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