NVIDIA Dictates Advertised Video Card Pricing

[Cuular]

if I understood the article correctly, Nvidia was trying to have all of the like cards listed with the same price to help the consumer see which items really are the same. Basically any card nvidia has deemed to be 199.99 should have the same performance.

With them all listed at the same price, you know what cards are the same, instead of trying to figure out if that 169.99 card is the same as the 230.99 one from a more name brand manufacturer.

The idea makes sense, but the implementation seems to sucketh.

 

[Munky]

Originally posted by: Cuular
if I understood the article correctly, Nvidia was trying to have all of the like cards listed with the same price to help the consumer see which items really are the same. Basically any card nvidia has deemed to be 199.99 should have the same performance.

With them all listed at the same price, you know what cards are the same, instead of trying to figure out if that 169.99 card is the same as the 230.99 one from a more name brand manufacturer.

The idea makes sense, but the implementation seems to sucketh.

That's not the way I understand it. The cards can still be priced at whatever the etailer wants, they just can't show the price in an easily accessible manner. Overall, this just continues the trend of NV confusing the customers, first the naming scheme, and now this tactic. How is this supposed to increase sales? Are they hoping the average Joe will just give up on comparing cards based on prices, and instead just buy a 8400gs 512MB XXX edition based on Nvidia's halo marketing image?

 

[PalitGuy]

When I checked yesterday at Newegg, if you wanted to compare the lowest priced 9600GT with the lowest priced 8800GT it would require 35 clicks not including changing pages. If you wanted to check two other online stores you're looking at 105 clicks. That seems a little excessive to me.

I see a lot of people saying this is the way things work with cars and TVs and appliances etc. People don't typically shop online for those items (new) so they don't have any need to see what price someone else is selling them for outside of what you can find locally.

No matter where you go you can always haggle with these folks to get a lower price.

It is also interesting that these products are all identical and manufactured by the same company i.e. Mitsubishi makes Mitsubishi TVs.

But the workd of computer components is a little different. Product specs can very, bundles can vary and you can have stuff shipped from virtually anywhere. Different manufacturers have different selling attributes.

In some cases, companies add an outlandish lifetime warranty or a game bundle. In Palit's case, we typically forego those with a more modest bundle and a two-year warranty and roll that cost savings into the price of the card so it costs less. That makes price part of our bundle.

So here's a question for everyone. If it's ok to obscure the actual cost of a card, is it ok to obscure the length of the warranty or what games come with it?

 

[lupi]

Didn't click on the link, but if this is what I think it is it's perfectly legal. Many companies have agreements they make their "authorized resellers" adhere to. That's the reason you can head to BB or CC and click on many of the sale items and the price will say click to add to cart to see sale price.

They're not forcing them to maintain a bottom level price though, which is now allowed and extremely anti consumer.

 

[Rhino2]

Originally posted by: m0mentary
damn that policy basically screams "screw the customers"

Ahh...nVidia....