Panasonic FZ-10 – 3DO

Trip Hawkins, the former CEO of Electronic Arts, was the pioneer behind the 3DO. His goal was to use the CD-ROM drive to establish a universal platform for games and multimedia content. His team also included Dave Needle and R.J. Mical, former developers of the Commodore Amiga and Atari Lynx. The system was powered by a 32-bit RISC-based CPU from ARM, whose performance was impressive—technical tricks could be used to process up to 64 million pixels per second. In addition to games, the device could also play audio and photo CDs. Unfortunately, it was three times as expensive as a Nintendo, which, combined with unclear market positioning and a lack of compelling software, became a problem. Initially, only older games and Amiga titles were ported, without fully exploiting the console’s technical capabilities. The later, less expensive Panasonic FZ-10, which featured a scaled-down chipset, was unable to win over the market, and so production of the 3DO was discontinued in 1995.