Halflife 2 to be nVidia only????

An, Origin game... what do you expect? There was a reason people used to call their engines future proofed

 

Looks like a couple really important points got overlooked.

1.) That 70% Nvidia number for HL is based on a bunch, I mean a bunch of dx7 classed hardware.

2) Half-Life was not about multiplayer when it came out. It was, at that time the greatest Single player game ever released. Everything gets compared to HL's single player experience these days.

3) At the Time of Its Release HL required TOP-OF-THE-LINE Hardware for solid game play at good resolutions with nice graphics.

You cant count all the players that started playing CS over the last 3 years on their dx7 cards they still have from back in the day.. as candidates for HL2. Its just not reality. HL2 is going to be about the single player experience.. which means at least 50% of it is graphics and atmosphere. Thus at LEAST 70% of that 70% can get chucked right out the window. HL2 is NOT going to be aimed at counter strike players people..

Its going to be a solid DX8 Title that Requires solid Systems and solid DX8 classed hardware to run, even at lower resolutions. Or do you really seriously think that they are going to release a game in 2003, that is a sequel to the greatest FPS experience of all time.. with graphics that cant even compare to say... NOLF2...

Dream on...

 

But haven't exclusive content deals been part and parcel of nearly every graphics card release? I remember that PVR had a similar deal with the Apocalypse line, and those games only worked on PVR hardware never mind just running with slightly different imagery on another card.

And some of the game titles were pretty popular at the time e.g.



Admittedly this was a terrible game




I don't see what the problem is with exclusive content, the only problem I would have is if it only ran on one product. But then again most people only play one or two games on their PC to any great depth and if you really just wanted to play those games, and you needed a specific card to do it, then wouldn't you just buy it? It's like buying a PS2 instead of an XBox because you can't get the games you like on the XBox.

I realise the PC industry is supposed to be more open, but is the gaming market really that different?

*edit*
for piccies

 

Bonobo, the latter two bring back some memories for me.

 

But those games were available in the shops with patches available for other graphics cards, I believe? So even though the versions of the games on the disks included with the card were PVR specific, the games in the shops could be played on other chips - though not that many in those days!

Ultimately, I see nothing wrong with a vendor-specific version of a game being released as long as a generic version is also available which can be used on cards from other vendors.

 

Well that's kind of the crux of the matter. These games included exclusive content for the PVR cards. There were different versions available for other cards.

Admitedly there was no real unifying API for developers to follow (discounting OGL - which had no direct support under 95 and VGA\SVGA\XGA register compatibility) so it didn't make much difference. They would have to produce more than one flavour anyway to support the cards that were available.

Now it is easy for devs to produce slightly different content for games, and exclusive content for one IHV doesn't mean that another IHV can't get their own exclusive content. I see no problem.

And those piccies were freshly scanned before posting, dug out of the box of retired games and cards. Anybody want 200 486 CPUs?

 

Oh goddam... now I gotta see if I can get Tomb Raider to work on a R9700Pro/WinXP... I can't get images and music of the game out of my head now, dammit... anyone knows any links to get Tomb Raider to work on my R9700Pro/WinXP?

 

You got her name wrong too just like the guys at Image did who made the Lara Croft comic.. oh man what a tragedy that was !!!

 

What if the Nvidia exclusive content amounts to is the insipid logo -- Nvidia: The Way It's Meant To Be Played ? Afterall, why display that to a user not running on an Nvidia card afterall? Actually, I'm surprised Nvidia hasn't built that into their drivers ala 3dfx logo.

One can only hope...

 

I didn't mean playing, more of memories of porting them... well, with a bit of "testing" of course. I scored a couple of trips out to California for Mechwarrior - although it was like being in a ghost town, working in Activision's offices on July 4...

As for getting TR to run on WinXP it might be tricky as the sound system/movies were DOS. We had to specifically produce a DOS version of the PVR drivers for it which was nearly half the work of the port.

 

Is that supposed to be a bad thing?

It's the percentage that's important, though. Who cares if there are more actual people with Nvidia boards, there are also more people in absolute numbers that don't. You're still giving up a huge chunk of your audience.

Sorry, but you need to check into the Reality Hotel, and see what the gaming demographic is (especially for non-SIMs BS titles). How many of those teens and college students have unlimited budgets? They're the ones bringing in the bread and butter for FPS games, at the very least.

 

Well team fortress wouldnt have come into existence either, just fill in your favourite mod for your favourite game.

 

I was responding solely to Dave's (rather) one-liner -- I said what I said based on a certain type of community here at B3D.... and I think it would be fair to assume that some would upgrade their video card if DOOM3 (when it's released) runs crappy on their existing video card... whether or not DOOM3 is a great game or not won't matter... some folks want a "better" video for a certain game that has become a de facto video card benchmark because they can, um, "boast", even if they don't like that game.

 

It's not the fact that nV will bundle some EA games with their boards which scares us, we DON'T CARE ABOUT THAT, what scares me is the following statement :

"Electronic Arts has a tremendous track record for developing games that can be enjoyed by consumers of all ages and both the hardcore and casual gamer alike. By exclusively adopting NVIDIA hardware for their worldwide studios, EA is escalating the creative palette of its 3D artists and programmers," said Dan Vivoli, executive vice president of marketing at NVIDIA. "Our FX family of GPUs were designed to usher in an era of cinematic computing, and we couldn’t be more thrilled that EA has signed on to help us meet our goal."

 

I think that most studios already use NV hardware for their work stations. So nothing new really. It doesn't say that the games themselves will be NV hardware only.

Does this affect games on other platforms ?

Sure it does. There will always be more bugs in a game running on a different platform than what it was developed on (Never Winter Nights spring to mind)

Cheers
Gubbi

 

Demalion-

I wasn't making a point about exclusitivity, as I stated, it was in reference to DX9 availability.

In terms of optimizations to avoid multi pass I can see, adding the shader routines that exploit DX9 will take time and won't be seen by the majority of end users. Publishers aren't too fond of paying out for things that won't be seen by the end user

Money. It is done. No need to do additional work. No increased funding required. No additional time spent at all.

nVidia does not make end consumer products. Their statements relate to shipments to OEMs as they always have. How long it will take all of those to move through the channel is another matter. Given that the statement was made as they were in the process of ramping up production odds are they had orders for the majority(if not all) of the 1.5Million chips they quoted.

How are you putting those two together? Look at the numerous titles that only ran in 3D accelerated mode using Glide, whether it was a V1, V2, V3, V4 or V5. If you were to limit functionality to only DX9 level boards then you would run in to problems in terms of potential customer base. The exclusitivity factor is simply one in general for any particular IHV.

How about current real numbers then?

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/apr2003/tc2003044_3712_tc024.htm

That is from one week ago.

I've been in to numerous B&Ms, seen lots of R300 boards on the shelves- just have only seen one R9500Pro despite being available for ~six months longer then the FX.

Those same users who are likely overjoyed with the Cat3.2s, right?

ATi craps on these same users we are talking about by breaking their titles of choice. How much good will should a company display when another company releases a driver that breaks all of their games? Sure, they are all HL based titles, but that still is the entirety of Valve's library(which in terms of average titles sold is likely second behind only Blizzard in the PC market).

Factor potential sales against the amount of money that is being offered in exchange for the deal. If they figure that HL2 has a potential of say four millions units, take 19% off of that(we'll round) and say it's 800K. The retail price of the game is $50, $38 at the wholesale level and the publisher takes a ~$15 cut. That leaves you with $23 per so $18.4Million if they are factoring for hitting four million. Blockbuster status is reached at 1Million, which would only be $4.4Million. You look at your projected sales and then factor in the potential impact it is going to have on your customer base then figure out how much cash you want to see. If they are planning on 1Million units sold, then $5Million in cash could be enough to convince them to make such a deal. You look in MS's direction and they agree to throw in a clause that reduces the price of their chips from nV by $1 each to give them exclusive rights to HL2 and nV lands the deal without any cash out of pocket up front(MS may even be willing to take $.50, selling another 20Million XBoxs is within reason). I want to make it clear again that I am not saying this will happen or is even likely, simply why it could be plausible for MS/Valve/nVidia.

One year is nothing in the gfx market when looking at gaming. Two and a half to three years out is more reasonable, that was GF1/GF2/V5/Radeon era. ATi's markeshare has risen to 19%, nV has over 50% more of the market after ATi's increase.

Most of the rest of your post deals with why the parties would want to take part in the deal which I've already expanded on. I also didn't take into account those gamers who would be swayed to upgrade to nV instead of ATi for their next round or those very die hard who would toss out their boards that couldn't run the game.

 

I'm not sure if we mean the same thing, but drivers allow displaying a NV logo in D3D.

http://users.otenet.gr/~ailuros/Logo.JPG

 

I haven't read the rest of the thread beyond this but...

http://nvidia.com/view.asp?IO=IO_20030409_7420