October 1993: 3DO Launch



The 3DO corporation introduced a new concept in gaming. Rather than creating a new game system they created a specification for a game system and left it to electronics companies to implement. Panasonic was the first to try by releasing a $700 3DO player in October 1993. The initial launch didn't produce many sales. The sticker price and no-name library kept the bulky Panasonic 3DO boxes dusty.

Our store was sent a demo unit shortly after the launch. It was the only demo unit we had in the time I was there (although the same store now sports several). We had a challenging time finding a game to display that caught customers' attention. After several experiments we found that Madden Football was the most successful. Sports games were always solid sellers and Madden was (and still is) the premier franchise. When customers saw how superior Madden for 3DO was in comparison to the Genesis and Super Nintendo versions it made them consider buying a 3DO. Are people really willing to shell out $700+ just to play the latest version of Madden? Well, at the time of this writing I found something called the "Xbox 360 Premium Gold Pack Sports Bundle" (which includes Madden '06) selling for a low price of $830. So to answer the question, "yes".

The 3DO never took off though. The failures of other CD-based systems lingered like a dark cloud over the 3DO. Previous CD systems (Sega CD, Phillips CDI, TG-16 CD) were infamous for their weak game libraries. 3DO made the mistake of launching without titles that gamers were actually interested in. Customers' was saw it as yet-another-overpriced-CD-system-with-no-games. Far too late it managed to amass a respectable library with rock-solid ports of Super Street Fighter II, Dragon's Lair, and Samurai Shodown. By that time gamers had largely written the system off.

Late in 1993 Elbo introduced something called the "Extended Service Agreement" (ESA). It was basically the same obnoxious extended warranty that Best Buy and Circuit City pimp with every purchase today. We originally only offered it on the Genesis, Super Nintendo, Game Boy, Game Gear, and redesigned NES. For an extra $15 or $20 customers could purchase a 1 or 2 year ESA. If any part of the hardware broke during that time we'd swap it out for free. We were given small commissions for each one sold so we pestered customers mercilessly to buy them. During the Christmas season they actually accounted for a decent percentage of our paychecks. The program wasn't offered for the 3DO because, to put it bluntly, we didn't know if we'd have replacement systems handy in 2 years.