Editing 3DO (section)

=== Conception ===
The 3DO format was the brainchild of [[Electronic Arts]] (EA) founder [[Trip Hawkins]]; while at EA, he found himself frustrated with the limitations of developing software for different platforms that were incompatible with each other. Hawkins was inspired to create his own platform from his repeated recollection of a [[cartoon]] he saw on a wall at his previous employer, [[Apple Computer]]: it consisted of two [[vulture]]s on a branch, with one suggesting to the other that they kill something instead of waiting to [[scavenge]].<ref name="Intro - WSJ">{{cite news |last1=Turner |first1=Richard |title=Video-Game Innovator Lures Corporate Giants To `Interactive' Media |work=[[The Wall Street Journal]] |date=January 7, 1993 |page=A1 |id={{ProQuest|398317848}} |language=en}}</ref> Hawkins formed a unit within EA to work on the platform, but when it was spun off as [[The 3DO Company]] on September 12, 1991, he found no one willing to oversee it; he ultimately relinquished his role as [[chief executive]] of EA to oversee it himself while remaining at EA as its [[chairman]].<ref name="Intro - WSJ" /><ref name=Retro122>{{cite news|last=Matthews|first=Will|url=https://archive.org/stream/retro_gamer/RetroGamer_122#page/n17/mode/2up|title=Ahead of its Time: A 3DO Retrospective|date=December 2013|work=[[Retro Gamer]]|publisher=[[Imagine Publishing]]|issue=122|pages=18–29}}</ref> The 3DO name itself was an abbreviation of "three-dimensional optics", though it was also a play on the words "audio" and "video".<ref name="Intro - WSJ" /> The 3DO Company's objective was to create a next-generation, CD-based video game/entertainment standard which would be manufactured by various partners and licensees; 3DO would collect a royalty on each console sold and on each game manufactured. To [[video game publisher|game publishers]], the low {{US$|3}} royalty rate per game was a better deal than the higher royalties paid to [[Nintendo]] and [[Sega]] when making games for their consoles. The 3DO hardware itself was designed by [[Dave Needle]] and [[RJ Mical]] (designers of the [[Atari Lynx]]), starting from an outline on a restaurant napkin in 1989.<ref name=Retro122/> Trip Hawkins was a long-time acquaintance of Needle and Mical and found that their design very closely fit his philosophy for architecture and approach, so he decided: "Rather than me start a brand-new team and starting from scratch, it just made a lot of sense to ... join forces with them and shape what they were doing into what I wanted it to be."<ref name=Retro122/> The company demonstrated a prototype unit at the Winter [[Consumer Electronics Show]] in January 1993, where attendees marveled at the console's graphical capabilities;<ref>{{cite news |last1=Bryant |first1=Adam |title=Alphabet Soup, With a Dash of Hype |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1993/01/08/business/alphabet-soup-with-a-dash-of-hype.html |access-date=March 1, 2025 |work=[[The New York Times]] |date=January 8, 1993 |page=D1}}</ref> industry analysts considered them unprecedented compared to those of contemporary consoles and personal computers.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Weber |first1=Jonathan |title=Is 3-D the Next Step in Home Entertainment? |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-los-angeles-times-is-3-d-the-next-st/166946634/ |access-date=March 1, 2025 |work=[[Los Angeles Times]] |date=January 8, 1993 |page=D2 |via=[[Newspapers.com]]}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |last1=Lewis |first1=Peter H. |title=Brave New 32-Bit World |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1993/02/09/science/personal-computers-brave-new-32-bit-world.html |access-date=March 1, 2025 |work=The New York Times |date=February 9, 1993 |page=C7}}</ref>