Halflife 2 to be nVidia only????

[Hellbinder]

but I would not think a publisher like EA will allow ANY of the developers under their umbrella to do what Valve is rumored to be doing (as in this thread).

Thats pretty laughable that you stated this considering that EA and Nvidia just signed an *Exclusive* agreement.

 

[demalion]

Demalion-

Hmm...I'm still not understanding your point about "exclusive". I'm not saying it is "simply available", but that it is available and that indications show is having a significant impact on the user base.

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

Hmmm...if you read that again, you'll see that I addressed your point about DX 9 availability, and related it to the context of the discussion we are having about exclusivity. Again: 'I'm not saying it is "simply available", but that it is available and that indications show is having a significant impact on the user base.' Do you agree that this addresses DX 9 availability and that it addresses the statement you proposed as support for this part of the discussion?

Also, offering DX 9 shader support should not be significantly harder than offering DX 8 support...it can be a matter of enhancement, not a radical shift as utilizing shaders in the first place can be.

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

Hmm...floating point support and shader length seem to be the primary benefit of DX 9, and that seems to be trivial to implement for existing DX 8 shaders. Well, this and higher shading speed (for most DX 9 cards) that allow a greater number of effects and simpler management of effect implementation. Viewed in this way, shader versions seem all about scalability, and would seem to be pretty re-usable. What delay will there be? I'm not talking about fully utilizing DX 9 to the limit, I'm talking about showing tangible benefit from DX 9 support.
I don't see that as requiring much beyond what is already being offered by games (Silent Hill and Splinter Cell come to mind). I've thought this about DX 9 for a long while, and statements have served to confirm my impression to me as time has progressed. If you have something in mind that contradicts my impression, please mention it.
So my impression isn't left unsupported here, here is a comment (not out of context AFAICS, but if you think so say why) that I think supports my expectations.

Again, XBox->DX 8 (of DX->X Box) seems like what will actually be the case, why assume "nvidia exclusive" is facilitated? If they are using Cg, why can't they use DX 9 HLSL? Your comment doesn't answer either question AFAICS...something being ported from the XBox doesn't prevent it being implemented on non nVidia DX 8 capable cards.

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

Not doing additional work is lost sales....the PC isn't an X-Box. The additional work would have to be done to get it to work for other cards at all. Do you think using multi-texturing to implement features is easier than using DX 8 to implement the X-Box featureset, or do you think they'll just never do it? Again: "...something being ported from the XBox doesn't prevent it being implemented on non nVidia DX 8 capable cards."
BTW "(of DX->X Box)" above was meant to indicate "(or DX 8/9->X Box)", which seems a valid development path to me.

OK, let's talk about claims to shareholders...IIRC, the wording for the shipping was indicating "expectation", and did not specify a relationship between where they were shipping to and relating that to the actual installed consumer base that would result.

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.

Your statement of the figure of 1.5 million was, again, in answer to my comment about DX 9 marketshare. It went: "ATi had a press release that they managed to ship 1Million DX9 parts in five months. nV is planning on besting that in their first month of volume shipment."

"Odds are" doesn't seem a good response to already shipped units and the marketshare figures I've discussed, nor to lend strong support to your usage of the figure as a rebuttal to my maintaining that the 9500 and higher family are a significant growing portion of the shader supporting marketplace, and represent an indication of differing marketshare represenation moving forward.

I thought we were discussing DX 9 cards? That seems to be what is pertinent to this talk about exclusivity.

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.

That's what I mean by going back in history (even before DX 7 now) and presuming equivalent applicability today. That's beeing going on throughout the discussion (had a big paragraph about that before).

We are not in a time when there is one maker of fast 3d accelerators. Not having 3D acceleration for non nVidia cards hardly seems pertinent at all to our discussion (except in a horrible worst case scenario). So what does? Well, it seems to be shaders. Hence, why I'm discussing shaders and not the Voodoo cards.

From that, we have you proposing that DX 7 (and before) still applies, and also that DX 8 shaders are all that will be offered. I've addressed that above, and also when I said limiting to DX 8 functionality will also circumvent nVidia's intended future lineup ("DX 9 top to bottom").

What I am and have been proposing is that the vehicle for exclusivity would depend on DX 9 (or, rather, CineFX versus DX 9).

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.

Eh? I'm limiting exclusivity to DX 9, not functionality, and this is based on the current focus on DX 9 level functionality by everone (including nVidia themselves, as branded by "CineFX") and the perception I've been proposing that DX 9 support is not an onerous step from DX 8 supporting game designs.

I'm not proposing these are absolutely conclusive, but I do propose them as indication that is pertinent to the assumptions being made. If you are going to make such claims in direct contradiction to these indications, I just ask that you provide some alternate figures and interpretation with some sort of logical progression, instead of just making a statement and using it for support as if the evaluation it presents is factual.

How about current real numbers then?

ATI (ATYT ), now with an estimated 19% of the market, and Nvidia (NVDA ), with 32%, are the only major specialized makers of graphics chips to survive. (Intel (INTC ) holds a 28% share of the graphics-chips markets, and two smaller rivals own single-digit bites.)

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

That is from one week ago.

You do recall the discussion I was having where 70% nVidia marketshare was proposed?

In any case, Ben, the article is from 1 week ago, but the figures are from Q4 2002. Take a look.

A handy quote (allegedly atleast...it is the Inquirer after all ) from the John Peddie report:

John Peddie's Market Watch report said that ATI increased its graphics share in Q4 of 2002 by 18% compared to the same quarter in 2001, ahead of Intel and Nvidia.

Nvidia, however, remained the largest supplier of graphics to the PC market but with a reduced share of the market.
...

I'm still under the impression that the future is shaping up differently than the past to which you keep referring by way of example.

Heh, ok this is support, but it is a pretty limited sampling, don't you agree?

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.

Well, a few things: The 9500 Pro is an R300, so I presume you meant 9700; We've discussed the 9700 price and the marketshare figures, and I've addressed the reservations you expressed about the 9700 having bearing on marketshare outside of the $300-$400 price range (the 9700 has been less than $300 since 4th quarter 2002); Just maybe the 9500 Pro isn't on shelves because they are selling very well, or because in those places the 9700 is selling well enough...did you ask?

I'm pretty sure I saw a 9500 Pro at Circuit City at the beginning of the year, and I'm pretty sure as scarce as they are that there really has been the opportunity for there to be more than "one" 9500 Pro on shelves in the "six months" of its release. So, forgive me, I still think your report is "limited".

An analysis of the applicability of the figures I presented in regards to 9500 Pro availability is also available in my prior posts.

I've already covered short term benefits, but I also covered why it seems foolish to me for Valve, or any company focusing on large sales, to specifically target a group of customers to not support.

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

Hmm...didn't take the opportunity to correct me on "large sales" which should be "long term sales" (they are the same for Valve in my view, but shouldn't have been used in conjunction with "any company") and instead went off on a long ATI bash.

Well, I've said plenty on this already, and I think others too. If you can relate it to the discussion for me, I'll address it next time.

Ok...so it doesn't matter if you are selling, for example, 50% of what you could if that 50% is a large number? 80%? Let's run with that...if each % is a larger absolute number of sales, wouldn't that also mean that throwing away even 20% would be quite an impact? How does that make sense for Valve, then?

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.

Wouldn't it be 4.6 with your suppositions?

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.

That seems to ignore things like growing future sales and a long term franchise as Valve did with the first Half-Life. Or should they not bother? See my next comment.

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.

Ben, I really wish you wouldn't simply ignore the large body of prior text specifically devoted to addressing this line of reasoning. This was directly addressed in the post to which you reply. Why are you simply repeating something I've addressed in detail with no discussion of that address, and then using it for support in a reply to me? I addressed it the last time you proposed it as support and your choice to disregard that seems to prevent any progress (something I've also indicated in that previos post).

What is this "far more"? Is it based on market share figures from last year? If so, do you also think the release of the R300 has had no influence on the marketshare, even looking at the things I've mentioned? How about the future?

One year is nothing in the gfx market when looking at gaming.

"Nothing"? Is that another unspecified and unsupported phrase used to refute my statements? You seem to be trying to make me repeat myself on several fronts.

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.

That sounds like an abusive phrasing of figures. The indications I've seen don't seem to support any reasonable parsing of the statement. As far as I've understood, nVidia's marketshare has been decreasing since the R300 launch, and ATI's marketshare had increased from one year prior to the quoted figures. The other numbers discussed in the thread seem to all tend to support the indication of the trend I propose to my understanding. Again, could you please relate your support more convincingly?

Hmm..or is that just an odd way of saying "nVidia has more than 1.5 times ATI's marketshare as of Q4 2002"? I'll just point out that those figures are for a view of the market where Intel has a 28% share, and therefore would include 3d accelerators from nVidia that do not have much bearing on exclusivity, as I've proposed before. Doesn't seem to successfully address the other figures and discussion I've presented AFAICS.

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.

No, most of the rest of my post deals with things that seem to refute your statements that you ended up repeating above.

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.

But there are other things you aren't taking into account, even after I've taken the time to point them out.

 

[BenSkywalker]

You are going off topic here, so I'll try to put it back on track. I'm not talking about DX9 being linked to any of the events dealing with Valve. The reason I brought it up was simply availability. You can now buy a DX9 level board for under $90, they are available at the mass market price.

Marketshare and the finances concerning the possibility of this deal is what are relevant so I'll reply to those points.

I'm still under the impression that the future is shaping up differently than the past to which you keep referring by way of example.

Because you are under that impression does not make it so.

Just maybe the 9500 Pro isn't on shelves because they are selling very well, or because in those places the 9700 is selling well enough...did you ask?

It took me about a week of searching to find a place that I could get a R9500Pro from, most places told me they should have some in stock within a couple of weeks(with gaps of weeks in the supply channel that takes weeks to replenish there are supply issues). Yes, I think the R9500Pro sold very well considering its class, but simply look to the thread your provided from the Inquirer stating that add in boards outsold CPUs in Q4. With flat PC sales that should place CPU shipments in the ~30Million range for Q4 and graphics boards outsold that. The 1Million total units which took place over two quarters amounts to likely ~1.5%-2%(I haven't seen the break out for per quarter shipments on the R300 boards).

Hmm...didn't take the opportunity to correct me on "large sales" which should be "long term sales" (they are the same for Valve in my view, but shouldn't have been used in conjunction with "any company") and instead went off on a long ATI bash.

Did ATi not break Valve's games with the latest driver release? Long term user support for a IHV isn't helped when you release drivers that won't work with their games. For the really die hard Valve loyalists things like that happening can hurt ATi's chances of them purchasing their boards. ATi, by releasing a driver that removed acceptable support for Valve games hurts their reputation in the Valve community. Looking at the R300 boards in particular, without a SS AA implementation their IQ is also inferior to many earlier boards in the HL powered games. Talking about the Valve loyalists ATi is not doing what it takes to keep them in the fold. Long term, this is going to hurt ATi with the die hard Valve community. If they were making an active push to court these die hard fans the way that nV does(implementing a SS option on their DX9 level boards as an example) I could see why long term impact could be a somewhat factor.

Also in terms of long term sales goals, if they really want to build a major franchise then they could move to the consoles. The PC market is still a lot smaller then the console side of things.

Wouldn't it be 4.6 with your suppositions?

I rounded less then you, it's $4.37Million.

That seems to ignore things like growing future sales and a long term franchise as Valve did with the first Half-Life. Or should they not bother? See my next comment.

If you are saying it has the potential to hurt the franchise then yes that is a possible risk. How large that risk is vs the money it would take to offset it would be up for Valve to decide.

Ben, I really wish you wouldn't simply ignore the large body of prior text specifically devoted to addressing this line of reasoning.

Your body of text was dealt with. MS makes out as they lost less money per XBox(utilizing scales of economy a $1 difference makes a big impact), your comment on giving up their PC API support seems completely out of left field to me. Why do you suppose that they would be surrendering DX control because of a possible deal? They will still have full control over their API. As it stands Valve has been using OpenGL for their lead API all along. MS would still have full control over DX, that is a non factor.

"Nothing"? Is that another unspecified and unsupported phrase used to refute my statements? You seem to be trying to make me repeat myself on several fronts.

As it relates to the gaming market what happens in the last year, unless it is a massive shift the likes of which we haven't really seen, is not all that important. The target platform is set long prior to the year before it ships.

That sounds like an abusive phrasing of figures. The indications I've seen don't seem to support any reasonable parsing of the statement. As far as I've understood, nVidia's marketshare has been decreasing since the R300 launch

From the article you linked-

Intel managed to increase its graphics shipment by 12% while Nvidia grew its share by 13% in that quarter.

I stated ~50% while the actual number is closer to 68% greater then ATi. I was allowing for a large adjustment. Also, the article you linked to gives increase in sales compared to year ago for the particular IHVs. Given nV's baseline figure they saw a larger increase in unit sales then ATi and for that matter a nearly identical(actually, slightly larger for nV) in terms of marketshare. ATi's marketshare is increasing in proportion to what it was faster then nVidia's, nVidia's marketshare is growing faster in absolute terms.

No, most of the rest of my post deals with things that seem to refute your statements that you ended up repeating above.

Because you state something does not make it so. Your statements do comment on what I had stated previously, there is no need to explain to you the same things over and over again. You want to link this singular deal out into MS handing over DX control, debating the amount of DX9 boards on the market, and trying to inflate ATi's marketshare. I have addressed all of those issue. DX9 is irrelevant in the context of this hypothetical deal, this has nothing to do with MS surrendering control over their API and ATi's marketshare is considerably lower then nVidia's and decreasing in relation to nVidia based on the numbers we have.

 

[demalion]

You are going off topic here, so I'll try to put it back on track.

You're "on track" seems to be a sidetrack, details given before.

I'm not talking about DX9 being linked to any of the events dealing with Valve.

And I am, as I was when you replied. Did you just decide to skip over the "Again:" cues? I've addressed the commentary you've made about DX 9, both the availability you keep mentioning (I say yet again) and the relationship that I see with the discussion at hand.

The reason I brought it up was simply availability.

Yeah, and I answered you. Why do you repeat it instead of responding to my answer?

You can now buy a DX9 level board for under $90, they are available at the mass market price.

Strange, there was no mention of the price in the quote I provided of your introduction to the topic I was addressing. You give me the impression of trying to switch focus after I addressed your approach, as an alternative to recognizing that anything I said addressed anything you said. That's no way to hold a productive discussion.

Marketshare and the finances concerning the possibility of this deal is what are relevant so I'll reply to those points.

Well, actually, as I've said before I seem to recollect, I happen to maintain that things you don't reply to are relevant. I also think I've given reason why. I also repeat again that stating they aren't and replying by ignoring them doesn't get us anywhere.

I'm still under the impression that the future is shaping up differently than the past to which you keep referring by way of example.

Because you are under that impression does not make it so.

This is a bit ridiculous in the cut and snip department, Ben. It wasn't just my impression, it was my impression following a discussion, quotes, and correction of an assertion you made, that you "happened" to decide to omit in order to make this statement.

You asserted that something indicated the marketplace as of a week ago. I provided a link that showed the data in question was actually from Q4 2002, and quoted an excerpt of the report that yet again seemed to provide indication that your assertions about marketshare are not well supported. You reply by quoting only my caption and excising the quote and prior discussion that backed it up, and then making a remark to imply that I don't have anything...backing it up.

A bit...absurd.

Just maybe the 9500 Pro isn't on shelves because they are selling very well, or because in those places the 9700 is selling well enough...did you ask?

It took me about a week of searching to find a place that I could get a R9500Pro from, most places told me they should have some in stock within a couple of weeks(with gaps of weeks in the supply channel that takes weeks to replenish there are supply issues).

You are omitting discussion related to this I offer, and are applying an extrapolation of your experience universally and proposing it as a substitute. Did you ever relate your experience to your mention of six months?

But, anyways, yes there do seem to be 9500 supply problems in retail. I'm unclear how many are involved in the 9600TX deal (with Medion IIRC), but there does seem to be an indication that retail availability was sacrified for OEM contracts. Also, the discussion you repeatedly omit does not depend on the 9500 alone...in fact, it spends some time addressing your basis for viewing the 9500 in isolation in a fashion that you've chosen not to respond to.

Yes, I think the R9500Pro sold very well considering its class,

It would be nice if I had some idea if that recognized something I said, but it just looks like a deprecation without connection to me (yes, even as part of the rest of the sentence that follow, since the rest of the sentence doesn't seem associated with it)...what does "considering its class" mean in the context of our discussion?

but simply look to the thread your provided from the Inquirer stating that add in boards outsold CPUs in Q4. With flat PC sales that should place CPU shipments in the ~30Million range for Q4 and graphics boards outsold that. The 1Million total units which took place over two quarters amounts to likely ~1.5%-2%(I haven't seen the break out for per quarter shipments on the R300 boards).

Your extrapolation seems a bit uncontrolled. It did not say boards outsold CPU shipments, it said graphics shipments outsold CPU shipments. That would include integrated nforce boards, integrated ATI solutions, and integrated Intel graphics chipsets. The point they made by saying that figure exceeded CPU shipments was that they believed it indicated discrete solutions were a significant portion.

That doesn't change the figures originally discussed (nor the invalidity of the context in which you originally presented them, though it does seem to behoove you to ignore that). Tell me: what do you think of nVidia's integrated chipset sales (nforce) compared to ATI's? If you think nforce outsold ATI's integrated solutions, that would mean that the original figures are overstating the case of add in board marketshare (and ATI's situation would be more favorable). That would be my guess, but I don't claim to know, nor would I try to come up with percentages and present them as data based on my guess.

Hmm...didn't take the opportunity to correct me on "large sales" which should be "long term sales" (they are the same for Valve in my view, but shouldn't have been used in conjunction with "any company") and instead went off on a long ATI bash.

Did ATi not break Valve's games with the latest driver release? Long term user support for a IHV isn't helped when you release drivers that won't work with their games.

Hey, I got the impression the last time we discussed this that you had an amazing ability to ignore what others said too!
Well, we've had this discussion here already, I don't feel like repeating myself point by point regarding your commentary. If you write paragraphs and paragraphs ignoring the other issues with Alt-Tabbing and Esc in Half-Life has had, I guess it must be true that ATI is "breaking games", right?

For the really die hard Valve loyalists things like that happening can hurt ATi's chances of them purchasing their boards. ATi, by releasing a driver that removed acceptable support for Valve games hurts their reputation in the Valve community.

Removed acceptable support? In case anyone got confused, you can play the game with ATI drivers, but along with the other issues the game has with leaving 3d mode (not just with ATI cards), it crashes when using Cat 3.2 and completely leaving 3D mode (Esc or Alt-Tab, as I understand it), atleast for most people (I presume R300 owners, I didn't run into the problem when I did it). The coherent support here is ignoring the long standing bugs with sound that occurs in the same circumstance, discounting that this indicates that the game could have issues itself, and proposing this as support for Valve having reason for going nvidia exclusive.

Do you call this relating your anti-ATI ranting (for the reader wishing to evaluate the applicability of the label, it begins in a prior post with "ATi craps on these same users...") to the discussion at hand?

Looking at the R300 boards in particular, without a SS AA implementation their IQ is also inferior to many earlier boards in the HL powered games.

What are your framerates with supersampling on your 4200 using 8x aniso (not necessarily with trilinear, half life shouldn't need it much)? On that basis, are you going to maintain that "inferior IQ" as indisputable? Are you further maintaining that half-life (the first one, the one with alpha tests) IQ is make-or-break for people who play it and its mods?

Talking about the Valve loyalists ATi is not doing what it takes to keep them in the fold. Long term, this is going to hurt ATi with the die hard Valve community. If they were making an active push to court these die hard fans the way that nV does(implementing a SS option on their DX9 level boards as an example) I could see why long term impact could be a somewhat factor.

Some twists and turns in that, but I feel compelled to address everything fairly even if presented in a way I view as distortion. I agree ATi should offer a super sampling option for those who want it. I don't agree that not offering it makes a cut and dry case of inferior IQ for ATi (did you ever turn on AA when you had your 9500?). I agree that it is indeed cut and dry when it comes to alpha test application, but I don't agree that alpha test textures are the only factor for IQ in the half life engine.
I also don't think "not offering SS" in the context of the current half life engine and then associating that as a deficiency in regard to DX 9 (and therefore future games) goes together at all in a coherent fashion.
If you are wondering on my reason for this last, there are discussions about alpha tests and blends elsewhere in the forums.

Also in terms of long term sales goals, if they really want to build a major franchise then they could move to the consoles. The PC market is still a lot smaller then the console side of things.

I addressed this. They are an also ran on the console. On the PC they have a well established franchise strategy needing a refresh. Why go console exclusive? Heck, why am I repeating myself again when you refuse to address my commentary except in fragments away from the body of support I provide? I.e., your cut and snip earlier.

Wouldn't it be 4.6 with your suppositions?

I rounded less then you, it's $4.37Million.

Okay...you switched from my 20% to 19%.

That seems to ignore things like growing future sales and a long term franchise as Valve did with the first Half-Life. Or should they not bother? See my next comment.

If you are saying it has the potential to hurt the franchise then yes that is a possible risk. How large that risk is vs the money it would take to offset it would be up for Valve to decide.

Hmm...did you read my first post, or my request, with link, for you take a look at my prior posts?.

Ben, I really wish you wouldn't simply ignore the large body of prior text specifically devoted to addressing this line of reasoning.

Your body of text was dealt with.

That's your euphism for ignoring it? Or maybe you mean "making it disappear" in a vaguely mobster sense?

MS makes out as they lost less money per XBox(utilizing scales of economy a $1 difference makes a big impact), your comment on giving up their PC API support seems completely out of left field to me.

Is this where I'm supposed to repeat my discussion so you can ignore it again? It's still there earlier in the thread, Ben. I don't have the impression that it is reasonable to require to me repeat it because you've decided to talk around it, nor that it would do any good if I did because other repetitions have consistently been treated the same way.

I don't know, I get tired of pointing this out, do you get tired of doing it? Since it takes less typing and thought for you to ignore than me to try and hold a discourse, I'd guess not. Oh well, my typing fingers are building up endurance.

Why do you suppose that they would be surrendering DX control because of a possible deal?

If you're really curious, go back a post or two to when I said so...
One place to look would be to the text you said you didn't find it necessary to recognize. Where I talked about MS and nvidia and Xbox and stuff...you know, the stuff you just started to talk about again after saying my discussion of the same things didn't apply. Perhaps you can get some mileage out of picking sentences and responding to them in a way that makes sense to the sentence in isolation but not the rest of the text it is part of?

They will still have full control over their API.

Hmm, nVidia seems to be having issues with the DX 9 API. BTW, did you read this link the first time I provide it? If so, too bad you decided not to discuss it so we could have me spend time referring you to answers and arguments already provided.

As it stands Valve has been using OpenGL for their lead API all along. MS would still have full control over DX, that is a non factor.

Hmm...don't you think it is a bit of a non sequitor to propose "X Box exclusive" as being an incentive for MS to pay off Valve and "Valve has been using OpenGL for their lead API all along"?

"Nothing"? Is that another unspecified and unsupported phrase used to refute my statements? You seem to be trying to make me repeat myself on several fronts.

As it relates to the gaming market what happens in the last year, unless it is a massive shift the likes of which we haven't really seen, is not all that important.

You mean "that I, Ben, haven't really seen", and your vision just seems extremely selective to me. I can't seem to engage a discussion about anything I mention, it seems like it is always me repeating myself to your restatements of things I've addressed before. I really do think it is you, Ben. Could you take the time and step back and evaluate that proposition objectively for me? Hmm...I believe that 8 pages of a thread having failed to do so prior, it is wishful thinking on my part.

The target platform is set long prior to the year before it ships.

I have this strange idea I had a discussion about DX 8 and DX 9, with provided support, that is directly related to this, and more than once too. I don't see recognition or reply to it, other than your saying I was going off topic and you saying you'd be putting things on track by ignoring it.

Are you trying to get me to use emoticons?

That sounds like an abusive phrasing of figures. The indications I've seen don't seem to support any reasonable parsing of the statement. As far as I've understood, nVidia's marketshare has been decreasing since the R300 launch

From the article you linked-

Intel managed to increase its graphics shipment by 12% while Nvidia grew its share by 13% in that quarter.

I stated ~50% while the actual number is closer to 68% greater then ATi.

Like my next paragraph had said? Is it just impossible for you to quote what I said and say "yes"? Oh, wait, I discussed other stuff in that next paragraph too, maybe that's why you didn't recognize it.

Do you have some ATI-blocking shades on such that you didn't mention that ATI saw an 18% growth "ahead of nVidia and Intel", despite it being at the beginning of the article, and was quoted by myself earlier?

In order to progress, I have to repeat myself since your discussion does nothing to recognize what I brought up. That makes me think progressing the discussion is not what you are interested in.

I was allowing for a large adjustment. Also, the article you linked to gives increase in sales compared to year ago for the particular IHVs. Given nV's baseline figure they saw a larger increase in unit sales then ATi and for that matter a nearly identical(actually, slightly larger for nV) in terms of marketshare.

I'll discuss the bolded bit in conjunction with the discussion of the text I quote after this.

Discussing nforce sales versus ATI integrated sales would be disrupt your statement, wouldn't it?

ATi's marketshare is increasing in proportion to what it was faster then nVidia's, nVidia's marketshare is growing faster in absolute terms.

Market...share. Leaves me the impression of percentages. So, having a larger percentage share of...the market... than before, to me indicates...growing market share. ATI grew 18%, nvidia grew 13%...so...by what math did nVidia's market share grow faster?

That looks like a convolution to support the statement highlighted in bold above that seems, to my understanding, to be incorrect, and to do so by emphasizing unit sales and disregarding the meaning of what units are being sold.

At this point I'll quote a definition I've found of marketshare, and have the expectation someone will say I'm playing word games by responding to a usage I don't see as correct.
I don't know...it really does look to me like you spent a paragraph trying to redefine the word. Would you maintain that I am mistaken? Besides just saying "yes", can you provide coherent support for that?

No, most of the rest of my post deals with things that seem to refute your statements that you ended up repeating above.

Because you state something does not make it so.

Are you just making a bad job of trying to throw my words back at me? Sounds silly when what you are quoting mentions support of mine to which you are refusing to reply.

Your statements do comment on what I had stated previously, there is no need to explain to you the same things over and over again.

You explain something...if I disagree, I provide my reasons and counterargument...if you disagree, you provide your reasons and counterargument, not repeat your original explanation and dismiss my reasons and counterargument as invalid because you said so. So...I wasn't asking you to "explain the same things over and over again".
Did I have to explain this?

You want to link this singular deal out into MS handing over DX control, debating the amount of DX9 boards on the market, and trying to inflate ATi's marketshare.

Doesn't strike me as an objective representation of my viewpoint, actually.
There's a "few" paragraphs indicating why. My saying this, again, in a discussion with you is not because I like saying it, but because it is necessitated by your treatment of the discussion.

I have addressed all of those issue.

No, you have made statements and discounted mine and the given reasons behind them and simply proceeded to omit my statements and reasons without providing discussion of what I brought up. That is not 'addressing those issues'.

DX9 is irrelevant in the context of this hypothetical deal, this has nothing to do with MS surrendering control over their API and ATi's marketshare is considerably lower then nVidia's and decreasing in relation to nVidia based on the numbers we have.

Your argument feels like a "Quicksand" method of argument...opposing viewpoints and support are swallowed up without a trace or consideration in order to present the original uninterrupted surface intact.

 

[Reverend]

]

but I would not think a publisher like EA will allow ANY of the developers under their umbrella to do what Valve is rumored to be doing (as in this thread).

Thats pretty laughable that you stated this considering that EA and Nvidia just signed an *Exclusive* agreement.

What I meant by "... to do what Valve is rumored to be doing..." is that a Valve game to not run on non-NVIDIA hardware, which isn't the case with EA's agreement with NVIDIA. I doubt my statement is laughable this sense.

 

[Striker]

The largest post I've EVER seen.

Good work demalion...I doubt anyone will ever read it, tho. I didnt read it, for one.

 

[BenSkywalker]

I've addressed the commentary you've made about DX 9, both the availability you keep mentioning (I say yet again) and the relationship that I see with the discussion at hand.

And your comment was-

Again: 'I'm not saying it is "simply available", but that it is available and that indications show is having a significant impact on the user base.'

And I provided numbers that directly refuted it. Are you ready to drop it yet? Should I dig up more numbers to show you this?

Well, actually, as I've said before I seem to recollect, I happen to maintain that things you don't reply to are relevant.

Drop the morality based hypothesis and try presenting your end of the discussion with some logical business based lines of discussion. I claimed nVidia had a significantly greater portion of the gaming market, you refuted it using extremely weak anecdotal evidence which was completely unrelated and I come back with hard market data. It is not my job to find an angle you can use to discuss this issue. You are utilizing speculation about how the market would respond based on people's feeling to the situation overall. Start presenting some real numbers revolving around Valve's user base or the market at large and stop trying to think of a way that maybe someday something bad might come of it.

It wasn't just my impression, it was my impression following a discussion, quotes, and correction of an assertion you made, that you "happened" to decide to omit in order to make this statement.

I showed you hard data that made all of your rantings irrelevant. We have now seen numbers from two quarters of ATi's supposed new direction and nVidia has increased their marketshare. This is based on numbers that come from a financial publication, not my completely unfounded speculation based on a particular leaning I may have.

You asserted that something indicated the marketplace as of a week ago.

Where did I state that? I quoted an ARTICLE and stated "That was from a week ago". I quote an article, say it was from a week ago. Why I didn't reply to the rest of your post concerning that it was from Q4 was that I NEVER SAID OTHERWISE. The only thing I stated that can be remotely misunderstood was that the numbers were current. I apologize if I mistakenly assumed that you would know that current numbers indicates the most recently released figures. Given that the article was posted within a week of the end of Q1 it should have been understood that it was from the prior quarter. We have discussions regularly concerning marketshare in the console forum, it is understood that when you post new numbers they are the most recent available(and when someone says 'current numbers' it indicates the most recently available numbers). If I was stating that they were in fact up to the minute numbers, I would have stated as such.

You are omitting discussion related to this I offer, and are applying an extrapolation of your experience universally and proposing it as a substitute. Did you ever relate your experience to your mention of six months?

You asked me a question pertaining to my personal experience, I relayed the details of my personal experience. Anecdotal evidence is never worth much, nor have I claimed otherwise.

what does "considering its class" mean in the context of our discussion?

It sold well for a $200 board.

Your extrapolation seems a bit uncontrolled. It did not say boards outsold CPU shipments, it said graphics shipments outsold CPU shipments.

Yes, that was a mistake on my part. I misspoke when I stated boards as I should have stated chips.

If you write paragraphs and paragraphs ignoring the other issues with Alt-Tabbing and Esc in Half-Life has had, I guess it must be true that ATI is "breaking games", right?

Is this in the context of Valve's customers or not? Go check gaming based forums to see what they think of ATi's drivers right now.

The coherent support here is ignoring the long standing bugs with sound that occurs in the same circumstance, discounting that this indicates that the game could have issues itself, and proposing this as support for Valve having reason for going nvidia exclusive.

The game worked fine with the Cat3.1s and then didn't with the Cat3.2s. ATi has ackowledged it and said they would fix it. Does anyone honestly think ATi tested any of the HL games with the Cat 3.2s? How do you think Valve's loyalists running ATi hardware right now feel about ATi's drivers? These same users who you expect to get upset with Valve if they were to drop ATi? Does this 'prove' anything? No. Is there a certain way to quantify what impact this will have? No. The same way your prior speculation on short v long terms benefits is non quantifiable.

What are your framerates with supersampling on your 4200 using 8x aniso (not necessarily with trilinear, half life shouldn't need it much)?

Have you ever played Half-Life? I could run 4x AA+AF with my GF2@1280x960 and it was playable. I honestly don't know what my exact framerate is, capped @100 and never noticed any slowdown @1280x960(you can't run 4xS in OpenGL, only D3D which doesn't support 16x12) and that is with trilinear and HL needs it a lot more then most current games, the mip banding on the grated floors is obscenely bad).

On that basis, are you going to maintain that "inferior IQ" as indisputable?

Yes, until ATi releases a SS implementation for their R300 boards. Overall the AA on the R300 is leaps and bounds beyond what I currently have, but in HL it is extremely poor. The games needs SS AA.

Are you further maintaining that half-life (the first one, the one with alpha tests) IQ is make-or-break for people who play it and its mods?

No, nor is performance a major concern with any vaguely close to current board. But what about those people upgrading from a GF4MX to a R9700Pro and HL looks poorer? Talking about the die hard loyalists here.

I don't agree that not offering it makes a cut and dry case of inferior IQ for ATi (did you ever turn on AA when you had your 9500?).

Ran almost everything 2x AA 16x Q AF(newer games, HL I ran at 6x AA when it worked). Now I run most things at 2x AA 8x AF(HL 4S, Quake3 engined games 4x).

I agree that it is indeed cut and dry when it comes to alpha test application, but I don't agree that alpha test textures are the only factor for IQ in the half life engine.

Nor do I. I have the graphics expansion pack which improved things considerably where HL was weakest(mode complexity). The textures are limited to 256x256 and any close to current board can handle it with max A and trilinear along with a fairly heavy negative LOD setting without running in to aliasing issues with the very noteable exception of alpha textures.

I also don't think "not offering SS" in the context of the current half life engine and then associating that as a deficiency in regard to DX 9 (and therefore future games) goes together at all in a coherent fashion.

I was stating that as it was easier then writing the R300/R350/RV350. They should offer SS AA as an option on all of their boards. I don't have a R8500 nor have I had my hands on one in quite some time so I can't say if they currently offer a SS AA mode or not. I am not going to say they should do something that they may already have done.

I addressed this. They are an also ran on the console.

They haven't released a timely port of their titles yet.

On the PC they have a well established franchise strategy needing a refresh.

There are two different aspects to what happens concerning Valve. One is their customer support and encouragement for helping to keep the community alive. This requires very minimal effort from Valve, handing off the basic tools and giving out some documentation along with a bit of encouragement pretty much handles it. The other end is financial. On this end, they pale in comparison to what Rockstar has done in the last twenty months with one of their franchises. That is, every title Valve has sold combined for their entire existance pales in comparison to what RockStar's singular franchise has done in under two years.

Why go console exclusive?

Scales of economy. Valve's model concerning CounterStrike(etc) wasn't viable on the consoles until recently(allowing additional levels, content to be DLed, acceptable gaming environment). Now it is.

I don't know, I get tired of pointing this out, do you get tired of doing it? Since it takes less typing and thought for you to ignore than me to try and hold a discourse, I'd guess not.

Your comments focused on my not spelling out explicitly how it would benefit each party. I did that. I broke down how all involved could stand to come out ahead on a financial end(with the exception of nV who simply gains huge PR). MS could land reduced chip costs. Apologies if one sentence makes your lengthy comments irrelevant moving forward. I am not going to take time to reply to the same point worded twelve different ways.

Hmm, nVidia seems to be having issues with the DX 9 API. BTW, did you read this link the first time I provide it? If so, too bad you decided not to discuss it so we could have me spend time referring you to answers and arguments already provided.

Could you please explain how the hell Cg means MS is handing over control for DX please? I stated that they will still have full control over their API. You think Cg means Gates is going to have over DX to Trovalds(sic)? Maybe Steve Jobs will control the entire MS corporation if nVidia comes up with their own API....

Hmm...don't you think it is a bit of a non sequitor to propose "X Box exclusive" as being an incentive for MS to pay off Valve and "Valve has been using OpenGL for their lead API all along"?

Why? OpenGL is Valve's lead API, they have still supported DX. If they wanted to pull off an exclusive PC port they could 'break things' quite nicely under OpenGL.

You mean "that I, Ben, haven't really seen", and your vision just seems extremely selective to me.

Perhaps because I look at actual market data by industry professionals instead of listening to the dreams of users who focus on an extremely tiny niche market? Hard market data. I have provided it. In order to make any headway in this discussion you need to provide something to counter it. It is that simple. Facts v fancy.

I have this strange idea I had a discussion about DX 8 and DX 9, with provided support, that is directly related to this, and more than once too.

And I told you why what you said could be thrown out the window. You focus on your ideals. I focus on reality. You talked to many game publishers about your ideas for game development? It's a stressful job, I'm sure they could use a hearty laugh. This market is controlled by money. Yes, there are a few groups in the industry who have enough of it to fully self fund themselves and ignore whatever the publisher wants. You can likely count those groups on one hand.

Market...share. Leaves me the impression of percentages. So, having a larger percentage share of...the market... than before, to me indicates...growing market share. ATI grew 18%, nvidia grew 13%...so...by what math did nVidia's market share grow faster?

My quote again-

ATi's marketshare is increasing in proportion to what it was faster then nVidia's, nVidia's marketshare is growing faster in absolute terms.

16.2 * 1.18 = 19.116 Absolute up 2.916%

28.4 * 1.13 = 32.092 Absolute up 3.692%

You would make a great comedian at a financial professional gathering. Have you taken any economics classes at all? My comment was extremely obvious(and of course, correct).

I don't know...it really does look to me like you spent a paragraph trying to redefine the word. Would you maintain that I am mistaken? Besides just saying "yes", can you provide coherent support for that?

This has nothing to do with English, it is very basic economics and mathematics.

 

[demalion]

Sorry, lost the original to a crash (I think the "one ring" screen saver installed some spyware, uninstalling seems to have done wonders for stability) and I spent a little less effort on cleaning it up.

I've addressed the commentary you've made about DX 9, both the availability you keep mentioning (I say yet again) and the relationship that I see with the discussion at hand.

And your comment was-

My singular comment that you propose in isolation in lieu of the actual paragraphs I was referring to, you mean.

Again: 'I'm not saying it is "simply available", but that it is available and that indications show is having a significant impact on the user base.'

And I provided numbers that directly refuted it.

I understand that you said "You're saying it doesn't make it so" to prevent me from saying it to you. That doesn't mean that it is any less valid when I do say it to you (I just did), nor that it is any more valid when you said it to me (as discussed in my last post to you, a discussion you decided was irrelevant after I provided my input on the matter). It as at times like this where I'm faced with the choice of repeating something you decided to ignore or mentioning it and saying to go look. Your strategy seems to consist of causing me to make this choice in place of holding an actual discussion with me, and depending on people not reading the parts of my posts you don't quote (and it seems to work for some, though let me do them the courtesy of mentioning one by name: "Striker") by responding to each strategy in the same way (quoting isolated text and saying only that text is relevant).

Are you ready to drop it yet? Should I dig up more numbers to show you this?

By this you seek to imply that I'm hiding from your numbers, when I've addressed them directly. Your excuse for ignoring my address is later specified to be that I am to blame for my criticisms of your statements, not you. To answer your question: No, I'm not going to give way to your insistence on being right regardless of what I say, and if you wish that, you can converse with yourself using notepad to more effectively achieve the goal.

Well, actually, as I've said before I seem to recollect, I happen to maintain that things you don't reply to are relevant.

Drop the morality based hypothesis and try presenting your end of the discussion with some logical business based lines of discussion.

What morality based hypothesis? That my statements are relevant? How dare I propose that with support, discussion, examples, quotation, and analysis! I don't know how you put up with me.

I claimed nVidia had a significantly greater portion of the gaming market, you refuted it using extremely weak anecdotal evidence which was completely unrelated and I come back with hard market data.

To hold a discussion we have to be able to discuss the same thing in some sane frame of reference. I never "refuted" that nvidia has a greater market share, I refuted that the market share figures being presented had direct bearing on the gaming market share for a game like half life 2. I even gave reasons among the "irrelevant" things I discussed. BTW, when I mentioned Steve Spence in that other thread, did you decide to emulate him more closely to cause me aggravation? Your practice here reminds me rather closely of his approach to dispute (except you don't have the power to delete threads and posts by other people).

It is not my job to find an angle you can use to discuss this issue.

Who asked you to find me an angle? I'm doing fine on discussing the issue and providing support, thanks, I'm just asking you to get beyond your self-involvment with your own viewpoint and think through the statements I provide. You seem to have a "self induced optical deficiency" in your fixation with your own angle (to be less vague, I'm saying you have blinders on).

You are utilizing speculation about how the market would respond based on people's feeling to the situation overall.

No, I'm using support based on discussing the data I present, the data you presented, criticizing your analysis with support for my reasons for doing so, providing my own observations and statements, and hoping in vain for you to respond to my statements with anything but a marked contempt for viewpoints not your own.

Start presenting some real numbers revolving around Valve's user base or the market at large and stop trying to think of a way that maybe someday something bad might come of it.

Hmm? I am presenting "real numbers". Is your phrasing intended to refer to the 2000 Valve survey results and again propose they are the most pertinent to the question of the marketplace in 2003 for Half Life 2, and circumventing my support for disagreeing?

It wasn't just my impression, it was my impression following a discussion, quotes, and correction of an assertion you made, that you "happened" to decide to omit in order to make this statement.

I showed you hard data that made all of your rantings irrelevant.

Well, I said something, and you said something. I think it is observable that the statement I made is true. Instead of refuting it, you label it irrelevant. Let's see what your support for this is.

We have now seen numbers from two quarters of ATi's supposed new direction and nVidia has increased their marketshare.

From the earlier analysis of your "hard data" (would be nice if you gave some indication of having read the links I provide non selectively):
"Nvidia, however, remained the largest supplier of graphics to the PC market but with a reduced share of the market."

EDIT: The following is a quote from the original release at Jon Peddie's web site. (the reason for this mention is at the end of the post):

"Nvidia ... was the largest supplier of PC graphics devices worldwide but with a reduced share of the total graphics market."

That is perhaps a clue that your interpretation is wrong, along with my mention of a definition of the term "market share" to clarify where you seem to be confused in your usage of it AFAICS.

Also, the numbers we see there are not after two quarters unless you want to propose that mass availability was instantaneous upon release(which would make it about 1 and half quarters) and add half a quarter for the hell of it.

There is a "whole bunch" of text supporting the sentiment of that quote and my above comment that you decided was "irrelevant" to your reply, apparently. It remains easier for you to ignore than me to repeat, so repeating it seems a wasteful proposition, but let's continue with me addressing your commentary and providing support, and you...hmmm, well something.

This is based on numbers that come from a financial publication, not my completely unfounded speculation based on a particular leaning I may have.

No, this is based on your personal interpretation of numbers from a financial publication, and your ignoring anything I say that contradicts your interpretation.

You asserted that something indicated the marketplace as of a week ago.

Where did I state that?

How about current real numbers then?

ATI (ATYT ), now with an estimated 19% of the market, and Nvidia (NVDA ), with 32%, are the only major specialized makers of graphics chips to survive. (Intel (INTC ) holds a 28% share of the graphics-chips markets, and two smaller rivals own single-digit bites.)

link provided...
That is from one week ago.

I quoted an ARTICLE and stated "That was from a week ago". I quote an article, say it was from a week ago. Why I didn't reply to the rest of your post concerning that it was from Q4 was that I NEVER SAID OTHERWISE.

Hmm...so because you never said "this is not from Q4" (just quoted figures and said it was from a week ago ), my discussion of the relevance of it being from Q4 is...err...irrelevant?
Do go on...

The only thing I stated that can be remotely misunderstood was that the numbers were current.

Well, shame on me for "misunderstanding" you saying "how about current real numbers?" then quoting marketshare figures then saying "that is from one week ago". No implication there that contradicts it being from the Q4 2002, of course. Bleh.

I apologize if I mistakenly...

...assumed that you would know that current numbers indicates the most recently released figures.

False alarm, it's still my fault.

Given that the article was posted within a week of the end of Q1 it should have been understood that it was from the prior quarter.

I didn't have trouble understanding that, which is why I corrected your statement. You saying that seems to be predicated on the belief that I should have known better than to think you are capable of a mistake. Well, I didn't, and I still don't, but it is of course more useful to have this sidetrack concerning your infallibility rather than discussing the support that has already been presented on my part.

We have discussions regularly concerning marketshare in the console forum, it is understood that when you post new numbers they are the most recent available(and when someone says 'current numbers' it indicates the most recently available numbers). If I was stating that they were in fact up to the minute numbers, I would have stated as such.

Since this is obviously the console forum, you don't make silly mistakes, and the article was within "minutes" of the end Q1, I obviously should have known better to think that there was something wrong with your statement and responded by quoting something that might make your assertion look weaker. Or not, but with your selective reading skills, perhaps you'll be please by the prior sentence.

You are omitting discussion related to this I offer, and are applying an extrapolation of your experience universally and proposing it as a substitute. Did you ever relate your experience to your mention of six months?

You asked me a question pertaining to my personal experience,

No, what I asked for was substantion and some form of support. What you decided constituted support against the figures and commentary I proposed was your personal experience in the stores presented as applicable to the 6 months of availability to the R300. My evaluation of that is reflected rather well in the text of mine you just quoted, if you read it.

I relayed the details of my personal experience. Anecdotal evidence is never worth much, nor have I claimed otherwise.

You do when you propose it in response to the broad request: "If you are going to make such claims in direct contradiction to these indications, I just ask that you provide some alternate figures and interpretation with some sort of logical progression, instead of just making a statement and using it for support as if the evaluation it presents is factual."

...

Not the most sterling support for your assertion that my "rantings" are "irrelevant", IMO.

what does "considering its class" mean in the context of our discussion?

It sold well for a $200 board.

Well, it did list for $199, but I'll also point out that the non Pro (also DX 9) listed for less. I'd say the selling price mattered more and I recall some DX 9 Radeon card selling for $150 for Q4. But back to discussing your "hard data".

Your extrapolation seems a bit uncontrolled. It did not say boards outsold CPU shipments, it said graphics shipments outsold CPU shipments.

Yes, that was a mistake on my part. I misspoke when I stated boards as I should have stated chips.

It is good to find a point beyond which your defense of your infallibility will not continue.
Perhaps now we can progress to such things as considering that it wasn't boards but "graphics shipments", including integrated chipsets (I seem to recall wondering how many nforce boards might have made up nVidia's marketshare figure). Then, we could perhaps recognize that my long standing (and continually deemed irrelevant) discussion concerning DX 8 and DX 9 and the topic of exclusivity is indeed pertinent (or would you still maintain that GF 4 MX and below functionality, such as offered by Intel with its 28% share in your "hard data", has direct bearing on HL 2 exclusivity?). If "we" can, my discussion is available in prior posts.

If you write paragraphs and paragraphs ignoring the other issues with Alt-Tabbing and Esc in Half-Life has had, I guess it must be true that ATI is "breaking games", right?

Is this in the context of Valve's customers or not? Go check gaming based forums to see what they think of ATi's drivers right now.

The same forums where the common wisdom is that ATI's drivers suck and that nVidia's drivers are flawless? Hmm...well, I see a lot of complaints about nVidia drivers too.
First place I looked, in the planethalflife forums, has this mention of a long standing nVidia driver problem. Maybe you had a more emotional forum in mind, since searching on "ATI bug" did not turn up the type of discussion you referred to. Perhaps you could provide a link to gaming forum in question?
In any case, why is it that ATI is "breaking games", but nVidia is not? Could it be because it is more convenient to discuss the validity of your viewpoint by proxy?
Hey, look what someone said: "Anecdotal evidence is never worth much, nor have I claimed otherwise."

The coherent support here is ignoring the long standing bugs with sound that occurs in the same circumstance, discounting that this indicates that the game could have issues itself, and proposing this as support for Valve having reason for going nvidia exclusive.

The game worked fine with the Cat3.1s and then didn't with the Cat3.2s

That seems to be anecdotal evidence to me, but still true. The problem is you propose it as a factor in Valve's decision making...what was that you said before about anecdotal evidence? I don't think they are run by people with your mentality, but, hey, I could be wrong.

ATi has ackowledged it and said they would fix it.

Well, they acknowledged that they could reproduce it and gave some indication that the issue would be resolved. Which does not seem to speak against the example that I provided of how the same action is and has been bugged on the part of the program for quite a while, and is something Valve is indicating they will address. Might not even be an issue for HL 2 !
Oh, here is that link to our prior discussion of this topic (provided again).

Does anyone honestly think ATi tested any of the HL games with the Cat 3.2s?

The problem manifests when you Alt-Tab or press Esc. For myself, I don't use Alt-Tab because I play using sound, and I don't use Esc because I'm used to the "~". I suspect ATi's problem (and, yes it is their problem in testing, if not in the actual bug) was related to that. BTW, I used Esc in both Natural Selection and Counter-Strike using Cat 3.2 on my 8500, and the issue did not manifest. I also Alt-Tabbed out of NS.
I only mention this anecdotal evidence because you seem to be indicating it is a unversal problem with ATI cards.

How do you think Valve's loyalists running ATi hardware right now feel about ATi's drivers?

Weren't you accusing me of using people's feelings to support my case, Ben? Were you perhaps thinking of yourself when you said it?
To answer, I propose the possibility that they blame Valve, for the long standing problem I referred to earlier. Could be the fault of either, or both, and the only problem with deciding on one or the other is then extrapolating that and inflicting it on others as support for your argument.

These same users who you expect to get upset with Valve if they were to drop ATi?

I'm not sure what users you are referring to, as you haven't clarified your example. I expect ATi users would be a bit upset, and I think the marketshare picture is changing who they would tend to blame for such an issue. I don't think your "hard data" is an effective counter to that expectation (reasons provided prior).

Does this 'prove' anything? No. Is there a certain way to quantify what impact this will have? No. The same way your prior speculation on short v long terms benefits is non quantifiable.

You call this hypocritical and ill conceived line of argument equivalent to my discussion? Well, if you say it, it's true, right? Great alternative to addressing someones disagreement: say it is worthless as the argument you presented.

What are your framerates with supersampling on your 4200 using 8x aniso (not necessarily with trilinear, half life shouldn't need it much)?

Have you ever played Half-Life?

Not on a 4200, which, amazingly enough, is why I asked you a question.

I could run 4x AA+AF with my GF2@1280x960 and it was playable.

Hmm...I did not ask about "playable", I asked for something to relate to your idea of undisputably inferior image quality. Let's see how close to that I get.

I honestly don't know what my exact framerate is, capped @100 and never noticed any slowdown @1280x960(you can't run 4xS in OpenGL, only D3D which doesn't support 16x12) and that is with trilinear and HL needs it a lot more then most current games, the mip banding on the grated floors is obscenely bad).

Well, that's not quite a helpful answer, is it? What level of aniso? I presume maximum image quality settings tweaked on your 4200? Is mentioning these and your fps really that complicated? If you want to include trilinear, go ahead.
If you don't want to discuss actual figures, I'll just point out that your opinion is not "indisputable". There are even places in the game without alpha tested textures.

On that basis, are you going to maintain that "inferior IQ" as indisputable?

Yes, until ATi releases a SS implementation for their R300 boards. Overall the AA on the R300 is leaps and bounds beyond what I currently have, but in HL it is extremely poor. The games needs SS AA.

Wow, you really do love your facts and figures.

Are you further maintaining that half-life (the first one, the one with alpha tests) IQ is make-or-break for people who play it and its mods?

No, nor is performance a major concern with any vaguely close to current board. But what about those people upgrading from a GF4MX to a R9700Pro and HL looks poorer?

I don't know, I think statements like these make you look idiotic. I think it is easy to snip my quote of you and reply out of your own replies, so you don't care that you do so. Hmm...yeah, I'm having trouble with people upgrading from the GF4MX finding the 9700 Pro a disappointment.

Talking about the die hard loyalists here.

I don't agree that not offering it makes a cut and dry case of inferior IQ for ATi (did you ever turn on AA when you had your 9500?).

Ran almost everything 2x AA 16x Q AF(newer games, HL I ran at 6x AA when it worked).

The issue with HL is when leaving it the 3d screen, so how exactly did you have a problem with 6xAA associated with "when it worked"? Was there a problem with getting it to start that I forgot about, or are you just determined to say negative things about ATI?

Now I run most things at 2x AA 8x AF(HL 4S, Quake3 engined games 4x).

Ah! 8x AF at 1280x960! There we go. Now if fps just wasn't so hard to report for HL. I mean, then we could build a more complete picture of how they compared for your evaluation. However, with you evaluating 6xAA as "indisputably" worse than 4xS on the GF 4 Ti 4200, I'm not sure there is a common ground we can reach to continue the discussion. Nevermind the GF 4 MX comment.

I agree that it is indeed cut and dry when it comes to alpha test application, but I don't agree that alpha test textures are the only factor for IQ in the half life engine.

Nor do I. I have the graphics expansion pack which improved things considerably where HL was weakest(mode complexity). The textures are limited to 256x256 and any close to current board can handle it with max A and trilinear along with a fairly heavy negative LOD setting without running in to aliasing issues with the very noteable exception of alpha textures.

If they aren't the only factor, why are they only factor you recognize when discussing indisputable IQ superiority? What about 16x AF? Maybe going up to 1600x1200 and using 2xAA? I can see how a GF 4 MX user would hate that.

I also don't think "not offering SS" in the context of the current half life engine and then associating that as a deficiency in regard to DX 9 (and therefore future games) goes together at all in a coherent fashion.

I was stating that as it was easier then writing the R300/R350/RV350. They should offer SS AA as an option on all of their boards.
...

Your commentary still doesn't hold together, AFAICS.

I addressed this. They are an also ran on the console.

They haven't released a timely port of their titles yet.

On the PC they have a well established franchise strategy needing a refresh.

There are two different aspects to what happens concerning Valve. One is their customer support and encouragement for helping to keep the community alive. This requires very minimal effort from Valve, handing off the basic tools and giving out some documentation along with a bit of encouragement pretty much handles it. The other end is financial. On this end, they pale in comparison to what Rockstar has done in the last twenty months with one of their franchises. That is, every title Valve has sold combined for their entire existance pales in comparison to what RockStar's singular franchise has done in under two years.

Two points:
Is it really so hard to provide the information on which you are basing such a statement?
I've already said it makes sense to do a console port, what you continue to fail to do is relate that to the proposition of "nVidia exclusive" on the PC.

Why go console exclusive?

Scales of economy. Valve's model concerning CounterStrike(etc) wasn't viable on the consoles until recently(allowing additional levels, content to be DLed, acceptable gaming environment). Now it is.

Yeah, there will be lots of users making such content with console exclusivity. Are you able to critically parse your own statements before making them?

I don't know, I get tired of pointing this out, do you get tired of doing it? Since it takes less typing and thought for you to ignore than me to try and hold a discourse, I'd guess not.

Your comments focused on my not spelling out explicitly how it would benefit each party.

No, it focused on pointing out how it would not benefit some of the people you said it would benefit, and criticizing your stating that it would with an absence of coherency.

I did that. I broke down how all involved could stand to come out ahead on a financial end(with the exception of nV who simply gains huge PR). MS could land reduced chip costs.

And I addressed the flaws in your "breaking it down". Now, here we are, you telling me what you did after ignoring my reply to each detail of it.

Apologies if one sentence makes your lengthy comments irrelevant moving forward.

What one sentence are you proposing make my comments irrelevant? Let me guess, the sentence where Ben says "your comments are irrelevant"?

I am not going to take time to reply to the same point worded twelve different ways.

You haven't replied to my discussion of this besides labelling it irrelevant.
Did I mention my feeling of deja vu?

Hmm, nVidia seems to be having issues with the DX 9 API. BTW, did you read this link the first time I provide it? If so, too bad you decided not to discuss it so we could have me spend time referring you to answers and arguments already provided.

Could you please explain how the hell Cg means MS is handing over control for DX please?

No, I indicated that MS paying someone to use Cg instead of DX 9 reduces the influence of DX 9, and provided a link referencing a discussion by Microsoft personnel commenting on Cg. It was addressing what you proposed (which was quoted and pointed out directly in some of that "irrelevant" text of mine), and if you'd spend some time reading what I said you could maybe avoid asking such questions. Just a thoght.

I stated that they will still have full control over their API. You think Cg means Gates is going to have over DX to Trovalds(sic)? Maybe Steve Jobs will control the entire MS corporation if nVidia comes up with their own API....

Hmm...well, with such a lucid commentary, how can I begin to disagree?

Hmm...don't you think it is a bit of a non sequitor to propose "X Box exclusive" as being an incentive for MS to pay off Valve and "Valve has been using OpenGL for their lead API all along"?

Why?

So, I guess the answer would be "No".

OpenGL is Valve's lead API, they have still supported DX. If they wanted to pull off an exclusive PC port they could 'break things' quite nicely under OpenGL.

Did you forget we were discussing your proposition of "X Box exclusive" and how you proposed that validated your commentary? A hint: if OpenGL is your lead API, your focus is the PC, not X Box. This might serve to negate the strength of proposing a focus on the X Box as rationally connected to nvidia exclusive on the PC. Just the same stuff I said before, nothing new here.

You mean "that I, Ben, haven't really seen", and your vision just seems extremely selective to me.

Perhaps because I look at actual market data by industry professionals instead of listening to the dreams of users who focus on an extremely tiny niche market? Hard market data. I have provided it.

Yes, and I provided the data too (without saying something about "one week ago"). I also discussed that data, provided support for that discussion, looked at your discussion in turn and criticized it point by point, and provided other data...steps you have not done. Yet, again, "Ben is right".

In order to make any headway in this discussion you need to provide something to counter it. It is that simple. Facts v fancy.

Yeah, your opinion is fact, mine is fancy. Deja vu. Forgive me for not linking to specific posts in the thread, I'm simply presuming that anyone who follows my links (not that I would accuse of you doing that, Ben) will read on for a while and be able to form their own impressions.

I have this strange idea I had a discussion about DX 8 and DX 9, with provided support, that is directly related to this, and more than once too.

And I told you why what you said could be thrown out the window.

What, because they were irrelevant? I must have skipped over your support. Or, perhaps I just have a different standard of support than you do (of course, because I'm not you, my standard must be a lower one).

You focus on your ideals. I focus on reality.

Hmm...it must be nice to have reality defined as "Ben's viewpoint".

You talked to many game publishers about your ideas for game development?

Hmm...nope. Did you? Could you provide a quote of the commentary on this topic that was provided by Valve to you?

It's a stressful job, I'm sure they could use a hearty laugh. This market is controlled by money. Yes, there are a few groups in the industry who have enough of it to fully self fund themselves and ignore whatever the publisher wants. You can likely count those groups on one hand.

It obviously doesn't disturb you to propose such a diatribe as factual. As long as that is the case, please understand that people will continue to form low opinions of your posts. Ones they can justify by quoting you. In context.

Market...share. Leaves me the impression of percentages. So, having a larger percentage share of...the market... than before, to me indicates...growing market share. ATI grew 18%, nvidia grew 13%...so...by what math did nVidia's market share grow faster?

My quote again-

ATi's marketshare is increasing in proportion to what it was faster then nVidia's, nVidia's marketshare is growing faster in absolute terms.

Hmm...there does seem to be be some abusable terminology, doesn't there? Heh, OK, did a search and found the original report, discussed below.

16.2 * 1.18 = 19.116 Absolute up 2.916%

28.4 * 1.13 = 32.092 Absolute up 3.692%

Your math is all wrong, because the growth was in shipments, and the impact on market share is separate, and I do have to ask: why'd you go and arbitrarily make up "facts" based on your misunderstanding? My mistake for providing something abusable to someone I view as prone to abusing.

However, I should have corrected terminology before this, and I'm reminded of my comment when I quoted the Inquirer: "A handy quote (allegedly atleast...it is the Inquirer after all ) from the John Peddie report".

Hopefully, discussing things without the Inquirer's terminology will lead to clarity...Here is the report from Jon Peddie's site.

You'll note that that the growth was from Q3 to Q4, and was in shipments, and that their analysis of marketshare is a marked departure from yours (strange with your statement being factual presentation based on financial experts )
Picking among the Inquirer comments (non selectively, atleast), this is the only interpretation that makes sense, and I blame myself for allowing the confusing terminology to persist this long and for quoting it without correction in the first place.

You would make a great comedian at a financial professional gathering. Have you taken any economics classes at all? My comment was extremely obvious(and of course, correct).

I recognized that your comments didn't make sense, and I should have applied that to the Inquirer I was quoting. Being truly at fault for this, I have the expectation that this will be a proxy for the validity in your own analysis, ignoring or down playing the errors on your own part. Will you succeed in disappointing me?
About the request for my employment as a comedian at a financial professional gathering: only if I can be your sidekick.
About the "My comment was extremely obvious(and of course, correct)": On second thought, I don't think you need me in the act at all.

I don't know...it really does look to me like you spent a paragraph trying to redefine the word. Would you maintain that I am mistaken? Besides just saying "yes", can you provide coherent support for that?

This has nothing to do with English, it is very basic economics and mathematics.

Ayep.
I'm sorry, I couldn't hold the emoticons in today. My twisted mouth and popped out eyes shall be my self inflicted punishment.

 

[Saem]

SWEET ZOMBIE JEEBUS, demalion.

Go write a book!

 

[Tahir2]

And you lost the original so you had to re-write it .. I agree with Saem go write War and Pieces 2 or something

 

[demalion]

SWEET ZOMBIE JEEBUS, demalion.

Go write a book!

Are you disagreeing with my statements, or just stating that I'm wasting my time?

Takes longer to write it than read it, ya know, if it makes you feel better.

 

[Vince]

Demalion, do you ever have a conversation that doesn't reduce to pointless discussions on semantics? How about you cut threw the shit for once and get to the ideas and facts behind the words - not the linguistics in themselves... just an idea.

Scales of economy. Valve's model concerning CounterStrike(etc) wasn't viable on the consoles until recently(allowing additional levels, content to be DLed, acceptable gaming environment). Now it is.

Yeah, there will be lots of users making such content with console exclusivity. Are you able to critically parse your own statements before making them?

Actually, this just shows how out of touch you are with the Console industry. Ben's statement is not only correct, it's prophetic (although it's obvious do to it's linear extrapolation of today)

XBox Next is the de facto online service at this time and is the template for the Next Generation which is being built around Broadband and the distrobution of digital medium via this method. Sony is definatly gearing up for this type of synergy big-time; although at this time MS has the lead.

Look no further than the 10 or so games for XBox Live! which have additional downloadable content thats distributed thew the MS controlled fabric and stored on the HD. Ubisoft's widely acclaimed SplinterCell has additional levels that are released to Xbox players just like Valve's done on the PC arena.

This E3 should be quite exciting for the Online push.. you're quite behind the times.

I've already said it makes sense to do a console port, what you continue to fail to do is relate that to the proposition of "nVidia exclusive" on the PC.

It makes sence because of the state of the gaming industry and it's trends. The cost of a top-tier next generation game will be astronomical in terms of development cost and time - when your pushing around a Billion polygons a second, you need the massive expensive digitial content to fill the enviroment and associated physics, AI, et al. to match them.

So, when a game like GTA: Vice City sells north of 9-10M copies (Thats ~$500Million) in like 3 months - you take note. For Valve to have HL2 be a launch title on a Console would be huge. They then take the game designed around the XBox and it's nVidia graphics chip and, at minimum costs, port it to nVidia powered PCs. So, they get the sales of the Consoles, they get any kick-back they can from nVidia, and they get a majority stake in the PC area thanks to nVidia's Nv3x and 4x line's penetration into the marketplace.

 

[demalion]

And you lost the original so you had to re-write it .. I agree with Saem go write War and Pieces 2 or something

I actually have a problem with just saying "Ben, you are a <insert what you'd think I'd call Ben>." and treat posts as warranting reply.

If you disagree, provide a shorter post for me to reply to, and if you agree, mention it in a brief post so I feel more free to trim. But don't worry, I'll be trying to trim further replies in any case.

 

[Saem]

Are you disagreeing with my statements, or just stating that I'm wasting my time?

Takes longer to write it than read it, ya know, if it makes you feel better.

That's not what I meant. I mean you have so much to say on the subject, write a book.

 

[whql]

So, when a game like GTA: Vice City sells north of 9-10M copies (Thats ~$500Million) in like 3 months - you take note.

It only sells that much because its on the PS2...

 

[Tahir2]

I think I will abstain. Some of what has been written recently and in the past by yourself and Ben could take weeks to analyse. In fact it is pretty hard for me to see what you two are actually debating now. A lot of seems on the surface to be an exercise in tautology..which is what both of you accuse each other of doing in your own words.

As an aside there is no evidence so far as to what kind of engine HL2 has and whether or not it will be compatible with ALL NVIDIA cards and other manufacturers or whether it will be playable only on a GF4 Ti 4x00 and beyond. By playable I mean that the game will actually run to any degree.

Until we know this fact there is not much else to say about market shares, market targets, what Valve are doing, what NVIDIA get out of it, what relevance XBOX has.

This is just my humble opinion and I carry only a small voice.

 

[demalion]

Demalion, do you ever have a conversation that doesn't reduce to pointless discussions on semantics? How about you cut threw the shit for once and get to the ideas and facts behind the words - not the linguistics in themselves... just an idea.

Oh, waiting to snipe, I see. Here's a thought, perhaps addressing the points when I present them would facilitate...discussing points. I've addressed the points Ben has raised, more than once. If you happen to have an inability to recognize my discussing points in disagreement to your viewpoint, I can understand that all you would see is semantics discussion. I don't accept the blame for that, though.
Any particular reason you reply to posts with someone else when we had our own discussion already? Well, I've stated my theory before.

Scales of economy. Valve's model concerning CounterStrike(etc) wasn't viable on the consoles until recently(allowing additional levels, content to be DLed, acceptable gaming environment). Now it is.

Yeah, there will be lots of users making such content with console exclusivity. Are you able to critically parse your own statements before making them?

Actually, this just shows how out of touch you are with the Console industry. Ben's statement is not only correct, it's prophetic (although it's obvious do to it's linear extrapolation of today)

Hmm...OK, on the one hand he is recognizing Valve not spending money on developing content by having the community do so, and on the other he is talking about "console only". My simple question: which console only users are going to create the content?
Hmm...that's a PC type of thing, isn't it? Since you can make a game for both the PC and the console, get the sales from both, and the content from the PC for the delivery system you propose, it still seems sort of silly to be proposing a "Console only" deal as associated with "nVidia exclusive" when "nVidia exclusive" will be destructive to the very community support you propose will provide dividends for the console.

XBox Next is the de facto online service at this time and is the template for the Next Generation which is being built around Broadband and the distrobution of digital medium via this method. Sony is definatly gearing up for this type of synergy big-time; although at this time MS has the lead.

And this ties into nVidia exclusive development on the PC, how?

Look no further than the 10 or so games for XBox Live! which have additional downloadable content thats distributed thew the MS controlled fabric and stored on the HD. Ubisoft's widely acclaimed SplinterCell has additional levels that are released to Xbox players just like Valve's done on the PC arena.

That's all well and good, and would seem to have nothing at all to do with the issue I had with his statement. Hmm...thanks for the valuable addition to the discussion, though.

This E3 should be quite exciting for the Online push.. you're quite behind the times.

Ahhh...sure, Vince.

I've already said it makes sense to do a console port, what you continue to fail to do is relate that to the proposition of "nVidia exclusive" on the PC.

It makes sence because of the state of the gaming industry and it's trends.

You say as you proceed to base your conclusion on something else entirely.

The cost of a top-tier next generation game will be astronomical in terms of development cost and time - when your pushing around a Billion polygons a second, you need the massivile expensive digitial content and associated physics, AI, et al. to match them.

Ok, games are expensive.

So, when a game like GTA: Vice City sells north of 9-10M copies in like 3 months - you take note.

Ok, games sell well on consoles.

For Valve to have HL2 be a launch title on a Console would be huge

How does a PC release preclude this? In fact, it would seem to make sense to have a PC release widely distributed first, build community support, so content could then be offered for this hypothetical console title in exactly the way you state. Do you begin to see the problem I have with the parallel you draw to automatic nVidia exclusivity?

They then take the game designed around the XBox and it's nVidia graphics chip and, at minimum costs, port it to nVidia powered PCs.

Why does the PC have to come after? Why does it make sense to discuss "OpenGL" as the primary API for Valve (as Ben was) in connection to this? Why wouldn't they code to PC standards (which would work with cards other than nVidia and have a positive impact on community response) and optimize it for the XBox afterwards if they are planning on leveraging user created content delivery?

So, they get the sales of the Consoles, they get any kick-back they can from nVidia, and they get a majority stake in the PC area thanks to nVidia's Nv3x and 4x line's penetration into the marketplace.

Umm...yeah, you've connected that well to the market trends. Silly of me to mention the things I did.
This reminds me of discussion earlier in the thread, and, lo-and-behold, it is a repetition of what I addressed and what I said to address it back then.

 

[Tahir2]

1) Is HL2 going to be released on console only?

a) Yes
b) No
c) Don't know

2) Is HL2 going to be released on PC and run only on the NV3x family?

a) Yes
b) No
c) Don't know

3) Is HL2 going to be released on PC and run on any DirectX 9 card?

a) Yes
b) No
c) Don't know

4) Is HL2 going to be released on console before it is released on PC (if it is to be released on both)?

a) Yes
b) No
c) Don't know


5) So there are many arguments for and against all the questions I posed but does anyone here have any hard information that can be answered with a simple(r) yes or no?

a) Yes
b) No
c) Don't know

My answers are as follows:

(1)c (2)c (3)c (4)c (5)b

I answered 5) with a 'No' on a hunch

 

[Vince]

Hmm...OK, on the one hand he is recognizing Valve not spending money on developing content by having the community do so, and on the other he is talking about "console only". My simple question: which console only users are going to create the content?

http://playstation2-linux.com/

:Shock at how little this guy knows:

There are also several games that I know of for PS2 that have editors built in as well - the recently released broadband capable MidnightClubII comes to mind.

Since you can make a game for both the PC and the console, get the sales from both, and the content from the PC for the delivery system you propose, it still seems sort of silly to be proposing a "Console only" deal as associated with "nVidia exclusive" when "nVidia exclusive" will be destructive to the very community support you propose will provide dividends for the console.

Again, your soo very out of touch - your comments reak of ignorance. Go ask Archie in the Console forum (former Square programmer) why SquareSoft doesn't put the Final Fantasy series on XBox. The truth is, porting to even a closed box system like XBox would require such a massive retooling for Square that it's not finacially viable for the returns.

And thats for a closed box!! Inagine having to deal with the PC and it's open enviroment where no two systems are alike!!

It's easy for someone like you to state that "porting to every platform is better than one or two", but to the company's CFO and the bean counters who have to make this financially viable - it's imposible.

Just think of the customer service personel increase when going from PS2 to the PC. You need dedicated people knowledgable in the diffrent PC graphics parts, problems... and these people need more room, more equiptment, et al. It's huge.

And this ties into nVidia exclusive development on the PC, how?

Design to a Console, port to the PC IHV that supplies the consoles 3D subsystem and you have the best of both worlds.

That's all well and good, and would seem to have nothing at all to do with the issue I had with his statement. Hmm...thanks for the valuable addition to the discussion, though.

Again, you stated:

Scales of economy. Valve's model concerning CounterStrike(etc) wasn't viable on the consoles until recently(allowing additional levels, content to be DLed, acceptable gaming environment). Now it is.

Yeah, there will be lots of users making such content with console exclusivity. Are you able to critically parse your own statements before making them?

I've stated that not only is there developer dl/able content but also consumer created. I just figured you were atleast a bit knowledgable about the console arena and the development happening on PS2 Linux and XBox Linux - but I was wrong.

How does a PC release preclude this? In fact, it would seem to make sense to have a PC release widely distributed first, build community support, so content could then be offered for this hypothetical console title in exactly the way you state. Do you begin to see the problem I have with the parallel you draw to automatic nVidia exclusivity?

Again, economies of scale and the related costs to maintain these seperate platforms is prohibited. How about you go talk to a real developer in the console room?

 

[OpenGL guy]

Again, your soo very out of touch - your comments reak of ignorance. Go ask Archie in the Console forum (former Square programmer) why SquareSoft doesn't put the Final Fantasy series on XBox. The truth is, porting to even a closed box system like XBox would require such a massive retooling for Square that it's not finacially viable for the returns.

And thats for a closed box!! Inagine having to deal with the PC and it's open enviroment where no two systems are alike!!

You may be correct, but your example is poor. Many of the Final Fantasy games are available for PCs and an Xbox is not that much different from a PC.