Halflife 2 to be nVidia only????

[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]

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 Geezer]

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]

All I can say is 'bollox' !

If true, I agree. Utter bollox!!

ATI here I come...

 

[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]

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!