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Graphics Software Entertainment Games

EA and NVIDIA in Alliance 226

Posted by michael from the unholy-pair dept.
Deepak Jois writes "Arstechnica is reporting that EA and NVIDIA have entered into a pact to promote each other. Among other things it also means EA will support games on all PC platforms featuring NVIDIA hardware. Also check this link to the press release."
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EA and NVIDIA in Alliance More

EA and NVIDIA in Alliance

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  • ALL platforms? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SixArmedJesus ( 513025 ) on Friday April 11, 2003 @07:54AM (#5709676) Homepage
    I wonder if they're just talking about hardware platforms, or software as well. Does this mean some good games getting released for Linux?
    • Have you seen NVidia drivers on Linux. Yes they are fast but I have had hard locks on a number of occasions when I start pushing them. When the drivers are more stable then I might start getting excitied. I mean I would love to be able to play games under Linux so I didn't keep rebooting but unfortunalty it ain't there yet

      Rus

      • Re:ALL platforms? (Score:4, Interesting)

        by grolim13 ( 110441 ) on Friday April 11, 2003 @08:33AM (#5709912) Homepage
        In my experience, it depends a lot on the card in question; also, some of the more recent Linux drivers are more stable than others.

        I have a Geforce 4MX and a TNT2 on my machine (i.e. dual-head), and ran the Geforce4 with the NVIDIA closed-source binary drivers and the TNT2 with the XFree drivers. Why? Because the system locks hard every few hours with the NVIDIA drivers for the TNT2. Interestingly, it has exactly the same symptoms in Win2K - if I hadn't been using Linux on the same system, I would probably be blaming Microsoft for NVIDIA's buggy drivers.

        On the other hand, getting the NVIDIA drivers to work at all is a pain. In fact, getting working drivers for any hardware that isn't supported by the stock kernel is a pain.

        • I have a TNT2 Ultra running on a p3 500 on Linux. It was all pretty painless and easy. I did struggle a little getting X to use the TV-out optimally (It 's DVD player). Now it's stable as a rock, although I don't know how much DVD/Divx playing pushes the card.

          I would recommend making sure the fan on yours is spinning ok, if it has one. A while ago the fan on my TNT2 built up so much dust that it stopped spinning. After a lot of trouble shooting (since the card sits upside down, I never see the fan), I fi
        • I have installed the Nvidia drivers under a few different distros. So far I have found it easiest with the Mandrake 9.0 download version. The commercial version is supposed to ship with the closed source drivers.

          I have tried, and succeeded, under Red Hat 7.1, 7.2, and Debian Woody.

          However, these instructions for Mandrake were the easiest I have been able to get them working:

          http://www.geocities.com/desktopmandrake/nvidia . ht m

          Under Mandrake 9, I have played UT and TacOps, both without lockups and with
      • I've had very good results but primarily with my GF3 Ti200. My backup machine is a GForce2 board with built in video, it's ok but doesn't even come close to matching up to the Ti card in FPS. The GForce2 based board was squirrelly up until 2.4.21-pre7 with respect to DMA. I also had a Vanta card that was decent, but I got rid of it a fair while ago. That said, I've dealt with a TNT card that just sucked. It didn't lock up but it would puke green artifacts on the screen that would only go away with a reboot.
      • I'm pretty sure this isn't true. The versions of nvidia drivers are pretty darn close to equivalent between linux and windows. I had common hard locks on windows, and found when i installed linux that I had the same thing there. As soon as v2960 drivers came out, and i installed them for both OSes, the hard locks stopped in both OSes.
    • "it also means EA will support games on all PC platforms featuring NVIDIA hardware"

      That, of course, means, they'll support all PC platforms as long as they're Windows 2000, ME or XP. Linux is not a hardware platform and a Macintosh is not a PC.

    • For FreeBSD and Linux, those platform obviously feature PC (x86) and nVidia.
  • At last Game, and hardware companies are supporting each other.

    • yes, at last. (Score:3, Insightful)

      by mfh ( 56 )
      Not like this every happened with...

      Sony
      Nintendo
      Philips
      Sega
      Atari
      EA
      Akklai m
      3dfx
      id Software

      I could go on, but I don't feel like searching Google right now.

  • Here's a good idea... (Score:4, Funny)

    by swordboy ( 472941 ) on Friday April 11, 2003 @07:56AM (#5709690) Journal
    nVidia should write a proprietary API for their video chips. And then they could pay EA to release hardware specific products...

    I think that "Glide" would be a good name for this API.

  • I remember them, back in the days of "NHLPA Hockey", "John Madden Football", and "Bulls vs Blazers", they were the creators of the BEST sports games on Nintendo/Sega.

    Seems like they stopped working on the game quality somewhere about 1999, and now are just concerned with shoving as much FMV, dumb features, and gimmicks in to their games. Not to mention the games are pretty buggy, the AI is horrible...

    • I'd hardly consider Medal of Honor, Battlefield 1942, SimCity 4, C&C Generals to be filled with dumb features, gimmicks and FMV.

      I know that The Sims is the root of all evil, but EA do publish some very high quality games.

      • Re:EA's games have been crap lately (Score:4, Informative)

        by Nitar ( 261628 ) on Friday April 11, 2003 @08:16AM (#5709818)
        Battlefield 1942 and C&C Generals are exceptions to the EA rule. EA loves to crank out sports titles with little more to offer than the previous years release, besides updated stats.

        Also, the customer support at EA just plain sucks. I can't think of a game since Anarchy Online where the support sucked as bad as it does for C&C Generals. Don't get me wrong, though. I think Generals is an excellent game, and I have been playing it quite a bit... now that I actually have it working. However, there are a lot of people who can't install the game, or it crashes to the desktop consistently, or it freezes up all the time. The only information that is returned from the game itself is that a "Serious Error" has occured.

        There is absolutely no useful input from EA to help people out with this problem. They give you links to benchmarking, and system stability testing software. If all of these utilities prove your system is indeed stable, EA basically ignores you, and the problem.

        Anyhow, I could care less about this union. I doubt EA will stop supporting ATI cards, so Nvidias major competitor will still keep going strong. I personally think that Nvidia is just trying to raise the perceived value of their gfx cards, since the actual performance of the cards is lower than the latest ATI cards.

        -Nitar

        • Re:EA's games have been crap lately (Score:4, Informative)

          by pmz ( 462998 ) on Friday April 11, 2003 @09:16AM (#5710210) Homepage
          The only information that is returned from the game itself is that a "Serious Error" has occured.

          This is EA's first mistake. How are they supposed to do tech support, when the customers can say only that a "serious error" occurred. Internet Explorer is just as bad when pages don't load. How are end-users supposed to learn anything when the programmers give up on reporting useful error information?
          • Ha. Gripe to the human-interface people who get up on their soapbox and beat their drums to the tune of "nobody wants to see that debugging junk, its enough to know their program crashed. It shouldn't have crashed in the first place, so its the programmers fault that it happened."
            • Ha. Gripe to the human-interface people who get up on their soapbox and beat their drums to the tune of "nobody wants to see that debugging junk, its enough to know their program crashed. It shouldn't have crashed in the first place, so its the programmers fault that it happened."

              So, the suits fall for the UI argument, and, then, follow-up by not increasing funding so the programmers can't write robust code. This makes me question whether EA would ever be a good place to work as a programmer.

              To anyone w
      • Did you buy simcity 4?
        It was a completely derivative work. I was extrememly dissapointed in the lack of innovation and new features. They even reused some of the sound effects from Simcity 3000.

        Add to that the HUGE problems with many chipsets at release (that kept me from playing the game at all for several days) adn extreme hardware requirements of the game and many people were very dissapointed in the game.

        I have totally sworn off EA games unless I've verified they work on my system through a demo or
    • Two words.

      NHL 94.

      Still the best hockey game out there in terms of playability and challenge. I recently picked up a used copy for 99 cents.

      By NHL 96, I was beating the computer AI on the most difficult level 20-0 in a hockey game...go figure.

  • NVidia got itself a good deal (Score:5, Insightful)

    by markpapadakis ( 115698 ) on Friday April 11, 2003 @07:57AM (#5709697) Homepage
    EA is, no doubt, the leader in the computer games industry. NVidia is into a head 2 head fight with ATI ( ATI is probably going to come out as the winner ), and such a deal will add points in its favor in this 'fight'. Imagine a series of games to comes with a 'NVidia' recommented stamp on the cover.
    • ATI is probably going to come out as the winner

      If EA is making games that work better on an NVidia card and no other big game software company is making games that work better on ATI cards guess which one I'd buy.

      I have an ATI Radeon 8500 128MB right now and it will be time to upgrade pretty soon. I'm considering switching to NVidia simply because I've heard of a few games that work better on NVidia cards. SimCity 4 (an EA game) to name one has some problems graphically even with the ATI 9700 - Makes

    • "NVidia is into a head 2 head fight with ATI (ATI is probably going to come out as the winner)"

      Strange statement to make. True, at the moment ATI is in the lead, but keep in mind that nVidia has now changed over to 13(?) micrometer technology. This is what caused all the delays with the FX. But ATI has yet to make that switch, with all the problems that entails.

      I bet you that the next round will see nVidia pulling ahead while ATI has problems with it's production on the smaller wavelenght technology.
      • 13(?) micrometer technology
        It is actually 0.13.

        nVidia is not ahead of ATi at all. nVidia and ATi both manufacture their chips at TSMC. The supposed reason that it took nVidia so long with the FX was that TSMC was having trouble with the 0.13 micron process. Not that they ironed out all the problems, there is no reason they can't manufacture ATi's chips using the same process.

        In fact, considering that nVidia's 0.13 micron card runs hotter and slower than nVidia's previous generation 0.18 micron card

      • Re:NVidia got itself a good deal (Score:4, Informative)

        by Pulzar ( 81031 ) on Friday April 11, 2003 @08:55AM (#5710053)
        True, at the moment ATI is in the lead, but keep in mind that nVidia has now changed over to 13(?) micrometer technology.

        Radeon 9600 is also made using 0.13u process. The whole "switch to 0.13" has been overplayed, since neither nVidia nor ATI actually develop the process itself, as they don't produce any of their chips.

        The only thing that they have to do is start using new libraries when creating their chips, and altough that's not a simple thing, it's also not something revolutionary -- both companies do it almost once every year.
    • No need to imagine. Check out UT2k3 [unrealtournament2003.com]. Does "the way it's meant to be played" [nvidia.com] count as 'NVidia' recommended?
    • I wouldn't be too sure that ATI will come out as the winner. It's not like in the Voodoo days where the Voodoo 3 came out and was total crap compared to the TNT2, thus giving Nvidia the huge advantage. ATI vs. NVidia is much more involved and uncertain.

      Despite the uncertainties, I predict a role reversal. ATI was always the card that came in Dells and Gateways and such. It was the video card that was good enough to play games, but not good enough for the l33t. ATI made their money by having their vide
      • It is really hard to say. NVIDIA seems to be playing out the history of 3DFX, which is sort of bothering: solid drivers but few updates, missed due dates for products, and paying off game manufacturers to sell out. I remember when games were branded with 3DFX logos (compared to now, where games are branded with NVIDIA logos) even if they used OpenGL or DirectX instead of Glide. In the end, having the larger company share and more industry support did not win them out, and they were swallowed by NVIDIA. I re
      • ATI makes Athlon and P4 chipsets that have onboard graphics hardware. Not that the video performance is very good, but it doesn't matter very much when it is a low end system. But for chipsets with onboard graphics they are reasonably inexpensive. The nForce2 is fast, if you are an OEM building a high end gaming system why would you buy the nForce2 when the VIA KT400 costs half as much? Many people who buy such a system probably don't know the difference between motherboard chipsets and are only looking
    • EA is, no doubt, the leader in the computer games industry. NVidia is into a head 2 head fight with ATI ( ATI is probably going to come out as the winner ), and such a deal will add points in its favor in this 'fight'. Imagine a series of games to comes with a 'NVidia' recommented stamp on the cover.

      Sure, it's a great win in the marketing department.

      Personally, though, I'd rather nVidia spent their time designing better video cards instead.
    • Does an agreement for EA to "promote" NVIDIA also mean an agreement for EA to "demote" ATI?

      Now that ATI has the flag as far as graphics hardware is concerned, it will be a sad thing to see the large number of games that EA pumps out only work well with NVIDIA cards.

      Granted, this is more a micosoftish thing to do, but that doesn't mean it can't happen. NVIDIA has been known to be bossy in the past.
    • ATI is probably going to come out as the winner

      Based upon what? Anyone remember 6-7 years ago when NVidia was in a head to head war with 3DFX (ATI was not even on the map) and 3DFX was clearly the dominant player? NVidia ended up buying them. And up until around 1 year ago ATI was light years behind NVidia. Just because ATI is currently ahead by a VERY small margin does not mean they are anywhere near assured a smooth ride. Plus NVidia has alot going to it that ATI does not. I for one will never buy a card

  • if this would mean that EA are going to release games for Linux and Freebsd then Wow!

    probably though a x86 pc only counts as a platform if its running windows :/

  • EA and Nvidia best consumate this in word and not so much in act.
    • EA and Nvidia best consumate this in word and not so much in act.

      No actually it's been happening for some time now. There's a cluster of 64? servers provided by NVidia to host Battlefield 1942 games. As far as I know these are deticated servers provided as a courtesy by NVidia in order to promote Battlefield 1942, which EA produced.

      This helps NVidia because BF1942 requires a high-end video card to run...so the more popular the game becomes, the more potential business for them. I believe these server

  • This reminds me... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Quass ( 320289 ) on Friday April 11, 2003 @07:58AM (#5709707) Homepage Journal
    Read this this-morning on CNet avantgo...
    Anyone remember those 3dfx emblazened boxes about 5 years ago? First they get they're own graphics language (reminds me of Glide), and now they start working with companies to program for the chips they make?? For some reason I think Nvidia is being just a BIT too influenced from 3dfx.. it's like they're repeating all the mistakes!

    "Nvidia: The way it's meant to be played" ... pfft.. yeah, the cards are good, but honestly!
    • Exactly - this is a step towards the bad old days, when such-and-such video card or this specific sound card was needed to run a particular game. The loser in all this is the consumer, whose software choices become constrained by hardware... Boo hiss!
    • Cg ("Their own graphics language") is a programming language.
      Glide was an API.
      Cg compiles to OpenGL or Direct3D, and it could very well be used on ATi cards with slight modifications. The two are nothing alike.

  • Wait a... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Martigan80 ( 305400 ) on Friday April 11, 2003 @08:01AM (#5709726) Journal
    By exclusively adopting NVIDIA hardware for their worldwide studios, EA is escalating the creative palette of its 3D artists and programmers

    I thought a palette was a piece of wood or something that had a range of colors, so how can a creative palette be obtained from using only one gfx card?

    • By exclusively adopting NVIDIA hardware for their worldwide studios, EA is escalating the creative palette of its 3D artists and programmers

      I thought a palette was a piece of wood or something that had a range of colors, so how can a creative palette be obtained from using only one gfx card?

      Maybe they meant 'pallet', the 3'x3' forklift-ready cargo platform. Kinda reminds me of the cubicles into which many 3d artists and programmers are crammed at these "layoff-before-christmas" game shops.

      Or maybe

    • Well... The trick is to use the back of the card to put your colors, of course!
  • ..It impresses me how quickly the davids of the past become the goliaths of the present..Seems like a trend with geekdom, cause, at least in part to the merciless social beatings we got while growing up for being the way we are..Microsoft Vs. Ibm...3dfx Vs. Nvidia and now Nvidia vs. everyone else. One can only hope one day, if and when Linux truly becomes a dominant desktop operating system, that someone has the perception to learn from the past and not doom us to repeat it.
    • The cycle is a sign of a healthy market... Manufacturers one-up eachother, making improvements and capturing marketshare. It is a wonderful thing that 3Dfx fell, that Nintendo fell, that all empires fall, because they are surpassed by better empires. Personally, I would find it great if Linux becomes the dominant desktop, then falls and is surpassed by something better. It is exactly this lack of cycling that has hurt the desktop arena, and computing in general.

      -C

  • Does this mean.... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Dutchmaan ( 442553 ) on Friday April 11, 2003 @08:01AM (#5709728) Homepage
    ...that EA's new slogan will be "Challenge Everything... except nVidia"

  • creepy (Score:5, Insightful)

    by IAR80 ( 598046 ) on Friday April 11, 2003 @08:02AM (#5709731) Homepage
    I allways found that kind of alliances creepy. This kind of thing never promotes value. The end of all this will be that all EA games will work verry bad with ATI boards and non EA games will be less competitive on Nvidia. Finally the end user will end up screwed.
    • I wonder...

      Will EA shoot themselves in the foot by making their games run badly on all boards made by ATI, which is after all a major graphics card manufacturer? That does not seem to be in their best interest unless they see NVidia as the clear and uncontested winner of the graphics card wars.
    • Maybe in the future:

      You'll buy vid cards like consoles. Drop $100 (it's my fantasy, I'll keep the prices low) for competing proprietary cards to play certain games that aren't cross-platform. I currently own a PS2 and a GameCube for this reason.

      I think that I would be willing to run a machine with both an nVidia card and an ATI card in it if it meant that all games would work out of the box.

      But then games would be expected to work out of the box.

      Plus, I'd finally get around to hooking up another displ
    • Huh? What? I guess you've never heard of DirectX/3D and OpenGL. Simply put, if the game uses one of the established APIs, then any graphics card, whether Nvidia, ATI or any other, will work assuming that the card's drivers are compatible with that API. Your comment would mean something if this press release were accompanied by another that announced a brand-new Nvidia-specific graphics API which EA is now going to use in their games (a la Glide).

      All this announcement tells us is that there will be Nvi

  • Of course, now ID(and a few associates, Nerve, Etc) has to join with ATI. I think I know which combination I favor. :)

    After having a horrible experience trying to get a darn kernel driver working with an Nvidia card (which has been sitting in a box for a year now) I'm now exclusively ATI.

    • Re: The point. (Score:5, Funny)

      by BabyDave ( 575083 ) on Friday April 11, 2003 @08:11AM (#5709787)
      After having a horrible experience trying to get a darn kernel driver working with an Nvidia card (which has been sitting in a box for a year now) I'm now exclusively ATI.

      Try taking the card out of the box and plugging it into the PC.

      HTH

    • After having a horrible experience trying to get a darn kernel driver working with an Nvidia card... I'm now exclusively ATI.

      If you're running Linux exclusively, this may be a good solution. I bought an ATI Radeon 7500 because it has open source 3d drivers for linux. Unfortunately, Windows support blows. I could not upgrade the Win2k drivers from those that came with the card. Any attempt to upgrade would simply result in a frozen screen on reboot. Tech support gave me a long list of things to do, w

      • Until you want to play UT2003. Oh wait, it won't work because ATI's driver support blows (read: missing S3TC support.)

        Same with NV drivers. You're welcome to use the open-source drivers, but if you actually want performance, you'll have to go binary-only.

  • Bundles (Score:2)

    by rf0 ( 159958 )
    I'm just waiting for the day we see John Madden branded video cards. Hey why not go a step further and load the games on to the graphic cards. Now that would be "working together"

    Seriously though I can't see why this is a huge deal apart from it might mean the EA get some slightly better locking games. Its not like NVidia would lock out everyone else. Would they?

    Rus
  • Given that we can take releases of EA games on Windows XP as a given, and I fail to believe for one minute this means we'll be seeing a port of Potter (or whatever) to Linux, this seems to relate to a statement about XBox. Which, given that EA have famously had a falling out with Microsoft over the 'Our Way or off the Information Highway' Live setup is 'interesting'.

    Whither Battlefield 1942 now?
  • I guess this means we're going to see a flood of games that either require an NVIDIA accellerator or "highly recommend" one (read: "this game will look like shit on ATI").

    Nah, it'll never happen. They'll stick to OpenGL, I'm sure of it!
    • They will lose sales on games in that case. I know that many gamers who are building new boxes, or buying new graphics cards, are buying the Radeon 9700Pro or the 9800Pro.

      The reasons for this are that the 9800 Pro is faster than the LONG awaited GeforceFX 5800 Ultra in almost every area. The 9700 Pro is about equivalent in performance. Check out the reviews on tomshardware.com and anandtech.com and see for yourself.

      Anyhow, I doubt EA would want to alienate ATI at this point.

  • *sigh* (Score:2, Insightful)

    by LHN ( 599122 )
    More games that will not be properly supported by my radeon.
  • EA only did this because they can't program for more than one system configuration per game anyway. Look how long it took them to make a game that would run on anything except windows 9x.
  • Does this mean that EA is going to be releasing their games under linux? Somebody please tell me that its true!
  • hmmmmm... what a dilemna...I don't play Sims, and when I play sports games (rarely) I fire up my Gamecube or Dreamcast, or hell the ol' Genesis

    Great for them and their strategic partnership, I'm sure it will garner them a few extra bucks,no doubt....but ultimately, for any gamers....this don't mean a whole hell of alot, IMO

  • I can't wait!!!

    After that comes out, I can quite dual booting. Yay!

  • ...and that their games will continue to run flawlessly with EA products.

    Just like how nForce motherboards have no trouble running ATI video adapters now!

  • Surely the API (Direct3D or OpenGL) is more important than supporting a particular make of card? Otherwise we're back in the age of all that Glide-only crap like Unreal when it first came out. Boy, was I glad to see 3dfx go under and some proper standards take over.
    • The whole John Carmack Doom3 rendering path relative speed thing showed that, while you can use the same API for every card, relative performance is still dependent on optimising use of the API for each card.
    • nVidia, and probably ATI as well, has been known to push numerous video drivers that violate even the Direct3D standard API. Ask BFC/Battlefront.com regarding how most nVidia drivers can fail when combining 2D text and 3D rendering on the same screen. nVidia's aware of the problem, but since that particular type of coding is rarely used, doesn't really give a damn it seems.

  • What this also means (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Winterblink ( 575267 ) on Friday April 11, 2003 @08:39AM (#5709940) Homepage
    This also means that suddenly the users of these other platforms (Linux, etc presumably) will have to put up with EA's absolutely horrible customer and product support. Ask anyone who played Earth and Beyond about the quality of EA's customer service and you'll get an earful. Issues like call centers staffed by people who can barely speak english and have no clue about anything they're supposed to be supporting, to phone AND email spam when you try to cancel your monthly subscription. Not to mention the way EA has a habit of getting developers to build games then retasks them to other projects, leaving some games with dangling technical issues.

    Admittedly this may seem slightly off-topic, but this issue is a part of the overall EA package other platforms are suddenly going to be exposed to. Just because they're going to develop the games for Linux or whatever doesn't mean you're going to get any kind of decent support behind it when things go wrong.

    • This also means that suddenly the users of these other platforms (Linux, etc presumably) will have to put up with EA's absolutely horrible customer and product support.

      Most likely you're right on the money, but so what?
      Either EA will then wise up and get their act in order with Customer support,etc.
      OR
      This will bite them and nVidia on the ass, as customers will be soured on EA and nVidia....

      Maybe EA will attempt to defer video issues to nVidia for support or some odd arrangement like that (?)

    • This also means that suddenly the users of these other platforms (Linux, etc presumably) will have to put up with EA's absolutely horrible customer and product support. ...

      Issues like call centers staffed by people who can barely speak english and have no clue about anything they're supposed to be supporting

      Maybe to be inline with the rest of the linux support they can just start responding RTFM!

  • Sounds good to me. Maybe not to you (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    As an owner of a new A7n8x nforce mb and geforce 4600 (Yes, I like it. The onboard 5.1 alone rawks.) who likes to game this is good news. However I can see the converse of this situation; What about people who have built up rigs using competitor's vga cards? Even if it runs fine on other cards, you know in the back of the hardcore gamer's mind he will be thginking it could be better and it will annoy him. This kind of partnership to me is like say Ford will produce cars that have windshields only designed f
  • I thought they were just releasing "media" products. Last time I played Madden I couldn't see half of the screen thanks to their MTV(TM) Feature.

    For those who aren't aware of what that is, let me explain:

    When playing Madden football, they play "new" music (which isnt' half bad actually), but then they pull the MTV info window that takes up half of the screen as they try to tell you the band/artist/year of release/etc/etc.
  • I wonder how many of us will be completely unaffected by this?

    I vowed never to buy another Electronic Arts game years ago, after they decided that Ultima Online and its patrons deserved to be handled in a cynically condescending and ham-fisted manner. I will never forgive EA for having me pay to play a beta, their game not even living up to the feature set printed on the box.

    From what I hear, their customer support has only gotten worse, not better, as they farm support out internationally, while making

  • This is nothing - only a bundling deal (Score:5, Informative)

    by Torgo's Pizza ( 547926 ) on Friday April 11, 2003 @09:59AM (#5710517) Homepage Journal
    There's already been discussion on this since yesterday on [H]ardforums. Too many people are reading the press release and thinking the graphics world is coming to an end. This is only a deal to get EA games bundled with Nvidia cards. That's it.

    First off, let's look at some parts of the press statement. Graphics microchip maker Nvidia Corp. NVDA.O and video game publisher Electronic Arts Inc. ERTS.O said on Thursday they would collaborate to market and develop new games. No biggie here. ATI does the same thing. Actually, in truth the way this works is EA will say to one of their development houses under contract, "Hey, we've got this Nvidia guy we'd like you to talk to, to help you implement some new features."

    Under the terms of the deal, Nvidia hardware will become the "preferred" graphics platform for Electronic Arts's video game studios, and video games developed by Electronic Arts may offer features designed to work on Nvidia hardware. Note the quotes around "preferred" and the added emphasis (mine) on may. Note that this is all fuzzy and hazy on exactly what is going to be done. The terms "exclusive" isn't used. Fact is, the developers who actually make the games aren't going to cut off their nose to despite their face. Neither is the publisher.

    Nvidia also said it will have exclusive rights to bundle Electronic Arts's games for personal computers with its products. Ah ha! This is what this whole thing is about. The best way to sell a game is to bundle it. The publisher makes a guarenteed sale and lowers his cost of production (no boxes to make, no instructions to print) as well. Best of all, a bundle is usually a guarenteed sale. Nvidia has already bought the game if they sell the video card or not and EA counts it in their books. The only thing that ATI users won't get is a EA game when they buy a new card. No big deal since ATI can lower the price of their card because they don't include a software bundle, or they could go to some other publisher.

    Finally, for all those bitching and whining about this you've already been suckered into this for years and years. Bundling agreements have been around and we all have bought products that have them. You buy joysticks and dohickeys because they have video game support and drivers built in. They come with bundles as well. I've bought plenty of video cards with bundles. Most computers come with bundles. All of them involve agreements like Nvidia and EA and press releases.

    What is this really? In exchange for technical expertise, the developer gets a free resource to implement some advanced features (which we probably won't use anyway) in return for some games in a video card box. Big whoop. There's just been too much FUD about this. It's not like DoomNukem IX only going to work on a Nvidia card. There's no conspiracy. There's no little green men trying to take away your ATI card. There's no men in black trying to limit your free choice.

    It's a bundling agreement. That's it. Now go back to your homes. There's nothing to see here.

  • Unbelievable (Score:4, Informative)

    by j4ck50n ( 548439 ) on Friday April 11, 2003 @11:14AM (#5711140)
    All the support I see here for EA...

    And they differ from MS how?

    They seem to be buying all the smaller studios and then either cancelling or crippling the games in development. Did they or did they not just buy the company working on the RTCW expansion and cancel it among others?

    Support...please.

    This collaboration will either:

    A) Suck

    B) Go nowhere

    C) Backfire

    Yea yea, they 'own' sports titles and have made a few decent driving games, but they also churn out a lot of buggy crap. BF1942 is not all that, C&C Gen is shallow as all hell. Etc etc.

    We'll see.

  • EA has been making it's games with Nvidia in mind for many moons now. When I worked there a year ago, the latest version of their golf game was dubbed "Tiger Woods' Nvidia Golf." It just didn't run that well on anything other than a Nvidia video card.
    EA is a large company, and they are ALL about bottom line. So it's not at all surprising that they are going to side with the company that (currently) is tops in sales, both retail and OEM.
    But ATI is making moves, so this might not be the smoovest of moves.

  • Judging by one of the first screens that pop up in UT 2K3, you'd think that nVidia and EA are in cahoots. I hardly ever see any other graphics company prominently displayed on a startup screen for a game.

    This could also be the result of Nvidia's failure to be king in the vid-card market. There's been enough mud flying back and forth between them and ATI to eclipse the sun. Seriously, I think that this won't really help Nvidia in the long run.

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