On a different topic -- and one I haven't seen posted in this newsgroup yet -- a working demo of the Macromedia Director Player for 3DO was shown at Digital World this month.
The significance of this is that it's the first time (to my knowledge) that an accessible authoring system will be available for producing titles on consumer devices. It will complement production teams of low-level coders, and will enable many, many more titles of many more genres.
(Macromedia Director has been the premier multimedia authoring tool on the Mac for many years. It recently doubled its capability in the new 4.0 version, and will be released for Windows this summer, where it's also expected to become the standard in multimedia authoring.)
Director doesn't do arcade-style games, but rather excels at general-purpose multimedia titles. Iron Helix, the Journeyman Project, Spaceship Warlock, Grandma & Me, Who Killed Sam Rupert, and many titles from Sumeria, Microsoft, ImageSmith, Visionary Media and more used older versions of Director to create CDs for Mac and Windows. Titles produced with the newer, faster version should start appearing this autumn.
The Director Player for 3DO is expected at about the end of this year. It means that the pool of title developers for 3DO will explode, as developers can take their Mac or Windows work and bring it over to the 3DO Player quickly and easily. (Note that teams of C folks will still have an edge in arcade-style games and games that play to the unique strengths of the 3DO Player -- there will now be multiple entrances to title development for 3DO, that's all.)
I work with Macromedia, but not on the Director Player for 3DO itself, and so don't have full details. But I'm pretty jazzed by this... the combination of the cool machine, the savvy developer base, and the shortened development cycle, will all make this a very significant event. If the topic's of interest to other folks in this newsgroup, would be happy to continue public discussion.