William M. 'Trip' Hawkins III is a Silicon Valley 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 is now the world's largest video game publisher.

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. Unfortunately, it was also the most expensive, costing a hefty US$700, compared to the low $100's of other systems. Sales were poor and the system's hopes were totally smashed in 1994 with the arrival of the Sony PlayStation, which beat the 3DO in power and price. In 1996 3DO stopped developing the system and transitioned into a video game developer, making games for the PlayStation, PC and other consoles. This was not the end of misfortune for the company, however. Due to poor sales of its titles, it went bankrupt in May 2003. Hawkins had used cash reserves to bail out the flailing company before, but declined to do so a final time. 3DO is now out of business. The defunct company sold most of its IPs to the publisher Ubisoft.

In late 2003, Hawkins announced his intentions to launch a new video game development company called Digital Chocolate. The company will focus on developing games for handheld devices.

In 2005, Hawkins became the eighth person to be inducted into the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences' Hall of Fame. The first to receive that honor was Shigeru Miyamoto from Nintendo.

Trip designed his own major at Harvard University in Strategy and Applied Game Theory, and then went on to receive an MBA from Stanford University.

Further reading

• High Score , a retrospective book by DeMaria and Wilson.

External link

• Trip Hawkins's contribution to the Hospice Mask Project