EA, Trip Hawkins, the 3DO... and Madden

[cwpab]

As one of the millions of Europeans who made the mistake of getting carried away by the FIFA hype in the 90s, I played quite a few EA games. But recently I realized I respect the earlier version of EA more: the one who created Kings of the Beach and Budokan: The Martial Spirit.

And then I remembered how this company was founded by a very famous man: Trip Hawkins, who later went on to create the 3DO.

I wanted to know more about the story (and I also wanted to know why FIFA games didn't play like soccer at all), so I made some research and discovered some interesting facts:

- Trip Hawkins founded EA to make Madden. He was a big American Football fan. He wanted the game to be super realistic based on input from players.

- EA started promoting themselves as the dream company for a programmer, and tried to put "developers on front". They made a stylish ad on a business magazine for that purpose.

- Madden was released for the Apple II first, and it's incredible considering the machine it's running on, both because of the graphics and the realism.

- FIFA games are not as good as other EA sports games because they started in 94, when EA was already turning into a "cold" big company that released new versions of sports titles each year. In contrast with Madden, Kings of the Beach, 1 vs 1 and other sports titles, no football players or coaches were consulted to make the game, and programmers were not exactly soccer fans: they were artists who worked on the great, but unrelated game Stunts.

- EA reverse-engineered the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis when they didn't receive the development kits. They borrowed a developent station and took it apart before returning it, and thanks to this they were able to make Madden look great.

- EA warned Trip Hawkins that they projected Sony to take over the market, but Trip continued with his 3DO adventure.

I recommend reading these 3 articles to learn these and many more details:

https://www.polygon.com/a/how-ea-lost-its-soul/chapter-1

https://www.espn.com/espn/eticket/story?page=100805/madden

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2008/08/the-story-of-ea-and-the-pirate-genesis-development-kit/

[cwpab]

This is the famous add included in several non-gaming magazines, like Scientific American ( https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:4800/format:webp/1*UX3EWiiAkTVwMACJ5FN5dw.jpeg ):



This one is more standard, but it's still peculiar how Trip had to include a big pic of himself and how they declared their love for the Amiga. I wonder if they had some sort of agreement with Commodore, but it wouldn't surprise me that simply Trip thought it was a cool machine ( https://64.media.tumblr.com/43ae32f9c55576564e88d63c303baea4/tumblr_oxh62rjhG41tg94xho1_1280.jpg ):

[cwpab]

3DO was already dying in early 1996, but they had "64-bit M2 technology on the way":



https://retrocdn.net/images/1/1d/Games_World_The_Magazine_UK_20.pdf#page=2

[ZorrO]

I don't know the exact composition of this team, but I know that the team of people created by Jay Miner made Atari VCS, Atari 800, Amiga, Atari Lynx and 3DO. They had tended to extend the project time, exceed the budget, don't listen investors, overestimate the value of their work and blind belief that they are the best. In my opinion because they smoked too much. And the fact that two of these projects turned out to be successful is the exception rather than the rule.
And Jay himself was such a visionary that the Amiga CDTV he valued the most was the biggest flop, and the one of which he was the biggest enemy and did everything he could to block A500 model, turned out to be the biggest success.
3DO was supposed to have many manufacturers to make it cheaper, but it was the most expensive console in history. Jay died between the American and European release of 3DO.

[Gryzor]

I think he considered the A500 a project that would dilute his vision?

[lmimmfn]

I don't know the exact composition of this team, but I know that the team of people created by Jay Miner made Atari VCS, Atari 800, Amiga, Atari Lynx and 3DO. They had tended to extend the project time, exceed the budget, don't listen investors, overestimate the value of their work and blind belief that they are the best. In my opinion because they smoked too much. And the fact that two of these projects turned out to be successful is the exception rather than the rule.
And Jay himself was such a visionary that the Amiga CDTV he valued the most was the biggest flop, and the one of which he was the biggest enemy and did everything he could to block A500 model, turned out to be the biggest success.
3DO was supposed to have many manufacturers to make it cheaper, but it was the most expensive console in history. Jay died between the American and European release of 3DO.

There's a lot to unravel there and what you say is quite disingenuous, Jay worked at Atari obviously for the Atari VCS and 800 so any issues with project planning/budget and success were solely the responsibility of Atari as he was just the "engineer".

The Amiga was mostly complete, OS was buggy and they continued to work @ Commodore until v1.2 of Workbench which was the first stable release. They also revised the chipset at Commodore using VRam but Commodore never released that citing that VRAM chips were too expensive at the time. 
Obviously the Amiga was successful in its own right despite Commodores mismanagement.

Only Dave Needle and RJ Mical worked on the Atari Lynx and 3DO. The Atari Lynx was late and was why Epyx went under due to not meeting Atari's deadline.

The main idea behind the 3DO was quite innovative, its the same licensing model used by a quite successful company today known for ARM CPUs, you may have heard of them?

The disaster that was the 3DO wasnt the fault of Dave Needle or RJ Mical, Trip sought to license the technology, where it all fell apart is that Panasonic and Co. decided to be greedy and tried to sell them for $699(Goldstar for example launched at a more reasonable $399 but that was too late in the game).

Also what was working against 3DO is that the main console manufacturers were selling new console versions close to cost price making money from publishers having to pay licensing fees to release software on the console.
Perhaps Trip thought that that licensing model was going to collapse due to how EA circumvented Sega's licensing fees.
Jay's opinion of the CDTV - http://www.projectfirestart.org/interviste/jay_miner_eng.html

MN: What about CDTV?
Jay: CDTV is quite a nice idea, but the software has to be right. Can you think of anything more horrible than trying to read an encyclopaedia or the Bible on a TV, rather than a nice crisp RGB monitor? As a low cost entertainment system it's a good viable long term project. I hope Commodore won't drop the ball if things aren't as good initially; they can take on Philips.

It was Carl Sassenrath(who wrote exec for the Amiga's OS to be a pre-emptive multitasking OS) who worked on the CDTV and Commodore contracted him for it, he had nothing to do with the CDTV other than fulfilling his Commodore contract.
The main issue with the CDTV was that it was just an Amiga(i.e. no improvements to the actual chipset hardware) and Commodore were trying to sell it as something else, i.e. for a hifi stack, i loved the look of it back in the day but far too overpriced.  

Jay Miner had nothing to do with the A500, it was the A2000 he was fighting for as his team in Los Gatos were competing for the A2000 computer with another team in Germany designing their version of A2000(more PC orientated, larger box for cards etc.). Commodore chose the German A2000 and let the team in Los Gatos go.
http://www.bambi-amiga.co.uk/amigahistory/jayinterview2.jpg