[Forbes] Follow-up: THE TRUTH About GameWorks, AMD Optimization, and 'Watch Dogs'

[blackened23]

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonev...ut-gameworks-amd-optimization-and-watch-dogs/

To put this particular argument to bed, I told Cebenoyan I wanted crystal clear clarification, asking “If AMD approached Ubisoft and said ‘We have ideas to make Watch Dogs run better on our hardware,’ then Ubisoft is free to do that?”

“Yes,” he answered. “They’re absolutely free to.”


And there’s nothing built in to GameWorks that disables AMD performance? “No, never.”

Perhaps more fascinating was Nvidia’s response when I flipped the situation around. What about AMD-partnered titles like Battlefield 4 and Tomb Raider? How much lead time did Nvidia receive — and how much would they need — to optimize Nvidia GPUs for those games? While I didn’t receive a direct answer, what I got was Nvidia returning fire.

My opinion:

The most telling part of this story is that Mr. Hallock is a marketing guy who knows jack about development while the NV side of the story is told by an actual developer that knows what's going on. He's head of the developer technical relations.

FURTHERMORE....Watch dogs ONLY uses HBAO+ from gameworks which runs at similar speeds on both AMD and NV. So what is AMD fussing about again? More specifically, what is their scum marketing guy Mr. Hallock complaining about again? When there was nothing preventing AMD From approaching UBI to get optimizations in the game?

He goes on to explain that NV at no point and time ever asked developers to cripple performance on AMD GPUs, and what developer would intentionally create a bad experience for 35% of their user base? < serious question there, I assume developers are in the business of selling games.

But the bottom line is AMD's story comes from a marketer. NV's side doesn't come from a marketer. Obvious implications there.

Blackened, let's please keep this in the existing Forbes thread
-ViRGE