[Forbes] AMD Is Wrong About 'The Witcher 3' And Nvidia's HairWorks

[geoxile]

So, I actually looked at the guys other articles and the one he posted right before this is:
"To Combat Nvidia's GameWorks, AMD Must Focus On Developing Own Proprietary Graphics Libraries"
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonev...eveloping-own-proprietary-graphics-libraries/

Really? So the solution to this problem is to make more proprietary libraries so eventually we are going to need both an AMD and nVidia card in our systems to run the games with the desired framerates/settings.

Gawd damn.

He's perfectly right. Consumers have spoken. They like gameworks, they like physx, etc. Proprietary, locked down features is what the people are paying for. The sooner AMD gets that, the sooner they'll start fighting back.

 

[x3sphere]

So, I actually looked at the guys other articles and the one he posted right before this is:
"To Combat Nvidia's GameWorks, AMD Must Focus On Developing Own Proprietary Graphics Libraries"
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonev...eveloping-own-proprietary-graphics-libraries/

Really? So the solution to this problem is to make more proprietary libraries so eventually we are going to need both an AMD and nVidia card in our systems to run the games with the desired framerates/settings.

Gawd damn.

I think it could backfire on them if they do that. Nvidia is in the unique position to do it because they already have like 70% of the market. AMD pursuing its own GameWorks-esque program, would not be anywhere near as successful IMHO.

AMD needs to continue delivering on price/performance and work on improving its brand image. The R9 290 series kept getting slammed for heat/power concerns due to the terrible reference cooler, and non-reference options didn't show up until like 3 months later.

 

[SirPauly]

So, I actually looked at the guys other articles and the one he posted right before this is:
"To Combat Nvidia's GameWorks, AMD Must Focus On Developing Own Proprietary Graphics Libraries"
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonev...eveloping-own-proprietary-graphics-libraries/

Really? So the solution to this problem is to make more proprietary libraries so eventually we are going to need both an AMD and nVidia card in our systems to run the games with the desired framerates/settings.

Gawd damn.

That is fear mongering to think that one needs to run the game or to enjoy the game with a nVidia platform or AMD platform. These are IHV specific or proprietary features that may improve fidelity for one's customer base -- but the game can be enjoyed over-all by a competitor. The idea of only offering features for everyone handicaps a company that desires to innovate or do more for their customers -- if one company desires to invest, innovate, risk and spend more resources based on their architectural and software strengths, and over-all vision, I see no problem over-all by either AMD or nVidia.

 

[Pariah]

He's perfectly right. Consumers have spoken. They like gameworks, they like physx, etc. Proprietary, locked down features is what the people are paying for. The sooner AMD gets that, the sooner they'll start fighting back.

Not really. Consumers aren't buying NVidia cards for those features. Those features are successful because they happened to be available on the cards sold by the dominant player in the market. If Nvidia bundled a packet of grape jelly with every card, it would instantly become the dominant jelly in the industry, but you couldn't really claim that the consumers have spoken, and they all want grape jelly. Correlation does not imply causation.

What AMD needs to do is increase market share. The formula for that is pretty simple. Sell a better product than the competition for less money. With greater market share comes the ability to have greater influence on the industry. Trying to create proprietary technologies when you are a minority player is a horrendous business decision unless it is a truly revolutionary technology.

 

[xthetenth]

One can be a victim once or twice. When it is becomes a pattern then you want to be the victim. AMD constantly not being on top of major game releases tells me they want to be the victim.

People continually buying NV tells me they want to be the victim. I'm not risking a repeat of my 970's memory or Kepler with my next card, that's for sure.

 

[geoxile]

Not really. Consumers aren't buying NVidia cards for those features. Those features are successful because they happened to be available on the cards sold by the dominant player in the market. If Nvidia bundled a packet of grape jelly with every card, it would instantly become the dominant jelly in the industry, but you couldn't really claim that the consumers have spoken, and they all want grape jelly. Correlation does not imply causation.

What AMD needs to do is increase market share. The formula for that is pretty simple. Sell a better product than the competition for less money. With greater market share comes the ability to have greater influence on the industry. Trying to create proprietary technologies when you are a minority player is a horrendous business decision unless it is a truly revolutionary technology.

PhysX, Gameworks, Gsync, and all the other exclusive features are selling points. They're not simply successful because they're attached to the market leader. AMD's marketshare falling to ~20% is a recent development with a perfect storm of GameWorks, G-sync, and Maxwell.

 

[MisterLilBig]

Devs are grunts too in a large company. I wouldn't put the blame squarely on Devs. It's Publishers and stockholders, whose main interest is money. If your employer says to implement Gameworks, well you've no say if you want to be paid sometimes.

By developers, I mean the company that actually developed or is paying for the game to be developed. Also, developers have a choice in using, picking, choosing, deciding on a publisher or what publisher to use. And more so since digital stores are widely popular now, they can self publish!

The argument "here", about game "x" or game "y" using some features should be against the game company, not the CPU/GPU company.

The "developers" decided on a platform for the game. The people need to complain to the "developers", if they want to complain.

 

[Jovec]

Consumers have spoken.

No, they haven't. They don't know or care. Even those who do know - like myself, you, and the other AT members - likely don't base GPU purchases solely on proprietary features. Those that do are free to make their own choice, but I've been computer gaming for over 20 years and I have never encountered a game that I wish I was running on the competitor's GPU. Outside of the rare case when a game is crippled/broken on one brand, there is no meaningful difference between gaming on one brand of GPU over the other at the same performance level.

This is almost entirely about developers and publishers wanting to offload development costs on to Nvidia and AMD. Nvidia and AMD oblige because they want the exposure, the press and marketing, and they are hoping to lock customers into their brand.

We are 10 years away from Nvidia and AMD just having to supply their own complete game engine to devs. At least, we were before the main engine techs could be licensed on the super-cheap.

I have no problem with Nvidia or AMD developing gaming libraries specific for their GPUs. I do have a problem with developers and publishers using GPU specific libraries with licensing agreements that lock-out their ability to work with the other.

 

[Pariah]

PhysX, Gameworks, Gsync, and all the other exclusive features are selling points. They're not simply successful because they're attached to the market leader. AMD's marketshare falling to ~20% is a recent development with a perfect storm of GameWorks, G-sync, and Maxwell.

NVidia being the dominant market leader is not a recent development. They have had over 60% market share since the end of 2011. The degree of dominance has increased recently, but not the fact that they are the dominant force which allows basically everything they add to their cards to be instant market leaders. When Nvidia released Gameworks in Q1 of last year, they commanded 65% of the market. Now they are in the low 70's. Not a major shift, but one which has far more to do with the release of Maxwell, while AMD has released nothing since then.

 

[geoxile]

No, they haven't. They don't know or care. Even those who do know - like myself, you, and the other AT members - likely don't base GPU purchases solely on proprietary features. Those that do are free to make their own choice, but I've been computer gaming for over 20 years and I have never encountered a game that I wish I was running on the competitor's GPU. Outside of the rare case when a game is crippled/broken on one brand, there is no meaningful difference between gaming on one brand of GPU over the other at the same performance level.

This is almost entirely about developers and publishers wanting to offload development costs on to Nvidia and AMD. Nvidia and AMD oblige because they want the exposure, the press and marketing, and they are hoping to lock customers into their brand.

We are 10 years away from Nvidia and AMD just having to supply their own complete game engine to devs. At least, we were before the main engine techs could be licensed on the super-cheap.

I have no problem with Nvidia or AMD developing gaming libraries specific for their GPUs. I do have a problem with developers and publishers using GPU specific libraries with licensing agreements that lock-out their ability to work with the other.

You're conflating two entirely different things.

Developers implement it because they're getting free labor or help or equipment from Nvidia. The implementation affects consumer perception of Nvidia. I'm not even really sure what your point is. Half your post isn't really disagreeing.

I do agree that developers are putting in features because they want help or more features they can sell about their game. But fact is, people see this stuff and it affects their buying decisions. The idea that consumers don't care is purposeful ignorance. The typical PC gamer isn't some blind idiot. They follow the popular tech "news" sites, all of which report on stuff like physX/FLEX, G-sync, Gameworks, Shadowplay, etc. They watch Nvidia's demonstrations and events. They pay attention to news about upcoming games and what sorts of features they have. They absolutely care, and they absolutely pay attention. You think the people waiting for Witcher 3 didn't pay attention to the Hairworks demos or people didn't pay attention when Borderlands 2's devs started showing off Physx? People care and people want to be able to use those features. When Nvidia's name is attached to those features you can bet it affects people's buying decisions.

You can what you like. But these proprietary, locked down features are a big part of Nvidia's marketing campaign and their reputation as innovator. The only thing people don't care about is whether something is open source.

NVidia being the dominant market leader is not a recent development. They have had over 60% market share since the end of 2011. The degree of dominance has increased recently, but not the fact that they are the dominant force which allows basically everything they add to their cards to be instant market leaders. When Nvidia released Gameworks in Q1 of last year, they commanded 65% of the market. Now they are in the low 70's. Not a major shift, but one which has far more to do with the release of Maxwell, while AMD has released nothing since then.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8446/the-state-of-pc-graphics-sales-q2-2014

AMD was up from 35% in 2013 to 38% in early 2014.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2015-04-17-amd-lost-USD180-million-and-gpu-market-share-in-q1
By Q4 2014, it plummeted to 24% and dropped even further in Q1 2015. Not sure how much but probably around 20% by now, or 80% for Nvidia. It's probably dropped even further after articles about Witcher 3 gimping AMD cards. It's a significant change. And AMD was certainly in a better position in early 2014 with almost 40%. Also, during the Never Settle campaigns AMD showed that they were able to get a lot of devs and titles on board with GE. They definitely weren't being ignored because they had less market share.

 

[MisterLilBig]

The typical PC gamer isn't some blind idiot.

I disagree. Because of ethology.

 

[xthetenth]

It's totally natural to buy in terms of what your purchase will bring you in the short term, and it's very counterintuitive to account for ecosystem health when purchasing.

 

[geoxile]

I disagree. Because of ethology.

Well perhaps they're blind idiots, but they aren't isolated, deaf, blind idiots. They still pay attention to news sites, friends, social media groups, and so forth. When a friend says "Hey did you see the new Witcher 3 hairworks demo? It's wicked!" they're not going to plug their ears. They'll probably check it out and see that it's Hairworks by Nvidia.

 

[JumBie]

This is a pathetic uninformed article.

 

[Stuka87]

He's perfectly right. Consumers have spoken. They like gameworks, they like physx, etc. Proprietary, locked down features is what the people are paying for. The sooner AMD gets that, the sooner they'll start fighting back.

What gamers have you been talking too? Because the whole web is pretty much up in arms about GameWorks right now. With its horrible performance hit (Especially on Kepler cards) because of nVidia purposely making them look bad by setting hairworks to 64x tessellation when there is no visual difference between 16x and 64x.

Your post seriously sounds like sarcasm, so not sure if I should be taking your post seriously or not. I cannot think of a single gamer that is happy about proprietary features that have vendor lock-in. More choices is always better for the consumer, period. It cannot be argued that one choice is the best choice.

 

[MisterLilBig]

Well perhaps they're blind idiots, but they aren't isolated, deaf, blind idiots. They still pay attention to news sites, friends, social media groups, and so forth. When a friend says "Hey did you see the new Witcher 3 hairworks demo? It's wicked!" they're not going to plug their ears. They'll probably check it out and see that it's Hairworks by Nvidia.

So, Nvidia marketing is great? Yes. No one has said otherwise.


And by the Witcher 3 hairworks effects in-game screen shots that I have seen, IMHO, it was not good at all. I saw the comparison pictures at different levels and they did not look at all impressive.

If you meant, like from the first videos of the game that came out, well, there's issues about how the game didn't turn out to be anything like it also. (Why aren't people fighting Nvidia about that? Because, "blind idiots".)

 

[SickBeast]

Hairworks is running beautifully for me on my 280x with the tesselation set to 8x in the drivers. I get about a 5fps performance hit. At 16x I lose 10fps but I can't tell the difference visually between the two so I leave it at 8x.

This article is completely uninformed. The Witcher 3 runs perfectly on the Omega drivers that AMD released some time ago. They are working on a new driver. Honestly if it ain't broke, don't fix it. To be honest nVidia has a bigger problem in that this "feature" of theirs actually runs better on AMD hardware that came out in 2011!

 

[SimianR]

That is fear mongering to think that one needs to run the game or to enjoy the game with a nVidia platform or AMD platform. These are IHV specific or proprietary features that may improve fidelity for one's customer base -- but the game can be enjoyed over-all by a competitor. The idea of only offering features for everyone handicaps a company that desires to innovate or do more for their customers -- if one company desires to invest, innovate, risk and spend more resources based on their architectural and software strengths, and over-all vision, I see no problem over-all by either AMD or nVidia.

There are other ways that a company can innovate though besides introducing proprietary features into games that basically cripple performance on a large % of GPU's. It would be nice if game graphics options remained vendor neutral but AMD/NVIDIA focused on IQ enhancing features outside the game like AA/filtering etc + new tech like VR. I really don't think the GPU market is healthy right now, having so much of the marketshare on one side and having one company use that leverage to basically push these features into games just leads to even more one sided market, eventually leading to less competition, higher prices, stagnant performance, etc. I know everyone wants to think NVIDIA would keep releasing cheap, affordable, GPU's every year but they're dreaming if they think it would happen at the same pace with AMD no longer around.

 

[geoxile]

What gamers have you been talking too? Because the whole web is pretty much up in arms about GameWorks right now. With its horrible performance hit (Especially on Kepler cards) because of nVidia purposely making them look bad by setting hairworks to 64x tessellation when there is no visual difference between 16x and 64x.

Your post seriously sounds like sarcasm, so not sure if I should be taking your post seriously or not. I cannot think of a single gamer that is happy about proprietary features that have vendor lock-in. More choices is always better for the consumer, period. It cannot be argued that one choice is the best choice.

If by the whole web you mean some very vocal AMD users, then okay. Here, OCN, gamefaqs, even /g/, I've noticed most people simply don't see it as an issue and there are even quite a few defenders who legitimately see Gameworks as fair.

Personally, I don't like it on a matter of principle and because I'm an AMD user, but I don't see most people caring. Also, keep in mind that even after CDPR lied out their bum about the downgrade issues and then said that the game wouldn't happen without catering to consoles, the game has been successful on PC as far as I'm aware. And people vehemently defend it, as if their lives depend on it. People don't mind this sort of thing.

So, Nvidia marketing is great? Yes. No one has said otherwise.


And by the Witcher 3 hairworks effects in-game screen shots that I have seen, IMHO, it was not good at all. I saw the comparison pictures at different levels and they did not look at all impressive.

If you meant, like from the first videos of the game that came out, well, there's issues about how the game didn't turn out to be anything like it also. (Why aren't people fighting Nvidia about that? Because, "blind idiots".)

Nvidia's market is great because they have proprietary tech they can market, i.e. GameWorks, G-sync, Physx, CUDA, Shadowplay. You didn't see them marketing TressFX or even OpenGL support now did you?

 

[digitaldurandal]

The typical PC gamer isn't some blind idiot. They follow the popular tech "news" sites, all of which report on stuff like physX/FLEX, G-sync, Gameworks, Shadowplay, etc.

False. The typical PC Gamer does not do this. Just because we are on a forum and we do this. We are not the typical PC Gamer. If you think we are you are severely mistaken.

Please review the Steam statistics for the typical PC Gamer. Most gamers use default resolutions and settings and they are not informed at all. Just like the typical car buyer is not informed, or the typical TV buyer, etc.

 

[digitaldurandal]

Nvidia's market is great because they have proprietary tech they can market, i.e. GameWorks, G-sync, Physx, CUDA, Shadowplay. You didn't see them marketing TressFX or even OpenGL support now did you?

Most gamers do not know what these features are. I don't think Physx is selling very many cards. They have brand recognition. I would guess the Nvidia logo on the splash screen is worth 10x more than any of these features. The thing the features are good for is that the developers like the features being put into their game for free. This gets the splash screen. Most PC Gamers do not have the horsepower to enable hairworks or Physx, they don't have a G-sync monitor and they dont even know what Shadowplay is.

 

[geoxile]

False. The typical PC Gamer does not do this. Just because we are on a forum and we do this. We are not the typical PC Gamer. If you think we are you are severely mistaken.

Please review the Steam statistics for the typical PC Gamer. Most gamers use default resolutions and settings and they are not informed at all. Just like the typical car buyer is not informed, or the typical TV buyer, etc.

Where are you seeing that most steam users use default resolution and settings? I'm seeing that over 50% of GPUs are Nvidia, so they could only be discrete.

You're also conflating technical knowledge with basically watching advertisements. Because they don't know settings to touch they don't follow news sources even though they're abundant on sites like facebook and reddit? That's like saying because most smartphone users are generally clueless, they don't pay attention to what kind of features the iPhone touts.

By the way, I typically use the default resolution for games, since most games just detect my monitor resolution. And I typically use the default (automatically set) settings unless I have some reason to change it, like there's some seriously wrong with performance or I want to try out a particular feature. By your criteria I must not check tech sites. I must not even be here, you're talking to a phantom!

 

[MisterLilBig]

Nvidia's market is great because they have proprietary tech they can market, i.e. GameWorks, G-sync, Physx, CUDA, Shadowplay. You didn't see them marketing TressFX or even OpenGL support now did you?

AMD has been the company with the most updated API support for years. For everything proprietary, there is a non-proprietary version out there. For instance, one of the reasons CUDA is even popular, is because Nvidia themselves destroyed OpenCL support for years.(Which is worse than what Microsoft had done with OpenGL back then.)

Nvidia invests a lot of $$$ on game companies to use their features. Keep in mind, my argument was not about the usage on a proprietary SDK or whatever of the sort. It was about the "hate" being towards those that aren't at fault.

And, AMD has/had tech they marketed and market, and yes, I saw them all. Because, I do follow game tech.


Some developers choose to get some money and use a specific companies tech. This has happened for many years in gaming. The issue I have is that people are blaming, in most cases, AMD, the company that has nothing to do with it.

 

[geoxile]

Most gamers do not know what these features are. I don't think Physx is selling very many cards. They have brand recognition. I would guess the Nvidia logo on the splash screen is worth 10x more than any of these features. The thing the features are good for is that the developers like the features being put into their game for free. This gets the splash screen. Most PC Gamers do not have the horsepower to enable hairworks or Physx, they don't have a G-sync monitor and they dont even know what Shadowplay is.

I disagree. I'm willing to bet most people who followed Witcher 3 has at least seen or heard about Hairworks, even if they don't know exactly what it's called or how to enable it in settings. Likewise for Borderlands 2 and PhysX. What matters is that they see this cool tech and they know that Nvidia has their logo on it.

Use =/= knowledge. Everyone knows what the iPhone is and who sells it and likely what kind of reputation the iPhone has. Doesn't mean they have one or have ever used one.

 

[MisterLilBig]

What matters is that they see this cool tech and they know that Nvidia has their logo on it.

Marketing works, yes. Not sure what you are trying to point out tho.

Marketing works so much that Nvidia is still selling 900 series cards like hotcakes no matter what bad they do and did with them, memory and driver issues, etc...