[martrox]

http://www.spong.com/

And you thought S.T.A.L.K.E.R.'s attitude sucked? If this is true, you very well may see the beginning of the end of PC gaming.....

[swaaye]

I'd say it'd more likely be the end of Valve. A move to Nvidia exclusivity would be incredibly arrogant and stupid.

From my point of view, Valve = 3DRealms in the area of credibility anyway.

[2B-Maverick]

hmmm... first april is over....

IF somthing like this ever happens, a boycott should be initialized against the parties involved.

[Dave Baumann]

This is kind of what I've been warning of for a long time.

[sonix666]

I think that someone mixed up facts. Valve has stated that their new engine for Half Life 2 will be using Cg for it's pixel and vertex shaders. However, Cg compiles to pixel shaders 1.1 and 1.3 so other DirectX 8.1 cards can work correctly with it.

[Fuz]

WTF???

From the article:

This massive story comes from insiders at nVidia, who are boasting that this will be the first of many such deals for exclusive content, bespoke to its cards

It gets better:

You will see a massive change in the structure of the PC games industry in the next few months -snip- Instead of being referred to as PC gaming, you will become an nVidia or ATI gamer, as distinct as Sony and Nintendo

I dont' want to believe it. Thats all I can say about this.

Edit: Now that I think about, there is no way the PC gaming industry is headed down that path. For that to happen, one very large player would be left sitting on the bench, and we know MS doesn't play on the bench. Why else would MS spend resources developing DX?

[Tahir2]

All I can say is 'bollox' !

[Joe DeFuria]

[quote="Fuz"]

This massive story comes from insiders at nVidia, who are boasting that this will be the first of many such deals for exclusive content, bespoke to its cards

Keep in mind that "exclusive content" doesn't equate to, and almost certainly doesn't mean "exclusive title." Likely, it's some rather immaterial setting or something that marketing will just blow wholly out of proportion....

[Dave Baumann]

Edit: Now that I think about, there is no way the PC gaming industry is headed down that path. For that to happen, one very large player would be left sitting on the bench, and we know MS doesn't play on the bench. Why else would MS spend resources developing DX?

They don't control OpenGL.

Hopefully there will be a significant user backlash to encourage developers not to go down this route.

[london-boy]

excuse my ignorance, but wasn't DirectX invented (among other things) to make different hardware to a certain extent compatible with each other?

i mean, if they want to go down that road they might as well shift development to consoles.... PC gaming is a different thing...

[Psikotiko]

WOW!!!!

I hope it doesn't happen. Even if i had a nvidia card i would not buy the game. It's just stupid....

Edit: We have to wait and see. "Remember where you read this first, and expect confirmation at this May’s E3. " :?

[Reverend]

It is incomprehensible to me -- if this is indeed true (i.e. "can't play this game unless you have a NVIDIA card"), then I know two things :

1) Valve can make great games
2) Valve suck in business

Of course, there's a caveat to #2... maybe they know HL2 will suck and they took their chances with the money NVIDIA is paying them :?

[Reverend]

BTW, I'm moving this to the 3D Graphics Companies forum.

[Natoma]

Just in case the article gets bumped off the front page, due to the natural progression of the news.

Direct link

[StellaArtois]

Originally Posted by Tahir

All I can say is 'bollox' !

If true, I agree. Utter bollox!!

ATI here I come... :P

[BoardBonobo]

I always thought that this was an inevitable outcome with PC games. The very fact that you have an API that sets the standards for the community means that every one is equal, allegedly.

It also means that if the API dictates what features are available to a developer then it matters not what gfx card they aim at. All they have to do is aim for the API. It also means that you don't need more than one gfx card or manufacturer on the market, after all they don't dictate what is good and what is not. Nvidias FP16 support is a prime example of that.

[Kristof]

Think economics here, can NVIDIA pay Valve the equivalent of ALL the "non-NVIDIA Boards using"-end-users ? If not then they are shooting themselves in the foot.

The only thing that might show up is some kind of exclusive demo... limiting content to one PC Graphics Hardware vendor is IMHO poor economics given that there are at least 2 giants which will propbably share roughly 50/50 of the market. Do you want half of the potential gaming market to be unable to play your game, do you want to rule out 50% of your target audience ?

IMHO NVIDIA would have to pay a hell of a lot of money to secure this, and even then the question of unlocking comes up, what stops ATI from providing a tick box : immitate NVIDIA driver strings. Or some third party from hacking the lock ?

[jb]

Yea even thought I enjoyed the 3dfx demo of UT before my friends I still thought that was a bad move (specific demos based on hardware). I hope this is just a mis-understanding. I can see where some features may or may not be there as we already have that...but not working on any other card?

[DeanoC]

I hope this is not true......

From a commerical point of view, it might make sense. The reduction of compat testing + the millions that NVIDIA would have to pay may be worth it but as a consumer it sucks.

As somebody else mentioned all it would do is make driver development harder, spending time 'emulating' video cards rather than making faster, more stable and more features in there drivers.

As a dev I'd consider it 'unethical' and quit if forced to restrict a game to one particular hardware.

We would be back to the good ol' days of custom API's (anybody for Redline games?) I wonder if NVIDIA would then sue people for writng wrappers (like 3DFX starting doing with GLIDE wrappers)

[whql]

Originally Posted by DeanoC

We would be back to the good ol' days of custom API's (anybody for Redline games?) I wonder if NVIDIA would then sue people for writng wrappers (like 3DFX starting doing with GLIDE wrappers)

Well, they didn't hire that general counsil from Intel last year to sit on his fanny all day!

[Tahir2]

fanny

I aint heard that word in a long time.... if he was a bloke what the hell was he doing, fannying around?

Edit.. stupid comma's.

[sabeehali]

I think we will see a rehash of the whole NWN debacle.

[Pete]

This sounds ridiculous. If people want easy development, aim for consoles. Perhaps Valve thinks they can make up what they lose in ATi PC customers with nVidia Xbox customers. I still think it's a stupid move, but not altogether surprising, given the problems ATi cards have had in the past with HL.

[duncan36]

It won't be purely an Nvidia game it doesnt make economic sense, if its an out of this world blockbuster and would sell say 2 million copies, being a Nvidia only game you can immediately cut out 1 million of those sales minimum.
So right off the bat you're losing $40 million in sales, not to mention the millions you'd lose in angry returns from the guy with the SiS Xabre card who didnt see the massive Nvidia only sticker on the box.
So you're looking at a loss of $40+ mil minimum in sales, cash that Nvidia would have to fork over to Valve, plus a huge hit to Valves standing and PR.
With Nvidia barely meeting EPS estimates theres no way they could drop $40 million on this venture.

[LeStoffer]

Rubish news!

Just think about it: Do you really think that most of the time making a game is about having to optimize for more than one card vendor?

Think about the massive amount of time that goes into making the engine itself (or adapting custom code to a given engine), all the content, art, animation, sound/music, AI, netcode, quality assurance and what gives.

Wake up guys! If a game developer takes the offer of going one-vendor it's because they have been payed through the nose for it - and how many of the truely creative people in this business would like to give up their freedom for a boring, steady income? Is this what fuels awesome and innovative thinking?

No, if there is anything to this newsbite it's only that Half-Life2 will be showcased with an nVidia optimized engine. The launched game is another story.

Only crap games that would otherwise die horrible in the free market could be in question here (as playable tech demos).