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Unfortunately for Hawkins and his partners, he is not the only one with his eye on the information-highway prize. Atari has announced a $200 game system called Jaguar that could steal some of 3DO's sparkle this fall. Both Sega and Nintendo are rumored to have 3DO-class machines in development. And last month Nintendo announced plans to leapfrog ahead with a game machine built around a % 64-bit chip, which has twice the power of 3DO's.
Sega, meanwhile, has made a couple of deals that could prove prescient. In one, Time Warner and Tele-Communications Inc. have agreed to create a special Sega channel on their cable-TV systems that would give subscribers access to 50 games each month. In another important pact, Sega has allied itself with AT&T to create a special cartridge called the Edge 16 that would enable Sega Genesis owners to compete with similarly equipped players anywhere in the world over ordinary telephone lines.
John and Shelly Bain already have a pretty good idea of what that's like. Almost every night after dinner, instead of clicking on their TV set and waiting to be entertained, they sit down at their computers and entertain themselves. Dialing a local access number from their San Francisco living room, they enter the virtual amusement park of the ImagiNation Network, a combination Las Vegas, Nintendo and Sunday-afternoon social club, where they can compete against fellow computer users in everything from bridge and blackjack to medieval role-playing fantasies.
The Bains are video-game addicts by almost any definition of the word. Shelly, 40, pays $129.95 a month to spend unlimited time on the network, while John, 43, a police officer, pays $79.95 for a 90-hour-a-month package. The two of them spend hour after hour perched in front of their computer screens playing games and exchanging E-mail messages with old friends, newfound acquaintances and even, sometimes, each other.
The Bains may not know it, but their nocturnal habits are of intense interest to the entertainment industry. What Hollywood needs to know is whether the Bains are a curious exception or the wave of the future. If videogaming is going to be one of the popular attractions in the mix of entertainment offerings on tomorrow's interactive TV systems -- and many are gambling that it will -- the people who create and market those games will have to know what makes people like the Bains tick. What do they want to play? Why? And, most important, how much are they willing to pay?
Until now the core audience for video games has been boys ages 8 to 14. It is with this group that the power of interactivity can be seen in its purest form. Unlike young girls, who seem to be able to take video games or leave them, boys tend to be drawn into the games at a deep, primal level. Many simply can't tear themselves away, to the detriment of their schoolwork, their eating habits and their health.