Major Game Companies Bid For 3DO Assets

Thanks to an anonymous reader for pointing to a Reuters/Yahoo report revealing that seven video game companies have qualified to bid in the auction for the assets of bankrupt publisher 3DO Co. The assets of the recently defunct developer/publisher are being displayed at the 3DOinfo.com website, and the article indicates that "In a notice filed with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in San Francisco, 3DO's attorneys said Microsoft, Eidos, Ubi Soft, JoWooD Productions Software AG, Namco Hometek Inc., Turbine Entertainment Software Corp. and Crave Entertainment filed by Wednesday's deadline to bid in the Aug. 14 auction." Their specific targets weren't revealed, but it's easy to speculate that companies such as Turbine might be interested in the Heroes Of Might And Magic license - other assets up for sale include High Heat Baseball and Army Men.

It's kind of sad...

[double-oh three]

It's kind of sad that one of the only companies where the CEO used his own private capital to try and keep it afloat went belly-up.

Re:It's kind of sad...

[mahdi13]

Bryon Fargo used his pocket money to keep Interplay going...then Targus bought them and fired Bryon
Talk about sad =(

HotGen also

[pommiekiwifruit]

HotGen Studios closed their doors recently and the boss of that lost a lot of personal money. Not that the former employees were happy about the closure either.

And that probably applies to most of the other smaller companies that have shut recently.

Re:It's kind of sad...

[Colonel Blimp]

More than sad, I still own stock from long ago in this trainwreck. At least I can write some of it off hopefully....

Good!

[kmak]

I hate it when these big companies buys a small company with a good franchise, like Heroes of Might and Magic, and just keep pumping out crap sequels...

All they kept on doing was improving the graphics, and the gameplay was more or less the same - no new innovations whatsoever.

They also did the same to High Heat Baseball.. the 2002 version was like rated the best baseball game.. and then they just got lazy, and now that honor goes to MVP Baseball of EA Sports...

I just don't like how they handled all thes

Re:Good!

[kmak]

That's probably true, but I was referring to PC version, which there isn't a World Series Baseball..

Re:Good!

[kmak]

I apologize, but hey, if you were going to troll me on what's a better game, you'll always find something when you try really hard anyhow.. I'm an idiot, and just trying to make a point..

(You don't happen to work for 3DO, do you?)

fighting over 3DO

[chill182]

Company 1: I want the crappy Army Men franchise!
Company 2: No I want it! You can't have it.
C1: But with 3DO's sucky lineup of games I could release twice as much video game vomit a year!
C2: If I don't get 3DO I'll have go back to punching kids in the gut and stealing their lunch money. Granted, it's not as morally apprehensible as releasing Army Men games but it's also not nearly as lucrative.

My two cents

[NetDanzr]

I'm personally torn between Microsoft and JoWooD. The former is slowly getting known for very stable releases; unlike with other big publishers, it seems like you need much fewer patches with Microsoft gaming products. The problem here is the lack of interraction with the fan community. JoWooD is not as technically proficient, but their fan interraction is second to none in this group. And considering what they did with Arx Fatalis (even though they were only the publishers), I can see some future for Might

Re:My two cents

[PainKilleR-CE]

I'm not really sure what Namco does in this group at all, and I'm pretty much indifferent to them. Don't remember ever playing one of their games

Most recently they've been doing fighting games, Tekken and Soul Calibur are Namco franchises. Namco goes pretty far back, though, buying Atari (Japan) from Atari US back in the 70's and releasing arcade games such as Galaga, Galaxian, Pac-Man, Pole Position, and Xevious (Namco didn't sell coin-op arcade machines directly in the US until the 90's, so most of thes

Re:My two cents

[NetDanzr]

Many thanks for the information; the site you mentioned proved to be very helpful. I never thought a non-PC gaming publisher would be interested in the 3DO franchises, which is why I assumed Namco was some obscure PC publisher. I'm ashamed to show my complete lack of console-based knowledge once again :(.

Re:My two cents

[Radius9]

Namco was also the original developer of games like PacMan, even though Midway distributed it in the US. As for acquiring Atari's arcade division in the 90's, I do believe that is wrong. WMS Industries (Williams/Midway) acquired it, hence games like San Francisco Rush being released under the Atari name when in the arcades. Someone else owned the Atari name for home releases (not Namco), and everything that was Atari in the arcades was rebranded as a Midway game when released for the home. The Atari tha

Re:My two cents

[PainKilleR-CE]

From the site I referenced in my previous post:

1974 Entered coin-operated videogame market through acquisition of Atari (Japan) Corp. from Atari Corp. of the U.S.

1990
Namco America Inc. began direct sales of coin-operated games in the U.S. and acquired Atari Operations Inc. to commence amusement arcade operations in the U.S. Established Namco Hometek Inc. as a U.S. distribution base for home videogame software.

They didn't buy the name afaik, but they definitely bought assets that were needed to become

Re:My two cents

[Docktor]

What's your major gripe with Ubi Soft? They had one of the best titles of last year in Splinter Cell. They are responsible for the strong Rainbow Six and Rayman franchises. This year at E3, they had some great new titles in XIII, Prince of Persia, and Beyond Good & Evil. That's a much stronger lineup than the third-tier products of JoWooD.

Re:My two cents

[NetDanzr]

My main problem is their total disregard for their fans. They are the first to drop support of their older titles. For games that they still officially support, getting technical help is even harder than when dealing with Westwood. They are also responsible for one of the worst games of all time (from a technical perspective) - Pool of Radiance. Worst of all, however, they sell game boxes that contain CDs in paper sleeves and manuals in electronic format for full price. For example, they handled the di

Re:My two cents

[Chris Mattern]

Let's not forget Chessmaster or Conquest (A very underrated RTS, in my opinion).

Chris Mattern

Army Men

[Kris_J]

Just let the Army Men property die, for crying out loud.