Graphic Cards Nvidia engages in petty Pay-Offs to counter AMD

sultanofswing

sultanofswing

Adept
This SemiAccurate Report may come off as a bit trenchant, but after reading it and a few related stories, one cannot help but find the outrage justified.
Mods: I don't know if this has already been posted, my preliminary search didn't yield results to that effect. I may be mistaken.
A few excerpts:
Nvidia is about to be pounded silly in the GPU space from notebook losses to channel sales, AMD has a full product refresh and Nvidia has no new silicon for several quarters, just more rebrands. On the gaming side AMD CPUs are powering two of the next three consoles and their GPUs are in all three. AMD is the development target for ALL next-gen games, Nvidia is totally out of the enthusiast market, game over and they know it. PC makers won’t even play the usual marketing games, the cost of doing an engine only for Nvidia based PCs is high enough to be a non-starter.

With no console synergies, no XBox, no Playstation 4, no Wii U, and only Shield to ‘brag’ about, how do you counter a competitor’s superior product? Find a credible OEM and pay them off perhaps.
Click to expand...
(SemiAccurate)
It turns out it isn't just one OEM vendor that has been targeted (makes sense, if any difference is to be made)
SemiAccurate did some calling around and the answers probably won’t surprise you. Multiple sources all said the same thing, a certain Nvidia marketing person, they all called him Bryan for no particular reason, has been calling around to all the Tier 3++ gaming PC makers offering large dollops of funding to dump AMD GPUs or so the story goes. Multiple SemiAccurate sources say this number is in the six digit range, several gave exact figures but asked us not to publish them. This isn’t direct cash payments but more towards MDF funding, product discounts, and other quasi-legal kickbacks that are directly tied to and based on sales volume of AMD GPUs.
Click to expand...

There's some more info in PC World's write up on the same issue
Could Nvidia have purchased Origin’s fealty with marketing dollars?

”It certainly sounds feasible,” says Jon Peddie, founder and analyst at Jon Peddie research. Peddie said he had no direct knowledge that this was the case, but “Nvidia, AMD, Intel, VIA Technologies—back when they were in the game—they’ve all done things like that from time to time.”
Click to expand...

PC World is more neutral in its stance as compared to SemiAccurate when it says:
We know what Nvidia has to gain, but there’s no proof that it influenced Origin, financially or otherwise. It’s also possible that Origin simply has a lower tolerance for the failure rates
Click to expand...

Your thoughts on the matter?
 
I'm sure Intel does that too. Earlier they were direct, and as a result, they had to pay a huge fine for it. Now, they must've found some workarounds. It's very hard for a competitor to crop up in the tech field, where only a few hardware and software giants control everything at the top.
 
Back
Top