I think folks just assume there’s some correlation between OEM volume and DIY volume so if retail is a wasteland it must be the case for OEM too. Of course that could be an extremely wrong assumption and maybe the vast majority of launch volume goes to OEMs as that has more far reaching impact in their ability to ship entire systems.
Retail isn't/wasn't the wasteland as it's being/was perceived to be. Even with the early reports it was evident that retailers were doing inventory management (as a nicer term) on their own end, with many who double as system builders allocating inventory to those builds. From what I remember for example OCuk had RTX 5080 systems at 1-2 weeks out but single GPUs orders with much longer wait times after the initial batch. I also recall some retailer having their website crawled indicating 0 retail 5080 units but quite a lot of 5080 systems.
Otherwise in terms of broader allocation dynamics we know for instance Nvidia has already been shipping 50xx series GPUs out for laptops, something I'm guessing AMD is not likely doing so with their allotments (and almost certainly nowhere near the same ratio).
Just using hypothetical numbers to illustrate this issue if we assume going by previous market share ratios let's say Nvidia ships 80k GPUs and AMD ships 20k. But Nvidia's 80k is split between 10k retail, 15k SI, 15k OEM, 40K mobile while AMD's is split as 15k retail and 5k SI who shipped more? Well that depends on perspective.
With respect to Nvidia abandoning gaming that narrative is a great example of contemporary outrage culture permeating everything with a healthy dose of entitlement on top. Yeah the company that’s invested the most heavily in gaming hardware and software and has 80%+ of the gaming market is abandoning gamers. It’s so dumb.
Just to clarify what I was referring to here. When people are discussing the marginalization of gaming for AI I think what they need to keep in mind that their demographic isn't even representative of gaming for Nvidia. We can forget about AI for moment and just look at how important the market demographic they belong to just in terms of gaming/consumer Geforce products for Nvidia. That would actually like paint an even more dire situation as rather than being 10% of Nvidia's revenue, you're looking at maybe 1%.
To be more specific I'm referring to the lesser importance of the demographic that places high importance on content from the likes of HUB, Gamer's Nexus, Computerbase (the kind that would also do their survey) and etc. and in the past maybe sites like HardOCP. And by extension the marketing priority Nvidia places on marketing to those demographics compared to say AMD due to the relative importance of each just for their gaming GPU products.
We've seen this for awhile now with Nvidia marketing outside of the traditional tech enthusiast space. Youtubers like Marques Brownlee for example cover Geforce products, but I'm guessing they are not covering AMD much less Intel GPU launches. I don't follow all this other stuff but I'd wager Nvidia has more marketing presence across all media/social media spaces. Even places like Digital Foundry do not serve the same traditional enthusiast space as the hardware techtubers/sites I mentioned earlier, and Nvidia is partnering more with outlets like in terms of coverage.
