I feel for 3dfx's employees and their families
Getting news of this nature, particularly during this time of year, is never reason to celebrate.
Robo
"what's sad is that I think a lot of the hardships endured by 3dfx and their "inferior" graphics cards are the results of shortsighted idiotic slams that many website review "journalists" have taken at them"
This news, while not pleasant to hear, is entirely 3dfx's fault. They are extremely poor at the business and marketplace aspects. You can see it yourself on this board via their employees, they focus on technology that THEY deem important and then try to push it. That may work fine for the miniscule retail market, but the retail market can't support a high tech company like 3dfx(as this proves).
Dell, Gateway and Compaq were all potential customers for 3dfx, and what did they have to offer them? Less features on the side of the box, and THAT is what matters. This never has been rocket science, they have had people screaming at the top of their lungs at them for several years telling them what they needed to compete, they were blindly devoted to pushing what they decided the market wanted. They now are seeing the end result.
Many of the major shortcomings of their products, in the MARKETPLACE, are the same ones that the loyal 3dfx fans have been saying didn't matter. AGP texturing, 32bit color, high resolution textures, hardware T&L. You can say whatever you want about how useful they were IN GAMES, but that never has been what mattered in the marketplace. Step back and take a look at the market, what you as a gamer want to see and what OEMs can use to help push their products are two entirely different things.
Buying STB was a very, very poor choice(I wish the old forums were archived so I could post links to the fact that I, and many others, were saying it then). They insisted that it was to lure OEMs, while they were witnessing nVidia's rise without any such offering. They significantly increased their overhead without any real plan on obtaining the increased revenue to justify it.
Going with a dual chip solution for the V5 was the final nail in their coffin. It doesn't matter to the end user, but how many OEMs were going to look seriously at a board that had twice as many chips and still lacked the features that ATi and nV had to offer? Don't think as a gamer, think as a businessman.
Their last truly succesful offering was the Voodoo2, how long did people think they could keep it going? I honestly was shocked to see the news this early, I figured Q1 '01 at the absolute earliest, with Q2 or Q3 being more likely. The writing has been on the wall for a long time now, it seems that most people just didn't want to ackowledge it.
On the competition front, this certainly doesn't change anything at all, those who think it does don't understand the marketplace very well. Right now, and for quite some time now, nVidia has been competing with ATi and only ATi. Matrox, 3dfx and S3 combined don't offer enough marketshare to worry too much about. Even looking at the current generation, the Radeon is the only real competition in the marketplace to the GF2(not in some game benchmark which is of very little importance).
nVidia is still aiming for their goal of "Pushing every pixel on the planet", as they have been for several years now. ATi is still the biggest obstacle for them to overcome, just as they have been for several years now. ATi has only very recently been passed by nVidia in the OEM market, and they also have a console deal of their own coming up(Nintendo's GameCube) along with some very exciting technology from their ArtX acquisition.
In terms of pricing, again, 3dfx has not been competition to nVidia, it has been ATi. Look at where the GF2 was priced before the V5 price drops, set to match the respective Radeon alternative(32MB DDR~GTS, 32MB SDR~GF2MX, 64MBDDR~ 64MB GTS), just as they still are(anyone wonder why the 64MB boards haven't dropped? Because the Radeon hasn't).
For moving the industry forward, outside of FSAA, 3dfx hasn't done anything since the V2. I know, Rampage and GP woulda coulda shoulda, but they didn't. If they had been even keeping pace with everyone else, let alone leading, in terms of features(performance is not nearly as important) we wouldn't be having this discussion.
Getting news of this nature, particularly during this time of year, is never reason to celebrate.Robo
"what's sad is that I think a lot of the hardships endured by 3dfx and their "inferior" graphics cards are the results of shortsighted idiotic slams that many website review "journalists" have taken at them"
This news, while not pleasant to hear, is entirely 3dfx's fault. They are extremely poor at the business and marketplace aspects. You can see it yourself on this board via their employees, they focus on technology that THEY deem important and then try to push it. That may work fine for the miniscule retail market, but the retail market can't support a high tech company like 3dfx(as this proves).
Dell, Gateway and Compaq were all potential customers for 3dfx, and what did they have to offer them? Less features on the side of the box, and THAT is what matters. This never has been rocket science, they have had people screaming at the top of their lungs at them for several years telling them what they needed to compete, they were blindly devoted to pushing what they decided the market wanted. They now are seeing the end result.
Many of the major shortcomings of their products, in the MARKETPLACE, are the same ones that the loyal 3dfx fans have been saying didn't matter. AGP texturing, 32bit color, high resolution textures, hardware T&L. You can say whatever you want about how useful they were IN GAMES, but that never has been what mattered in the marketplace. Step back and take a look at the market, what you as a gamer want to see and what OEMs can use to help push their products are two entirely different things.
Buying STB was a very, very poor choice(I wish the old forums were archived so I could post links to the fact that I, and many others, were saying it then). They insisted that it was to lure OEMs, while they were witnessing nVidia's rise without any such offering. They significantly increased their overhead without any real plan on obtaining the increased revenue to justify it.
Going with a dual chip solution for the V5 was the final nail in their coffin. It doesn't matter to the end user, but how many OEMs were going to look seriously at a board that had twice as many chips and still lacked the features that ATi and nV had to offer? Don't think as a gamer, think as a businessman.
Their last truly succesful offering was the Voodoo2, how long did people think they could keep it going? I honestly was shocked to see the news this early, I figured Q1 '01 at the absolute earliest, with Q2 or Q3 being more likely. The writing has been on the wall for a long time now, it seems that most people just didn't want to ackowledge it.
On the competition front, this certainly doesn't change anything at all, those who think it does don't understand the marketplace very well. Right now, and for quite some time now, nVidia has been competing with ATi and only ATi. Matrox, 3dfx and S3 combined don't offer enough marketshare to worry too much about. Even looking at the current generation, the Radeon is the only real competition in the marketplace to the GF2(not in some game benchmark which is of very little importance).
nVidia is still aiming for their goal of "Pushing every pixel on the planet", as they have been for several years now. ATi is still the biggest obstacle for them to overcome, just as they have been for several years now. ATi has only very recently been passed by nVidia in the OEM market, and they also have a console deal of their own coming up(Nintendo's GameCube) along with some very exciting technology from their ArtX acquisition.
In terms of pricing, again, 3dfx has not been competition to nVidia, it has been ATi. Look at where the GF2 was priced before the V5 price drops, set to match the respective Radeon alternative(32MB DDR~GTS, 32MB SDR~GF2MX, 64MBDDR~ 64MB GTS), just as they still are(anyone wonder why the 64MB boards haven't dropped? Because the Radeon hasn't).
For moving the industry forward, outside of FSAA, 3dfx hasn't done anything since the V2. I know, Rampage and GP woulda coulda shoulda, but they didn't. If they had been even keeping pace with everyone else, let alone leading, in terms of features(performance is not nearly as important) we wouldn't be having this discussion.
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