Bouncing Zabaglione Bros. said:Bad_Boy said:posted at the [H]
couldnt have said it better myselfdavidj said:Can someone please explain the following to me.
Several months ago prior to the 6800 generation. Ati paid valve MILLIONS of dollars(this was OK of course), HL2 and any game using PS2.0 was the shiznit. ATI boards with PS2.0 capabilities were defined as next-gen or superior . Of course any nvidia owner at that time was just a foolish <bleep> for buying "old or inferior technology.
NOW the 6800 is PS3.0 ready if you will and the x800 is not. Now that things are in reverse, PS3.0 is called unimportant. The 6800 is not considered next-gen at all, and a few future games will use PS3.0 well no big deal. Now all of a sudden Nvidia is involved in crooked,shady back room deals. Heck Ati & Valve through a damn party sent out press releases & the entire world new that MILLIONS had changed hands. But that was OK.
Did I miss something here?????????
The difference is that ATI paid Valve millions to get the marketing deal and the pack-in/voucher for Half-Life 2. Nvidia is doing the same thing with this unnamed developer (which is fine) but in addition is insisting that said developer does not support cards that use SM2.0, which includes R350, NV3x, R420.
The only way the ATI/Valve position would be the same is if ATI had paid money, but insisted that ONLY SM2.0 be supported, and that all earlier cards (such as Radeon 8500, Geforce 4) which could use a SM 1.x mode were deliberately excluded from HL2's code.
Paying a developer to code for your card is not a problem. Paying for a developer to deliberately not support your competitor's cards and to orphan your own customers is not.
To further this, HL2 has 2.0 shaders, yes, and it works on all 2.0 (and above) hardware, vendor agnostic so ATI did NOT pay them to deliberately NOT support everyone. Does this unknown game allow this supposed 3.0 support to run on all 3.0 hardware? Are they going a step further and doing some sort of Vendor ID check? I think this company will run a huge risk at excluding the MILLIONS of ATI 2.0 hardware. It certainly would seem like a disservice to the people who buy the game. I guess it boils down to if it really makes a difference in the game, not just programmatically.