Over 30 years ago, a man had a dream of a games console that would be made by multiple companies, but had the same branding, and would play the same games library. That man was Trip Hawkins, and that console was the 3DO. While that bold vision would ultimately fail in the market, Trip’s idea may once again come back to life in the most unlikeliest of circumstances.
As recounted in this oral history of Electronic Arts, EA’s founder Trip Hawkins wanted to fight the dominant console companies Sega and Nintendo, for the royalties they levied to bring games to their systems. He eventually decided the only way forward was to make a games console of his own. The 3DO would not charge royalties from game developers, theoretically giving them the freedom to make the games they wanted.
Now, gamers who lived through that time will know this part of the story. While 3DO got Panasonic, Goldstar, and Sanyo on board, they had to charge more for the consoles to make the profit they wouldn’t make on the games. This is often cited as the reason for the console’s failure, but that isn’t quite the full story.
As it turned out, Trip walked away from EA to launch the 3DO company, and somewhere in between EA dropped their sister company to make games for the PlayStation. In Trip’s words:
“I realized that EA was stabbing us in the back. They were not going to have any exclusive games on 3DO. They were all going to show up on PlayStation. We needed to have some first-party games. We didn’t have a choice.”
3DO made games for their own console, and would later compete directly with EA. But on another front, 3DO tried to broker a deal between Sega, Phillips, and Matsushita (known worldwide as National and/or Panasonic) to compete against Sony’s PlayStation. Again, to quote Trip:
“We made some really interesting moves where we got very close to putting together a stronger coalition of companies to support the M2 and take on PlayStation. At one point, I had a verbal deal with Philips and Sega to join forces with Matsushita. That grouping of companies could have given Sony a run for it. Matsushita wanted to kick Sega out of the deal, and then Sega obviously got all mad, and Philips backed off. I spent a year putting that coalition together, but in the end, they just couldn’t get along.”
That takes us to today, as Jez Corden writes about some more rumors and some speculation on Microsoft’s video game business plans for the near future for Windows Central. To quote Jez:
“Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer previously confirmed that the Xbox team is quite interested in building a dedicated handheld and is experimenting with different prototypes, but that it’s currently “years away” from launching, quite similar to the PlayStation handheld reportedly in development at Sony.
Until such a first-party device materializes, Microsoft is looking to partner with different companies that already have handhelds out in order to improve the experience of playing Xbox games on the go, directly playing into the firm’s recent “This is an Xbox” marketing campaign. We’ve even heard that Microsoft is exploring options around letting third-parties build Xbox-branded devices, something that could extend as far as letting them directly use the Xbox operating system.
These third-party Xbox devices could appeal to specific niches, providing a number of options with audiences or markets that Microsoft has previously struggled in. In this event, a hypothetical “Xbox” branded handheld from a developer like ASUS would actually be an Xbox, providing players access to the same library of games and the same services that they can use when playing on an Xbox Series X|S console.”
Jez then raises the questions that you would ask about such a plan. But since we brought it up, it should be clear that many of the potential pitfalls and issues Microsoft faces are similar to the ones that 3DO faced when they launched their plans to make consoles with everyone. And there is certainly some overlap with the issues Valve faced when they tried to launch Steam Machines.
Of course, unlike 3DO and Valve, Microsoft is one of the most valuable and powerful companies in the world, and they can certainly burn money and resources, fail, and go on to try something new. But more than that, they are on the same page on making a go for this right now, with other rumors that they already invested on a cross platform Xbox menu called Project Rainway. Microsoft are themselves pioneers in cloud gaming, and their recent success with Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 puts them in a good position to take these risks, with the hopes of making their business bigger as a result.
We look forward to how this plays out. For example, will Microsoft’s potential license for PC gaming handhelds the Ally and Legion GO mean they could subsidize those devices, and try to help make them more mainstream? It’s certainly convenient for Microsoft that Lenovo, ASUS, MSI, even smaller players like GPD and AOKZOE would have to be Windows OEMs. And would Microsoft then subsequently make that official Xbox handheld with several companies down the line? Succeed or fail, we could be looking forward to interesting times for portable gaming.
