M2 codenamed 'Bulldog' was in development in 1993, the first specs and existance of Bulldog were revealed in 1994. The M2 accelerator and standalone console was announced in 1995, for a Christmas release. M2 was delayed and pushed to 1996. During 1996 M2 was upgraded from 4-6 MB of RAM to 8 MB, given a 2nd PowerPC 602 CPU so that its polygon performance was boosted. The accelerator/upgrade was dropped and now it would be a new standalone console. Games including IMSA Racing were developed in 1995-1996 and into 1997. By mid 1997 the console release was canceled.

The 3DO Mark II / Bulldog / M2 upgrade was originally supposed to cost $100 and the standalone console $270 to $400. Keep in mind this was at a time when the original 3DO was selling for $699 or $799, as of 1994-1995.
By 1996-1997 the console was expected to be $300 to $400, not totally outrageous for a system with twice the graphics performance of N64,
two 66 MHz PowerPC CPUs, a 4x CD-ROM drive, 8 MB RAM.