Never Settle bundle updated for R9 Series Cards; Battlefield 4

[smackababy]

It might be EA who allowed non-290X BF4 bundling at this early stage, pretty sure it will help their sales numbers:

"The sales declines posted by Assassin’s Creed IV and Battlefield 4 was severe. Sales of Creed are down 60 per cent year-on-year, while Battlefield 4’s sales are down 69 per cent compared with 2011’s Battlefield 3. Week one sales of FIFA?14 were also down 24 per cent."

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/rough-waters-the-next-generation-transition/0123896

That is for console games with an expecting next gen release this week. Nobody who was buying a PS4 or Xbox One is going to buy BF4 for Xbox 360 or PS3 right now. Of course, those sales are down. Do we have PC numbers? Looks like BF4 has sold roughly 230k on PC since Oct 29th. BF3 in it's total life has sold about 10x that. BF4 is also having a good amount of issues so far.

 

[tg2708]

Not that I need it, but I guess I'll email AMD and attach a video of my 290X and two 290s. I'll stand behind them with a huge machete, garbed in a head scarf, while reading off gibberish on some 3x5 cards, intermingled with threats to decapitate the cards.

I'll report back.

If you are willing to sell one for a decent price (code) let me know.

 

[Vesku]

That is for console games with an expecting next gen release this week. Nobody who was buying a PS4 or Xbox One is going to buy BF4 for Xbox 360 or PS3 right now. Of course, those sales are down. Do we have PC numbers? Looks like BF4 has sold roughly 230k on PC since Oct 29th. BF3 in it's total life has sold about 10x that. BF4 is also having a good amount of issues so far.

Doesn't matter that they are console numbers, still means EA will want to bump overall sale numbers.

 

[smackababy]

Doesn't matter that they are console numbers, still means EA will want to bump overall sale numbers.

And, when the new consoles come out, most of their bump will come from those. The large slowdown in sales is across the board for cross gen games, I'm sure. It has nothing to do with PC at all. Madden, Fifa, COD, AC4, etc aren't selling as well right now either, because people are waiting to get them on next gen.

Selling AMD a million units on PC might help, but at what cost? Now, rather than buying BF4 for $60 on Origin, a lot of people will either get a code for cheaper or wait for the inevitable sale to follow due to everyone getting codes for cheaper and the slow down. I think few people expected this bundle to happen so soon. I figured after holiday season, myself.

 

[Stuka87]

And, when the new consoles come out, most of their bump will come from those. The large slowdown in sales is across the board for cross gen games, I'm sure. It has nothing to do with PC at all. Madden, Fifa, COD, AC4, etc aren't selling as well right now either, because people are waiting to get them on next gen.

Selling AMD a million units on PC might help, but at what cost? Now, rather than buying BF4 for $60 on Origin, a lot of people will either get a code for cheaper or wait for the inevitable sale to follow due to everyone getting codes for cheaper and the slow down. I think few people expected this bundle to happen so soon. I figured after holiday season, myself.

EA makes a lot of its money related to BF4 on DLC and premium accounts.

Everybody getting a next gen console is not going to buy the game for current gens. The numbers in a month will mean a lot more than they do now.

 

[Spidre]

And, when the new consoles come out, most of their bump will come from those. The large slowdown in sales is across the board for cross gen games, I'm sure. It has nothing to do with PC at all. Madden, Fifa, COD, AC4, etc aren't selling as well right now either, because people are waiting to get them on next gen.

Selling AMD a million units on PC might help, but at what cost? Now, rather than buying BF4 for $60 on Origin, a lot of people will either get a code for cheaper or wait for the inevitable sale to follow due to everyone getting codes for cheaper and the slow down. I think few people expected this bundle to happen so soon. I figured after holiday season, myself.

Or they will offset the losses with a flood of DLC. :hmm:

 

[Vesku]

Selling AMD a million units on PC might help, but at what cost?

Not much considering AMD is offsetting a portion. Plus it will look good in the executive meetings.

 

[smackababy]

Or they will offset the losses with a flood of DLC. :hmm:

They've already announced the DLC, so unless a flood means more than already announced, I doubt it. Plus, for most users the first DLC is free.

 

[Maverickbcp]

So does this mean everyone who purchases a R9 270 and above will ONLY get BF4 bundled with the card or will they be eligible for the silver/gold rewards with the Never Settle Forever deal as well?

 

[24601]

God damn it. I would have totally bought a 290 if I could get BF4 for free. Now I have one more reason not to buy one.......

Also wasted a crapton of money on the game since it will be bargain basement super quick on ebay/forums now.

Thanks oba.... AMD.

Wasted a ton of my friends' money on having them buy the game too soon as well as I didn't think the game would drop to 30-40 USD so quickly because of this.

 

[krumme]

God damn it. I would have totally bought a 290 if I could get BF4 for free. Now I have one more reason not to buy one.......

Also wasted a crapton of money on the game since it will be bargain basement super quick on ebay/forums now.

Thanks oba.... AMD.

Wasted a ton of my friends' money on having them buy the game too soon as well as I didn't think the game would drop to 30-40 USD so quickly because of this.

You will end up buying a 290 anyway if you want best performance in bf4 especially if you run multicard setup. Very easy decision.

 

[24601]

You will end up buying a 290 anyway if you want best performance in bf4 especially if you run multicard setup. Very easy decision.

If you have read any of my other posts on the subject you would know that my plan to get a 290 was only to try to consolidate my Litecoin hash rate into 1 fewer cards so I can get a 780 or 770 when G-sync comes out. This has to be done without long term hearing damage, which will be a challenge, since the card will most definitely need to run at 100% fan to cool the card in such a use case.

My 5% chance hope is that HIS brings an IceQ Turbo style cooler for the 290.

My 7970 is already cpu bottlenecked. I don't need anything faster from AMD until Mantle comes out.

 

[3DVagabond]

Obviously that misses the point and entirely ignores human behavior. A robot that strictly adheres to policy wouldn't bat an eye, but a real person feels slighted. Especially by how obvious AMD made it that they were out to withhold from their core adopters, which is short sighted.

If they made this thing retroactive, I would have been very pleased with my purchase, even more so and it would have been major props to AMD. Withholding the deal only lowers my opinion of them. It was already hard to move from Nvidia, who I have had great luck with since I sold my 4870's and more recently my 7970 because of HDMI issues. This decision to put off the deal makes my time back with AMD (after having HDMI issues) soured right out of the gate.

You know, there are retailers with price protection policies, return defectives straight to them (at least for a certain time period) and not have send them in for RMA, get professional advice so you don't purchase incompatible hardware, etc... They aren't going to be the cheapest option though. Everything has it's price. In the end no company is obligated to retro or extend sales and promotions. AMD did it with their game bundles before and I didn't see it convert anyone into loyal AMD customers. Everyone said, "Oh, isn't that awesome", but probably bought the 770 when it came out because it was 2% faster than the 7970GHz.

I know it sucks to miss out on a sale. In the end though it's nothing AMD did to disadvantage you personally, like you are taking it. I think we're better off with $400 cards that can trade blows with cards costing $100's more.

 

[SimianR]

Hey I feel all the R9 290/290X owners pain. I bought a Geforce 760 like 2 weeks before the NVIDIA holiday bundle was announced so I missed out on 2 free games Unfortunately PC hardware is not cheap and depending on when you buy you get screwed

 

[RussianSensation]

I'm kinda pissed too, since I bought BF4 over the weekend. If I would have known AMD would be giving them away for free, I would have waited for forums members to sell them at half the price I paid.

Is this a sarcastic comment? So if I wanted to buy AC Black Flag, SC: Blacklist and Batman: AO, I should be pissed as hell at NV for bundling 3 free games with their GPUs? Ummm....no. This like buying 4th generation iPad two weeks before iPad Air came out. No matter what happens, someone is going to get screwed. Heck, NV dropped the price on MSI Lightning 780 from $750 USD to $535 USD and added 3 free games. That means in a matter of weeks, someone who go this card lost > $200 in resale value + never got 3 free games.

At least we now have AMD to thank for NV and AMD feverishly competing on price and game bundles this holiday season. :thumbsup:

--

As far as R9 290/X owners being upset, I'd be way more upset about buying a reference card without intention of water cooling it. R9 290's OC potential isn't realized without a better cooler and the reference cooler is too noisy imo. I presume the majority of PC gamers are waiting for AIB 290 cards will take advantage of this bundle anyway. The cost of an early adopter has generally been paying higher price and receiving less free perks. That's very often the case with early adopters.

 

[Shmee]

Is this a sarcastic comment? So if I wanted to buy AC Black Flag, SC: Blacklist and Batman: AO, I should be pissed as hell at NV for bundling 3 free games with their GPUs? Ummm....no. This like buying 4th generation iPad two weeks before iPad Air came out. No matter what happens, someone is going to get screwed. Heck, NV dropped the price on MSI Lightning 780 from $750 USD to $535 USD and added 3 free games. That means in a matter of weeks, someone who go this card lost > $200 in resale value + never got 3 free games.

At least we now have AMD to thank for NV and AMD feverishly competing on price and game bundles this holiday season. :thumbsup:

--

As far as R9 290/X owners being upset, I'd be way more upset about buying a reference card without intention of water cooling it. R9 290's OC potential isn't realized without a better cooler and the reference cooler is too noisy imo. I presume the majority of PC gamers are waiting for AIB 290 cards will take advantage of this bundle anyway. The cost of an early adopter has generally been paying higher price and receiving less free perks. That's very often the case with early adopters.

I honestly am upset about 2 things: no free BF4 yet, and no voltage control. I think the lack of voltage control right now is the biggest obstacle for OCing.

I contacted newegg, they said they don't offer the promotion, that I should go to the manufacturer, powercolor. I went ahead and sent powercolor an email, but their site is kinda hard to navigate and find customer support info on.

Anyways, is what newegg said true? Is this a powercolor issue now? Or should I contact AMD or recontact newegg?

 

[96Firebird]

Is this a sarcastic comment?

No...?

Can you not see how what I posted makes sense? I am selfish, if I could have saved myself money and didn't I am not happy.

 

[OILFIELDTRASH]

When does this start?

 

[blackened23]

Does the bf4 code come bundled with the card? Are the BF4 "limited edition" price premiums going to be the new price points? I'm still confused by this. The BF4 edition cards had a 30$ price premium - will that remain, or, no? I'm still not understanding this. In any case, I hope to see a flood of BF4 codes in various classified sections soon.

 

[OILFIELDTRASH]

Yeah I'm not seeing anything mentioned on newegg. I'm like you guys and would rather pick up a cheap copy than buying a whole card atm. I'm likely spending money on a ps4 instead.

 

[Kenmitch]

Yeah I'm not seeing anything mentioned on newegg. I'm like you guys and would rather pick up a cheap copy than buying a whole card atm. I'm likely spending money on a ps4 instead.

Notice the coupon in shipping box. Current stock may not include it if there is no mention of it.

 

[Teizo]

It seems CurrentlyPissed is currently pissed...

Jokes aside,it was a kinda stupid move by AMD.I do agree that people shouldn't be bitching about it as nothing was promised,but if they wanted to start bundles so soon after release,why not announce it along with the card's release?It's not like something changed within a week.

Yeah, it would have been a much better PR move to announce the Holiday Bundle on schedule with the launch of the 290. It was only a week. These bundles don't just happen over night. They are negotiated in advance. Why AMD decided to put it off a week or couldn't negotiate better is weird, and given they try to market value to their cards, you would think aligning the game bundle along with the launch of the 290 would have been a no brainier.

It is good they have the bundle now, but whoever is responsible for this screwed up.

 

[blastingcap]

I have a Silver bundle. Can anyone please tell me what happens if I redeem the code? Can I choose a pre-order of Thief and lock that in, or do I have to wait till February 2014 to select it? I'm worried because I think my code expires Dec. 31, 2013 so I can't really wait till February to redeem it.

 

[Rvenger]

I have a Silver bundle. Can anyone please tell me what happens if I redeem the code? Can I choose a pre-order of Thief and lock that in, or do I have to wait till February 2014 to select it? I'm worried because I think my code expires Dec. 31, 2013 so I can't really wait till February to redeem it.

It will appear on the list of games here.

http://sites.amd.com/us/promo/never-settle/Pages/nsreloadedforever.aspx

And it did.. so yes you can get it today. It will expire 12/31 and the code will no longer be valid. I have an expired one at home from last year and it does not work.

 

[blastingcap]

It will appear on the list of games here.

http://sites.amd.com/us/promo/never-settle/Pages/nsreloadedforever.aspx

And it did.. so yes you can get it today. It will expire 12/31 and the code will no longer be valid. I have an expired one at home from last year and it does not work.

OK thanks, that's a relief. If anyone knows anything about what games will be added to Gold and Silver tiers before Dec. 31 please share.