It was followed by the MPC60 MkII and the MPC3000, and the MPC2000, which Linn did not work on. The first model, the MPC60 (MIDI Production Center), was released in December 08,1988 and retailed for $5,000. Akai did the production engineering, making it 'more manufacturable'. He designed the functions, including the panel layout and hardware specification, and created the software with his team he credited the circuitry to a team led by English engineer David Cockerell. He disliked reading instruction manuals and wanted to create an intuitive interface that simplified music production. Linn described the MPC as an attempt to 'properly re-engineer' the Linn 9000. According to Linn, his collaboration with Akai 'was a good fit because Akai needed a creative designer with ideas and I didn't want to do sales, marketing, finance or manufacturing, all of which Akai was very good at'. His company Linn Electronics had closed following the failure of the Linn 9000, a drum machine and sampler.
Linn had designed the successful LM-1 and LinnDrum, two of the earliest drum machines to use samples (prerecorded sounds).
The original MPC, the MPC-60, was a collaboration between the Japanese company Akai and the American engineer Roger Linn. The MPC was designed by Roger Linn (pictured in 2010), who also created the LinnDrum
