CD-3DO

A type of compact disc designed originally to compete against CD-I and CD-MM for interactive television set entertainment and, possibly, education. A promoter named Trip Hawkins put together an impressive grouping of Hollywood movie studios and other developers of interactive videos using MPEG compression. Large companies such as Panasonic, Sanyo, and others are producing playback machines for TV sets. For an older review see NewMedia , August 1993, p. 21. For a more recent review see USA Today, May 28, 1998 where it is announced that Trip Hawkins launched a comeback after the early financial disaster of his 3DO venture. The 3DO video games lost out completely to competitors like Matsushita, Philips, Sony, and Victor who agreed upon a competing CD-Karaoke standard. Prospects once seemed high that this would emerge a winner. In 1993, 3DO stock soared in price. Time Magazine, January 3, 1994, p. 76, ranked the Panasonic CD-3DO Multiplayer as Number 1 in a listing and discussion of the top ten "best" new products of 1993. (In that same listing, the Motorola PowerPC Chip ranked Number 6 and PDA products came in at Rank 7 ahead of Mattus Ice Cream at Rank 9.) However, in 1994, sales of 3DO players have fallen far short of expectations (except in Japan) and the 3DO stock price fell from a high of over $45 per share to less than $15. Hawkins invested millions more of his own money in the company. "This maker of multimedia game players is fighting for survival" according to Newsweek on June 13, 1994, p. 40. Hawkins and his 3DO machines all but disappeared from the public. However, in May of 1998 they resurfaced 3DO unveiled 11 video games and targets to become a small and more focused video game maker. (See also Games , CD-VIS , CD-I , CD-MM , CD-R , and CD-Karaoke )