Trip Hawkins

Trip Hawkins

William M. 'Trip' Hawkins III (born December 28, 1953) is a Silicon Valley American entrepreneur and founder of Electronic Arts, The 3DO Company and Digital Chocolate.

Hawkins was the Director of Strategy and Marketing at Apple Computer in 1982 when he left to found Electronic Arts (EA), a video game publisher. Electronic Arts had a successful run for many years under Hawkins' leadership. It was once the world's largest video game publisher and continues to hold the top spot among third-party publishers as of the present day.

Though he remained chair of the board, Hawkins transitioned from EA in 1991 to form 3DO, a video game console company. 3DO was formed in partnership with several other companies including EA. Upon its release in 1993, the 3DO was the most powerful video game console at the time. It was also the most expensive, costing US$700, compared to other major systems retailing for under $200. Sales were poor due to its exorbitant price and weak games that relied excessively on full motion video sequences (which were state-of-the-art for the time) at the expense of gameplay. Hopes for the system were further damaged in 1994 with the arrival of the Sony PlayStation, which beat the 3DO in price.

In 1996 3DO stopped developing the system and transitioned into a video game developer, making games for the PlayStation, PC and other consoles. However, due to poor sales of its titles, it went bankrupt in May 2003. Hawkins decided to make branding a focus and 6–9-month production timetables for games. Quality suffered as did sales. Hawkins had used cash reserves to bail out the failing company before, but declined to do so a final time. 3DO is now out of business. The defunct company sold most of its intellectual property to the publisher Ubisoft.

In late 2003, Hawkins launched a new video game development company called Digital Chocolate. The company focuses on developing games for handheld devices. He stepped down from the CEO position at Digital Chocolate in May, 2012.

In 2005, Hawkins became the eighth person to be inducted into the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences' Hall of Fame.

Hawkins designed his own major at Harvard University in Strategy and Applied Game Theory.