Nvidia and EA Form an Alliance
- Thread starter jpeter
- Start date
No, this looks quite closely-related to something I've been wanting to see for some time:
I don't expect the rest of the agreement to have much effect, but exclusive games for the latest GPU's will really help people to see the benefits of higher-end hardware earlier.
ATI should do the same thing.
And, of course, all this is riding on the expectation that such exclusive games will never become very widespread, but will just be sort of a "better tech demo" for early-adopters.
While it is doubtful that many of these exclusive games will turn out to be all that great, it does seem quite certain that these games will give people quite a bit more to play with in the latest graphics technology than tech demos.
I don't expect the rest of the agreement to have much effect, but exclusive games for the latest GPU's will really help people to see the benefits of higher-end hardware earlier.
ATI should do the same thing.
And, of course, all this is riding on the expectation that such exclusive games will never become very widespread, but will just be sort of a "better tech demo" for early-adopters.
what else is new??
3dfx and EA had something like this in the past...
Which also caused "the troubles" that nVidia cards had NFS PU just after the launch and for the very same reason all NFS series games (excluding NFS 6 aka. HP2) used Table fog that was only HW supported 3dfx boards. Rash driver (d3da.dll / dx7z.dll / voodooa.dll) engine based games were always primarily optimized for Glide and D3D support was more or less because everyone else had it too. performance in D3d was awful compared to Glide. (for example NFS PU run smoothly on Pentium 233 with Voodoo1, while Celeron 300A and 16MB Matrox G400 had serious troubles running it with same settings.) from the NFS'es you can pick any game since NFS 2 SE all way up to Motor City Online and each of those were way or another optimized for 3dfx cards.
and reason why they do it not until now, is that afaik 3dfx deal was made for 5 years. and that happened somewhere in Q1 / 1998. (and if you count backwards five years from now.... well, you get to the point.)
3dfx and EA had something like this in the past...
Which also caused "the troubles" that nVidia cards had NFS PU just after the launch and for the very same reason all NFS series games (excluding NFS 6 aka. HP2) used Table fog that was only HW supported 3dfx boards. Rash driver (d3da.dll / dx7z.dll / voodooa.dll) engine based games were always primarily optimized for Glide and D3D support was more or less because everyone else had it too. performance in D3d was awful compared to Glide. (for example NFS PU run smoothly on Pentium 233 with Voodoo1, while Celeron 300A and 16MB Matrox G400 had serious troubles running it with same settings.) from the NFS'es you can pick any game since NFS 2 SE all way up to Motor City Online and each of those were way or another optimized for 3dfx cards.
and reason why they do it not until now, is that afaik 3dfx deal was made for 5 years. and that happened somewhere in Q1 / 1998. (and if you count backwards five years from now.... well, you get to the point.)
Well, my understanding of it is that they will getting the OEM rights only. In other words, you'll still be able to buy the games in the shops and play them on your ATI/whatever card but you won't get the game bundled with any other card than an NVidia one.
This would seem logical to me - I can't imagine EA would forgo the chance to sell lots of games to owners of cards other than NVidia ones.
Waltz King
Newcomer
[Sorry for my English...]
I don't think this will be a problem at all. So some EA games will probably have an "nVidia GPUs recommended"-sticker on their boxes or something like that, and maybe some games will feature some "FX-exclusive" (or better "FXclusive"?
) special effects, but EA will make sure that their games will run on other hardware as well. We won't see another "Glide". nVidia's market share is just not big enough.
Remember the "The way it's meant to be played"-campaign? Or Cg? None of these brought us a second "Glide" as some of us expected, or did they?
And about this "exclusive OEM distributor"-deal - well, when I understand this correctly, these EA games will still be sold on the retail market, but nVidia will be the only hardware vendor with *OEM* distribution rights - so we will see some EA games getting bundled with nVidia-based graphic cards just as today, and this just means that you cannot get these games as a software bundle with an ATI-based card (or any other brand's card).
I don't think this will be a problem at all. So some EA games will probably have an "nVidia GPUs recommended"-sticker on their boxes or something like that, and maybe some games will feature some "FX-exclusive" (or better "FXclusive"?
) special effects, but EA will make sure that their games will run on other hardware as well. We won't see another "Glide". nVidia's market share is just not big enough.Remember the "The way it's meant to be played"-campaign? Or Cg? None of these brought us a second "Glide" as some of us expected, or did they?
And about this "exclusive OEM distributor"-deal - well, when I understand this correctly, these EA games will still be sold on the retail market, but nVidia will be the only hardware vendor with *OEM* distribution rights - so we will see some EA games getting bundled with nVidia-based graphic cards just as today, and this just means that you cannot get these games as a software bundle with an ATI-based card (or any other brand's card).
The issue, as I see it, boils down to how this implication manifests in reality:
The rest doesn't really worry me significantly.
EA is exactly the type of short term (in terms of individual titles) focused company that this seems to fit due to their "throw away" franchise focus (not necessarily throw away quality, but throw away treatment): EA establishes or buys rights to franchises where people buy the name...quality is secondary, they have profit based on established franchises (e.g., The Sims), and customer support seems focused not on customer satisfaction with individual titles, but preventing returns for the duration of the time they are selling well.
I'd say the magnitude and frequency of the manifestation of this part of the announcment will depend on the lack of significance of the quality of the title to the bottom line of sales, and the sales figures of the GF FX family. Also, perhaps, on further incentives from nVidia.
The rest doesn't really worry me significantly.
EA is exactly the type of short term (in terms of individual titles) focused company that this seems to fit
due to their "throw away" franchise focus (not necessarily throw away quality, but throw away treatment): EA establishes or buys rights to franchises where people buy the name...quality is secondary, they have profit based on established franchises (e.g., The Sims), and customer support seems focused not on customer satisfaction with individual titles, but preventing returns for the duration of the time they are selling well.I'd say the magnitude and frequency of the manifestation of this part of the announcment will depend on the lack of significance of the quality of the title to the bottom line of sales, and the sales figures of the GF FX family. Also, perhaps, on further incentives from nVidia.
This crap is exactly what we dont need....the fact that the EA team is being supplied with Nvidia cards to program with, only in my eyes proves that the firms future games will be programmed to run better on NV boards. This is a bad trend. I would be just as PO'd about it if it was ATI doing it. Games should be designed, to the best of the programmers knowledge, to run good on all pc platforms. But this is no longer going to be the case....What if the entire gaming comunity fell into this type of mindset?....I would be better off buying a Freakin' console to play on. At least then I know I would be getting the most out of the game I shell out money for. .......F.U. EA Games, I hope this all comes back to haunt you. Unfortunately though, people will buy your titles, not knowing that this type of video card racism is going on behind the scenes....
This is not good.
Will this mean that EA will develop primarily on NV cards and that they will forget all other boards?
In other words, if the game has issues with ATi or other baords, EA will just leave the bugs as they are as they only focus on NV?
Look, CG was designed for NV30, and NV30 barely hit retail, it's TOO EARLY, too PREMATURE to draw conclusions. You have to wait till E3 at least (and wait to check if Half Life 2 is indeed NV30 exclusive or not) before jumping on conclusions.
Will this mean that EA will develop primarily on NV cards and that they will forget all other boards?
In other words, if the game has issues with ATi or other baords, EA will just leave the bugs as they are as they only focus on NV?
Look, CG was designed for NV30, and NV30 barely hit retail, it's TOO EARLY, too PREMATURE to draw conclusions. You have to wait till E3 at least (and wait to check if Half Life 2 is indeed NV30 exclusive or not) before jumping on conclusions.
Good god, people. EA is only agreeing that their titles will only be bundled with NVDA cards. This means that ATI can't sign a deal to bundle their games in with their hardware.
It means nothing with regards to what cards are supported in the game.
It means nothing with regards to the retail sales of the game.
It means nothing about the development of these games. Don't forget that EA is a publisher, not a game studio.
I swear... any time someone can run up the flag and decry DOOM AND GLOOM, they do so and then go on to explain how this is going to RUIN the industry. Please! It's not as if this has been the way the industry has been working for a decade... oh, wait. This is EXACTLY the same way the industry has been working for the past decade.
Any time you see the words "Exclusive agreement" you can conclude that it's primarily advertising. If you don't like advertising, I suggest you kill yourself, because it's not going to get any better.
To sum up:
Wonk! Wonk! Wonk!
It means nothing with regards to what cards are supported in the game.
It means nothing with regards to the retail sales of the game.
It means nothing about the development of these games. Don't forget that EA is a publisher, not a game studio.
I swear... any time someone can run up the flag and decry DOOM AND GLOOM, they do so and then go on to explain how this is going to RUIN the industry. Please! It's not as if this has been the way the industry has been working for a decade... oh, wait. This is EXACTLY the same way the industry has been working for the past decade.
Any time you see the words "Exclusive agreement" you can conclude that it's primarily advertising. If you don't like advertising, I suggest you kill yourself, because it's not going to get any better.
To sum up:
Wonk! Wonk! Wonk!
No......Todays news across the boards tell a different story. NV is supplying EA with GeForce FX's for their programmers. If you dont think that this is going to give NV boards an edge as far as how the game will look and perform, then well, I dont know what to tell you....Nvidia might enjoy having a better games bundle to go along with their boards but it goes much deeper than that....I think that a move like this is just the beginning. If your cards dont perform as well as the competitions, then buy out the programmers(if at all possible) to make sure that they do.......snakes.
flf said:
But to be fair, flf, it could well go a bit beyond just advertising:
I remember EA Sports having a tough time getting DX working as good as Glide in the past in the FIFA soccer series, so if that is any lession to go by, I wouldn't rule out a friver-fumble here and there on other IHV's.
But they would never go truely IHV-exclusive on any big titles me figures.
nooneyouknow
Newcomer
Here is the reality:
1 - This is a marketing play by a company that does not have the fastest product on the market. Argue all you want on the future, but at the present, they don't.
2 - There will be some titles that are enhanced for Nvidia simply by using PS 2.0+ shaders. The developer may even be prohibited from trying to implement the same shader in PS 2.0 with multipass.
3 - Any REAL PS 2.0+ shader will suffer from performance issues. By 2.0+, I mean longer than 65 (whatever the PS 2.0 limit)instructions. Of course, this is all dependant on how many pixels are being run through the shader, but in general, this will adversely affect performance.
4 - Rest assured developers will not be using Nvidia hardware exclusively. They get ATI products very easily and have ATI products in their QA labs.
5 - The ultimate issue will be how 'enhanced' the effects are that are Nvidia exclusive, how they perform (I assume less since they will be performing more instructions), and if it truly makes the game anymore enjoyable.
The only problem that I see if that the mainstream market people will think that this means they need Nvidia hardware to get the best experience in their EA games. And those are the same people that are going to be buying the slower NV3x-based boards, thus when running those 'enhanced effects', they will be slower and slower. Quite the experience I must say
This post is not to start a flame war, etc. It is simply my take on it and that is it.
1 - This is a marketing play by a company that does not have the fastest product on the market. Argue all you want on the future, but at the present, they don't.
2 - There will be some titles that are enhanced for Nvidia simply by using PS 2.0+ shaders. The developer may even be prohibited from trying to implement the same shader in PS 2.0 with multipass.
3 - Any REAL PS 2.0+ shader will suffer from performance issues. By 2.0+, I mean longer than 65 (whatever the PS 2.0 limit)instructions. Of course, this is all dependant on how many pixels are being run through the shader, but in general, this will adversely affect performance.
4 - Rest assured developers will not be using Nvidia hardware exclusively. They get ATI products very easily and have ATI products in their QA labs.
5 - The ultimate issue will be how 'enhanced' the effects are that are Nvidia exclusive, how they perform (I assume less since they will be performing more instructions), and if it truly makes the game anymore enjoyable.
The only problem that I see if that the mainstream market people will think that this means they need Nvidia hardware to get the best experience in their EA games. And those are the same people that are going to be buying the slower NV3x-based boards, thus when running those 'enhanced effects', they will be slower and slower. Quite the experience I must say
This post is not to start a flame war, etc. It is simply my take on it and that is it.
Hellbinder
Banned
Good grief....
Things like this do not happen in a couple days now do they....
You have to be completely blind, or in complete denial not to see the overall pattern and direction of events. Exclusive deals, likely means some form of exclusinve support, likely means more exclusive use of CG and other things, means Nvidias name and tech on the box, means people at the store think they need Nvidia cards becuase 50% of the games on the shelf say so.. right on the box.
Hellbinder[CE said:
It's just marketing and therefore simply not worth getting excited/worried about.
Although it does bother me that Nvidia might be able to convince the general gaming community that their boards are the best, I think that I should find ease in the fact that 'I myself' know whats best for 'myself'....But still, if the majority of games that I enjoy playing, play better on NV graphics, I wont really have a choice but to buy their products. All of the driving games that I love so much, are mostly produced by EA Games(though I love Rallisport Challenge).....This is simply forcing the hand of serious gamers, and I hate it.
