To: John Solder who wrote (3516 ) 7/23/1999 3:00:00 AM From: Schiz Respond to
Ok, maybe I didn't really get the point of your first post. My disagreement would be about the company being poorly run. Sony pretty much did what 3do was trying to do. Why was Sony able to do it and 3do wasn't? Because Sony had the money and resources and marketing savvy that 3do did not. Trip has done a great job in turning the company from a hardware company with a product that has no market into an up and coming interactive software developer. I traded 3do a few times when they were going through the transition (mid to late '97). I thought at the time they might have some potential but gave up on them after Uprising pretty much flopped. I went to an old link with 3do on it and noticed it came back a little. I looked into it and it looked like they had more games in the pipeline. Games that had potential (MMVI, Army Men, Battle Tanx). MMVI has done well traditionally, I thought the whole concept of army men was great and Battle Tanx seemed to be a game that would appeal to the average Nintendo user. I got in at 2 5/8 in early '98, and have been buying more ever since. 3do is currently my largest stock holding. If you look at the games they released last year and the revenue they generated, look at the games set to be released this year, decide whether you think this years games will do better or worse than last year and do the math I think you will agree that 100MM is very likely this fy. Did that last sentence make any sense? Battle Tanx 2 will likely do better than 1. Most of the games set to be released this year are additions to existing franchises. Gulf war... is the only new one that comes to mind. It's supposed to be released in August (I think). Last year, Uprising was a flop and I'm pretty sure that Toca didn't sell much either. Point being that all the games don't have to be hits in order for them to make the 100mm. If I remember correctly the pc games brought in 2.5 or 3mm in revenue (per game average based on fy revenue divided by titles released) and console games brought in around 6mm per title in revenue. I don't know the balance offhand but 12 console titles and 8 pc titles with similar average revenue generation would bring the revenue for fy00 up to around 100mm. Now if they can get one or two real hits they could really fly. Don't forget they are setting up operations in europe too. I'm not sure which games will be out before Christmas, the list I saw just listed first or second half of fy00 but last year they didn't have jack out for the holiday season. It's also likely that Battle Tanx and Army Men 3d will see some additional sales this Christmas season. Last list I saw still listed AM3d in the top ten ps games (I think that was May though- but still 3 months after it's release) As far as the attitude of the street, the industry is growing around 40% a year, I know that's peanuts compared to the internet but the internet growth is going to start to level off in the very near future.
