1: or rather occasionally refreshed I should say, not continually occasionally

689
00:41:53,120 --> 00:41:56,600
Speaker 1: refreshed by the microprocessor or else the memory deterior rates.

690
00:41:57,080 --> 00:42:00,279
Speaker 1: V RAM is video RAM, a type of AM that

691
00:42:00,360 --> 00:42:04,640
Speaker 1: the computer can actually read and write to simultaneously, and

692
00:42:04,800 --> 00:42:09,239
Speaker 1: it was particularly useful for handling graphics. And s RAM

693
00:42:09,280 --> 00:42:12,600
Speaker 1: stands for static RAM, which was a much faster form

694
00:42:12,640 --> 00:42:15,480
Speaker 1: of RAM than d RAM. But if it's better, why

695
00:42:15,520 --> 00:42:17,719
Speaker 1: don't just why don't you just use s RAM man? Well,

696
00:42:17,719 --> 00:42:20,080
Speaker 1: it's because it was also way more expensive, so it

697
00:42:20,080 --> 00:42:23,200
Speaker 1: would drive up the cost of productions. That's why the

698
00:42:23,200 --> 00:42:26,359
Speaker 1: three D O also had some expansion ports and had

699
00:42:26,400 --> 00:42:29,359
Speaker 1: a single control port, but it allowed for daisy chain

700
00:42:29,400 --> 00:42:32,279
Speaker 1: connections of up to eight peripherals, so you could have

701
00:42:32,440 --> 00:42:35,160
Speaker 1: multiple controllers plugged into it, but it had the one

702
00:42:35,239 --> 00:42:39,400
Speaker 1: port that you used to do that with. Uh now

703
00:42:40,000 --> 00:42:42,040
Speaker 1: when the system went on sale. Oh and it also

704
00:42:42,120 --> 00:42:44,680
Speaker 1: had a CD ROM drive. I mentioned that earlier, but

705
00:42:44,800 --> 00:42:46,440
Speaker 1: you know I should throw that in there too. When

706
00:42:46,440 --> 00:42:51,160
Speaker 1: I went on sale, it did so for six hundred dollars.

707
00:42:51,880 --> 00:42:55,880
Speaker 1: That is a lot of money. If we adjust for

708
00:42:55,920 --> 00:42:59,640
Speaker 1: inflation in today's US dollars, it would be equivalent to

709
00:42:59,719 --> 00:43:03,239
Speaker 1: about one thousand, two hundred sixty bucks or so. So

710
00:43:03,360 --> 00:43:06,080
Speaker 1: imagine that you go into a store and you see

711
00:43:06,080 --> 00:43:09,440
Speaker 1: a video game console and its ticket prices one thousand,

712
00:43:09,520 --> 00:43:13,040
Speaker 1: two hundred sixty dollars This is not a fully fledged computer.

713
00:43:13,160 --> 00:43:15,319
Speaker 1: It's not like a gaming rig or anything. It is

714
00:43:15,360 --> 00:43:19,359
Speaker 1: a video game console, akin to something like the PlayStation.

715
00:43:19,920 --> 00:43:23,840
Speaker 1: By comparison, the Sega Genesis, which was again already on

716
00:43:23,880 --> 00:43:26,239
Speaker 1: the market it had been since the late eighties that

717
00:43:26,320 --> 00:43:29,600
Speaker 1: one cost a hundred eighty nine dollars when it launched,

718
00:43:30,000 --> 00:43:33,240
Speaker 1: and the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, which was the reigning

719
00:43:33,320 --> 00:43:37,960
Speaker 1: champ at the time, had cost one dollars when it launched,

720
00:43:38,320 --> 00:43:40,719
Speaker 1: So the three d O cost more than both of

721
00:43:40,760 --> 00:43:44,120
Speaker 1: those combined. It almost cost twice as much as both

722
00:43:44,120 --> 00:43:47,520
Speaker 1: of those put together. Now, granted, the three d O

723
00:43:47,840 --> 00:43:50,680
Speaker 1: was a thirty two bit system, whereas the S and

724
00:43:50,719 --> 00:43:54,880
Speaker 1: E s and the Sega Genesis the regular Saga Genesis

725
00:43:55,120 --> 00:43:58,480
Speaker 1: were sixteen bet systems, so the three d O could

726
00:43:58,560 --> 00:44:02,480
Speaker 1: run more sophisticated game games with better graphics. But at

727
00:44:02,520 --> 00:44:06,600
Speaker 1: that steep price point, would anyone actually buy one? And

728
00:44:06,680 --> 00:44:09,680
Speaker 1: why was that price so high? Well, it goes back

729
00:44:09,719 --> 00:44:13,120
Speaker 1: to the three d O business model. See Hawkins idea

730
00:44:13,560 --> 00:44:16,520
Speaker 1: was to leave the manufacturing to other people, and then

731
00:44:16,560 --> 00:44:20,560
Speaker 1: to make money through licensing the technology to those manufacturers

732
00:44:20,560 --> 00:44:24,399
Speaker 1: and later to develop games for the system itself and

733
00:44:24,480 --> 00:44:27,880
Speaker 1: to collect on royalties for all the consoles and games

734
00:44:27,880 --> 00:44:31,640
Speaker 1: that were sold for the manufacturers. That meant that the

735
00:44:31,680 --> 00:44:35,520
Speaker 1: three d O was inherently more expensive than if those

736
00:44:35,560 --> 00:44:40,520
Speaker 1: companies had actually developed their own hardware in house. Manufacturers,

737
00:44:40,520 --> 00:44:42,200
Speaker 1: we're going to have to pay three d OH for

738
00:44:42,360 --> 00:44:45,800
Speaker 1: every console they sold to consumers. So to make up

739
00:44:45,840 --> 00:44:50,399
Speaker 1: for that cost, that loss and revenue, they increased the

740
00:44:50,440 --> 00:44:53,279
Speaker 1: price of the consoles, but that ended up pricing the

741
00:44:53,320 --> 00:44:55,959
Speaker 1: systems well out of the budgets of most video game

742
00:44:56,000 --> 00:44:59,080
Speaker 1: fans who are out there now. Typically, the way video

743
00:44:59,080 --> 00:45:04,200
Speaker 1: game console manu factorers make money is through software, not hardware.

744
00:45:04,760 --> 00:45:08,160
Speaker 1: Most companies will actually sell the hardware the consoles and

745
00:45:08,280 --> 00:45:11,920
Speaker 1: a loss, so the retail price will actually be below

746
00:45:12,239 --> 00:45:15,920
Speaker 1: what it costs to make and ship those consoles to consumers.

747
00:45:16,320 --> 00:45:19,520
Speaker 1: Now why would you do this, Well, it's because consoles

748
00:45:19,680 --> 00:45:23,279
Speaker 1: are really no good without content to play on those consoles,

749
00:45:23,760 --> 00:45:27,759
Speaker 1: so the manufacturers would use the consoles to secure customers

750
00:45:27,760 --> 00:45:31,640
Speaker 1: for stuff like video games and other content. Microsoft and

751
00:45:31,719 --> 00:45:35,880
Speaker 1: Sony and Nintendo can stand to lose money on console

752
00:45:35,920 --> 00:45:38,520
Speaker 1: sales if they can make it back by selling enough

753
00:45:38,880 --> 00:45:42,799
Speaker 1: first party games or making royalties off of games that

754
00:45:42,840 --> 00:45:46,640
Speaker 1: are licensed to run on those systems. But since these

755
00:45:46,680 --> 00:45:51,600
Speaker 1: manufacturers like Panasonic didn't own the i P, they couldn't

756
00:45:51,600 --> 00:45:53,839
Speaker 1: rely on that same model. They weren't going to make

757
00:45:53,960 --> 00:45:56,960
Speaker 1: royalties off of game sales the way that three d

758
00:45:57,080 --> 00:46:00,359
Speaker 1: O would. Heck, if if Panasonic had made a game

759
00:46:00,480 --> 00:46:03,440
Speaker 1: for the console that they were manufacturing, they would have

760
00:46:03,440 --> 00:46:06,479
Speaker 1: to pay a royalty to three d OH. Now, sure

761
00:46:06,640 --> 00:46:09,359
Speaker 1: it was a lower royalty than what it would be

762
00:46:09,400 --> 00:46:12,800
Speaker 1: if you were to make a game for Sega or Nintendo,

763
00:46:13,040 --> 00:46:16,400
Speaker 1: but since Panasonic was actually fabricating the three d O,

764
00:46:17,200 --> 00:46:20,440
Speaker 1: that's a big difference, and so the company passed the

765
00:46:20,480 --> 00:46:25,200
Speaker 1: costs onto the consumer. Understandably, that meant that the sales

766
00:46:25,239 --> 00:46:29,239
Speaker 1: of the three d O were modest at best, while

767
00:46:29,239 --> 00:46:32,240
Speaker 1: the royalty fees meant that, you know, developers were interested

768
00:46:32,239 --> 00:46:35,120
Speaker 1: in making games for the console. The fact that the

769
00:46:35,160 --> 00:46:40,040
Speaker 1: consoles weren't really selling well was a huge problem. Developing

770
00:46:40,080 --> 00:46:44,759
Speaker 1: a game is a time consuming and expensive process, and

771
00:46:44,800 --> 00:46:46,680
Speaker 1: if you see that very few people have bought the

772
00:46:46,719 --> 00:46:49,160
Speaker 1: console in the first place, well, there's not a lot

773
00:46:49,160 --> 00:46:51,799
Speaker 1: of incentive for you to make games for it. I mean,

774
00:46:51,840 --> 00:46:54,279
Speaker 1: if you do spend that time and money, there's a

775
00:46:54,280 --> 00:46:56,680
Speaker 1: really good chance you won't see a return on that investment.

776
00:46:56,680 --> 00:46:59,759
Speaker 1: There's literally not enough people with the console out there

777
00:47:00,200 --> 00:47:02,400
Speaker 1: to buy enough copies of your game for you to

778
00:47:02,440 --> 00:47:05,279
Speaker 1: make a profit. So the three d O had sort

779
00:47:05,320 --> 00:47:09,399
Speaker 1: of defeated itself. Now this wasn't because of the hardware, though,

780
00:47:09,440 --> 00:47:11,960
Speaker 1: to be fair, other systems that could go toe to

781
00:47:12,000 --> 00:47:14,200
Speaker 1: toe with the three d O were soon on the

782
00:47:14,239 --> 00:47:17,759
Speaker 1: market afterwards, like the Sony PlayStation, but the failure was

783
00:47:17,840 --> 00:47:21,279
Speaker 1: more in the business model. Hawkins, for his part, has

784
00:47:21,280 --> 00:47:24,400
Speaker 1: said that most retailers actually marked the price down to

785
00:47:24,480 --> 00:47:30,640
Speaker 1: five dollars, not six dollars, because the retailer said, will

786
00:47:30,760 --> 00:47:33,480
Speaker 1: never be able to sell these things if it's that expensive.

787
00:47:34,320 --> 00:47:37,719
Speaker 1: So I guess that's something. But even so, at five

788
00:47:37,880 --> 00:47:41,440
Speaker 1: nine it was far more expensive than the consoles that

789
00:47:41,680 --> 00:47:45,719
Speaker 1: competitors on the market had. Heck, when the Sony PlayStation

790
00:47:45,719 --> 00:47:50,040
Speaker 1: would debut in two years after the three d O

791
00:47:50,160 --> 00:47:53,080
Speaker 1: had first hit the market, Sony priced it at two

792
00:47:53,600 --> 00:47:57,239
Speaker 1: nine dollars, and like the three d O, the PlayStation

793
00:47:57,320 --> 00:48:00,800
Speaker 1: had a thirty two bit processor and had narrative amounts

794
00:48:00,840 --> 00:48:03,840
Speaker 1: of RAM. The f Z one would be the most

795
00:48:03,880 --> 00:48:06,279
Speaker 1: expensive three d O console to hit the market. That

796
00:48:06,360 --> 00:48:09,479
Speaker 1: was the first one, but even the less expensive ones

797
00:48:10,000 --> 00:48:13,319
Speaker 1: were still more expensive than the competition. Gold Stars. Three

798
00:48:13,400 --> 00:48:17,759
Speaker 1: d O would debut at three dollars. Even the expensive

799
00:48:17,880 --> 00:48:22,279
Speaker 1: f Z one would drop to four dollars later, but

800
00:48:22,520 --> 00:48:26,799
Speaker 1: the damage had been done. Adding to the enormous problem

801
00:48:26,840 --> 00:48:29,960
Speaker 1: of a high price was the fact that developing games

802
00:48:29,960 --> 00:48:32,640
Speaker 1: for the system was a new process. It was a

803
00:48:32,680 --> 00:48:35,319
Speaker 1: brand new set of hardware, and that meant that game

804
00:48:35,320 --> 00:48:38,719
Speaker 1: development was gonna a little more slowly than what the

805
00:48:38,760 --> 00:48:41,440
Speaker 1: three d O team had hoped, And that meant that

806
00:48:41,560 --> 00:48:44,800
Speaker 1: some titles that had been intended to be launch titles,

807
00:48:44,840 --> 00:48:49,480
Speaker 1: like a Jurassic Park game, trailed behind by several months

808
00:48:49,800 --> 00:48:52,360
Speaker 1: as developers tried to work out bugs in their code.

809
00:48:52,640 --> 00:48:55,880
Speaker 1: In fact, the only title that was available at launch

810
00:48:56,120 --> 00:48:59,440
Speaker 1: was a game called Crash and Burn, a futuristic racing game.

811
00:49:00,120 --> 00:49:03,120
Speaker 1: The console would fare a little bit better in Japan,

812
00:49:03,719 --> 00:49:07,040
Speaker 1: where there were six whole launch titles to go along

813
00:49:07,080 --> 00:49:10,680
Speaker 1: with it when it went on sale in n but

814
00:49:10,800 --> 00:49:14,920
Speaker 1: after an initial interest in three d O, that interest

815
00:49:14,960 --> 00:49:18,000
Speaker 1: in Japan died down and sales died with it. And

816
00:49:18,120 --> 00:49:20,279
Speaker 1: one bitter part of the story is that e A,

817
00:49:20,600 --> 00:49:24,200
Speaker 1: the company that Trip Hawkins had founded back in two

818
00:49:24,960 --> 00:49:28,840
Speaker 1: ultimately bailed on three d O to develop more software

819
00:49:28,880 --> 00:49:32,319
Speaker 1: for Sony PlayStation. Hawkins found out his old company would

820
00:49:32,400 --> 00:49:35,920
Speaker 1: not be developing exclusive titles for the three d O console,

821
00:49:36,520 --> 00:49:39,040
Speaker 1: but they would be doing it for the Sony PlayStation,

822
00:49:39,360 --> 00:49:42,520
Speaker 1: and that had to be a knife in the back

823
00:49:42,680 --> 00:49:46,600
Speaker 1: to see the company he had founded undercut the next

824
00:49:46,640 --> 00:49:50,200
Speaker 1: company he had found it yikes. The three d O

825
00:49:50,320 --> 00:49:53,800
Speaker 1: Company was looking at a new console design to try

826
00:49:53,840 --> 00:49:57,040
Speaker 1: and salvage things. They code named it the M two.

827
00:49:57,120 --> 00:49:59,279
Speaker 1: This was gonna be the successor to the three d

828
00:49:59,440 --> 00:50:02,520
Speaker 1: O and it was intended to be backwards compatible with

829
00:50:02,600 --> 00:50:04,600
Speaker 1: the three d O systems, so that, you know, you

830
00:50:04,640 --> 00:50:08,359
Speaker 1: wouldn't totally irritate all the three d O fans out there.

831
00:50:08,719 --> 00:50:12,000
Speaker 1: And the M two was needed because other game consoles

832
00:50:12,000 --> 00:50:14,360
Speaker 1: were hitting the market that could compete on a technical

833
00:50:14,440 --> 00:50:17,359
Speaker 1: level pretty effectively with the three d O and they

834
00:50:17,360 --> 00:50:21,359
Speaker 1: were much cheaper, and that, unfortunately, was just never meant

835
00:50:21,400 --> 00:50:24,400
Speaker 1: to be. The company stopped development of the M two

836
00:50:24,719 --> 00:50:27,439
Speaker 1: and sold it off to Panasonic. It's probably a good

837
00:50:27,440 --> 00:50:32,759
Speaker 1: thing because they avoided the sunken cost fallacy. By the

838
00:50:32,800 --> 00:50:35,160
Speaker 1: writing was on the wall and the three d O

839
00:50:35,400 --> 00:50:39,720
Speaker 1: system was discontinued. The Three D O Company switched gears

840
00:50:39,719 --> 00:50:43,080
Speaker 1: and instead of designing hardware specs and then licensing those

841
00:50:43,080 --> 00:50:47,280
Speaker 1: out to fabricators, the company would focus solely on developing

842
00:50:47,320 --> 00:50:52,120
Speaker 1: software for other existing consoles like the Sega Saturn and

843
00:50:52,239 --> 00:50:55,960
Speaker 1: even the Sony PlayStation, as well as for other computer platforms.

844
00:50:56,440 --> 00:50:59,960
Speaker 1: The company restructured layoffs followed I mean there's no need

845
00:51:00,040 --> 00:51:03,280
Speaker 1: for the hardware design teams at that point, and by

846
00:51:03,600 --> 00:51:07,160
Speaker 1: the company had sold off its hardware business division to Samsung.

847
00:51:07,640 --> 00:51:10,760
Speaker 1: Hugh Martin, who had been president while Hawkins was serving

848
00:51:10,800 --> 00:51:13,560
Speaker 1: as CEO and chairman, left the company at that time,

849
00:51:13,640 --> 00:51:16,120
Speaker 1: leaving Hawkins with the full leadership of the three D

850
00:51:16,280 --> 00:51:18,759
Speaker 1: O Company. The Three D Company would go on to

851
00:51:18,840 --> 00:51:22,040
Speaker 1: develop games like the Army Men franchise, the Mind and

852
00:51:22,120 --> 00:51:25,880
Speaker 1: Magic Series, and High Heat Major League Baseball, which was

853
00:51:25,920 --> 00:51:29,319
Speaker 1: possibly another nod to hawkins love of sports. But while

854
00:51:29,360 --> 00:51:32,640
Speaker 1: some of those franchises would do well, ultimately the company

855
00:51:32,719 --> 00:51:35,799
Speaker 1: was unable to stay in business, and in two thousand three,

856
00:51:36,200 --> 00:51:39,560
Speaker 1: ten years after they had founded the company, Three D

857
00:51:39,640 --> 00:51:43,239
Speaker 1: O had to file for Chapter eleven bankruptcy protection. Its

858
00:51:43,239 --> 00:51:46,919
Speaker 1: assets were sold off, with different franchises going to other

859
00:51:47,000 --> 00:51:51,360
Speaker 1: game developers, and our story comes to an end. Well.

860
00:51:51,480 --> 00:51:54,719
Speaker 1: As for trip Hawkins, he ran to some other challenges.

861
00:51:54,800 --> 00:51:57,080
Speaker 1: In two thousand eleven, the i r S, that is,

862
00:51:57,120 --> 00:51:59,960
Speaker 1: the Internal Revenue Service in the United States, the agents

863
00:52:00,160 --> 00:52:03,520
Speaker 1: kind of in charge of overseeing federal taxes. They alleged

864
00:52:03,560 --> 00:52:08,440
Speaker 1: that Hawkins owed around twenty million dollars in back taxes

865
00:52:08,960 --> 00:52:12,359
Speaker 1: and that number would steadily go up. A judge said

866
00:52:12,360 --> 00:52:17,120
Speaker 1: that Hawkins quote continued to spend money extravagantly with knowledge

867
00:52:17,160 --> 00:52:20,680
Speaker 1: of his liabilities end quote. Essentially, he was saying that

868
00:52:20,760 --> 00:52:24,880
Speaker 1: Hawkins was using a personal bankruptcy to kind of shield

869
00:52:24,960 --> 00:52:28,480
Speaker 1: his wealth and was still spending money like crazy on

870
00:52:28,520 --> 00:52:32,400
Speaker 1: a lavish lifestyle, or, as an old tiny type person

871
00:52:32,480 --> 00:52:35,880
Speaker 1: might say, he was making hay while the sun was shining.

872
00:52:36,719 --> 00:52:38,600
Speaker 1: He was doing this with the help of a little

873
00:52:38,640 --> 00:52:43,160
Speaker 1: accounting company called KPMG. By the way, this sort of

874
00:52:43,160 --> 00:52:47,120
Speaker 1: financial gymnastics that Hawkins was accused of performing are not

875
00:52:47,280 --> 00:52:51,080
Speaker 1: that dissimilar from the allegations leveled against a certain United

876
00:52:51,120 --> 00:52:55,320
Speaker 1: States president. Right now, Hawkins would go on to pay

877
00:52:55,400 --> 00:52:58,239
Speaker 1: some of those back taxes back, but he would be

878
00:52:58,280 --> 00:53:01,719
Speaker 1: embroiled in various legal proces eatings regarding the bulk of

879
00:53:01,760 --> 00:53:05,480
Speaker 1: those taxes. As for Electronic Arts or e A, it

880
00:53:05,600 --> 00:53:08,680
Speaker 1: is now the second largest video game publisher in the world,

881
00:53:08,760 --> 00:53:13,600
Speaker 1: right behind Activision Blizzard, another behemoth in video game publishing,

882
00:53:13,960 --> 00:53:16,640
Speaker 1: and as I mentioned earlier, EA has built up a

883
00:53:16,719 --> 00:53:21,280
Speaker 1: pretty spotty reputation over the years. Oh and as for Apple,

884
00:53:21,640 --> 00:53:25,040
Speaker 1: you know, the first employer of Trip Hawkins after he

885
00:53:25,080 --> 00:53:28,360
Speaker 1: got out of college. Well, Apple is still doing pretty

886
00:53:28,360 --> 00:53:30,319
Speaker 1: good these days. I hear they actually have a new

887
00:53:30,320 --> 00:53:34,520
Speaker 1: phone out, so good on them. And that wraps up

888
00:53:34,800 --> 00:53:37,640
Speaker 1: the tragic tale of the three d O and the

889
00:53:37,680 --> 00:53:42,120
Speaker 1: three d O Company and the misadventures of Trip Hawkins,

890
00:53:42,719 --> 00:53:44,960
Speaker 1: which I think would make a great title of a

891
00:53:45,000 --> 00:53:48,799
Speaker 1: choose your own adventure novel. What's next for Hawkins? I

892
00:53:48,840 --> 00:53:52,120
Speaker 1: don't know. He founded another company called Digital Chocolate, which

893
00:53:52,200 --> 00:53:55,239
Speaker 1: well maybe I'll talk about in another episode. Uh, and

894
00:53:55,320 --> 00:53:57,839
Speaker 1: you know he's still active out there. But yeah, this

895
00:53:57,880 --> 00:54:00,279
Speaker 1: was one of those stories where like he had some

896
00:54:00,320 --> 00:54:04,160
Speaker 1: great ideas and he had a real passion for games,

897
00:54:04,200 --> 00:54:08,040
Speaker 1: something that I think is is really noteworthy. Um, and

898
00:54:08,120 --> 00:54:11,200
Speaker 1: he made some great moves, but not everybody you know

899
00:54:11,320 --> 00:54:14,640
Speaker 1: bats a thousand. In fact, very few people do. And

900
00:54:14,719 --> 00:54:18,160
Speaker 1: this is a reminder of that. I hope you enjoyed

901
00:54:18,200 --> 00:54:20,920
Speaker 1: that episode of the Tragedy of three d O. If

902
00:54:20,960 --> 00:54:23,280
Speaker 1: you have suggestions for topics I should cover in future

903
00:54:23,280 --> 00:54:26,560
Speaker 1: episodes of tech Stuff, remember to reach out to me.

904
00:54:26,960 --> 00:54:29,279
Speaker 1: The best way to do that is on Twitter. The

905
00:54:29,320 --> 00:54:31,840
Speaker 1: handle for the show is text Stuff hs W and

906
00:54:31,840 --> 00:54:39,520
Speaker 1: I'll talk to you again really soon. Text Stuff is

907
00:54:39,560 --> 00:54:42,680
Speaker 1: an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from my

908
00:54:42,800 --> 00:54:46,440
Speaker 1: heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

909
00:54:46,520 --> 00:54:48,520
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.