NVidia & Verant

Proprietary APIs make little sense anymore. It's just a waste of time for the developer to spent too much time to do anything that favor only a fraction of the audience. Glide was a good example. The same reasoning is the root cause of why games don't look like the Werewolf Nvidia demo yet. If only 10% of the audience owns a Geforce 3, 8500, or better, there is no reason for a developer to spend hundreds of man hours catering to that need. Sure there can be other good reasons such as company image, but how much does Verant really care when they have such cash cows as Everquest? Do they want to look like a company that is pushing the limits? Right now Everquest is a pretty simple game graphics wise (even with the new expansion). It might piss off some of their current cult following.

I doubt anything Verant does will be so Nvidia specific that ATI hardware will either just crawl or not work. Now it might run like crap on a Voodoo 5 5500 or Kyro 2, but it is unlikely it will be so huge as to make ATI card owners feel totally screwed. The installed base is too big.

I highly doubt this is going to be THAT big of a deal. Nobody besides His Highness, John Carmack, dares actually pushing the envelope. Buncha pussy developers. ;)

Nvidia following Microsoft's strategy of anti-competition and monopolistic agendas? Wow, big surprise! NOT! Way to squash out other video card companies (e.g. ATI) by hooking up with game companies to optimize for their cards. Why not hook up with Carmack to make id games faster with Nvidia cards than other cards, oh wait, that probably already happened (arguable). Just like it happened with many other developers and games such as Giants. Notice how Nvidia tends to get beaten in programs where they haven't "hooked up" with the software developers? This includes programs like 3dmark and less popular D3D games of various genre. This situation will probably get worse, but no one will ever complain because everyone is a Nvidia fanboy now. This whole issue is debatable, but I'm surely not in support of anti-competitive agendas. It's just like if Microsoft cut some deal with Intel, and hooked up to make MS Office faster on the P4 than on the Athlon, that would be so wrong. If that would be wrong, then why is this right? Rant si ended...

business is business.

Sorry guys (or should I say fanboys) but someone had to say what I did. Of course I look like the antagonist, in a clearly Nvidia-dominant environment. All your replies are obviously exactly what I'm talking about, as long as you are all Nvidia fanboys, you will never complain.

Look at it this way. Using my scenario with MS Office. If Intel and the P4 was nearly as dominant over the Athlon XP, as Nvidia is today amongst shacknews users (relative to ATI), and clearly more popular, and they hooked up with Microsoft to make MS Office optimized for Intel CPUs, no one would complain because none of the Intel fanboys would speak out or complain against something that was pro-Intel anyway. It would be treated merely as a deal and something positive to benefit the plathora of Intel users (in this scenario, Intel would be the dominant player).

But in the current situation (reality), the P4 is obviously not clearly dominant over the Athlon XP in terms of outright popularity, and so if such a deal were cut, there would be much bitterness over unfair practices.

In reply to you "sucko", this isn't just an announcement that some game will be using GF4 features. This is a PARTNERSHIP between Nvidia Corporation and Sony Entertainment. This partnership deal is clearly anti-competition, and leaves out competitors. How the hell is this contradictory to wanting games to use new features on video cards? Those are two seperate issues.

Look, we all like the competition that's going on left, right, and center in the video card industry. It reduces our costs and improves product quality. But let's at least keep the competition fair; is that not too much to ask? It probably is. If profit is the sole goal and objective, then clearly this is the move Nvidia should make. But responsibility should also be part of company actions. I would not necessarily blame Nvidia, as many entities could be blamed for the situation (including government laws or even general practice). All I wish for is fairness.

If it were optimized for something you own, you wouldn't be singing the same tune, Valiance, so hush..

i have no ethical problem with this whatsoever. i just want prettier and better games. come on people, it's not like nvidia is secretly running our government. it's a freaking game for god's sake!

NVidia just announced this? The SWG Devs told everyone about this a couple months ago.

sweet visuals brought to you by big daddy nvidia

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