No Lower GPU Prices Despite Reduced GPU Demand

[SessouXFX]

......
Idiot miners. They got so ahead of themselves, buying up every damn thing in sight, they likely screwed gamers for another 6 months, after the craze died down.

Bring on Maxwell.

 

[InvalidError]

The problem is PC gaming is dead none of big box stores have pc games even places like EB/Gamestop has stopped carrying pc games

Almost every game out there is available for digital download these days, often at a substantial discount from their physical counterpart. There is no need for physical distribution and all the cost overheads that come with it anymore except maybe for special/collector editions.

 

[LostAlone]

I certainly don't believe that a lull in coin mining could drop the graphics card market by 40%. That's hilarious to me. No way in hell is mining a big enough part of the sector (compared to actual graphics) to crash it that hard. That's just scare mongering.

Sure, there has been some cooling off in that market. And that comes around the same time that most sane gamers (the ones with more sense than money) are looking at the PS4 and the XOne and deciding that they can probably live without a new graphics card for the time being. Since most big releases will be optimized for the consoles first, people know they can get decent performance on their current rig.

 

[InvalidError]

I think mobile parts are still leagues behind the desktop parts. One can easily judge them by running appropriate benchmarks on even the lowest sepc'ed i3 for each platform.

They do not need to beat desktops at everything. They only need to be good enough that people will have to start thinking twice before picking a $300 desktop CPU+chipset over a $30 SoC. It will take a few more years for Atom to get there but it will - it has to if Intel does not want to risk losing any more ground to ARM. When it does, Intel's ability to inflate prices will be considerably reduced.

 

[nhat11]

Pity this kind of market/pricing manipulation isn't regarded as something that
should be unlawful...

Ian.

The retail STORES are the one wanting to manipulate the prices, not the companies. They don't want to make any changes to the prices. How do you manipulate something when they're doing NOTHING? lol

 

[InvalidError]

They don't want to make any changes to the prices. How do you manipulate something when they're doing NOTHING?

If you actually read the article, when board manufacturers asked AMD and Nvidia to reduce prices on the GPUs chips, AMD and Nvidia responded by reducing chip production to maintain current chip prices. That definitely counts as doing something to keep prices up.

 

[vipboy28]

1) PC gaming isnt dead... with steam and origin (i know, i know lol) making insane sales and looking at steams most popular games you can see that people indeed still do play PC games. This arguement is the same ever freaking year, blah blah blah, consoles are killing PC's. Its just not true.

2) I would never buy a computer from any store unless it was Microcenter, They price match to amazon and newegg and they always have crazy deals, I literally got 40 off my SSD for buying a Mobo, Then received a 50 off for buying an intel and mobo combo. AT NEWEGG or AMAZON Pricing.

3) Consoles are getting stronger every year, however so are pc's consoles are just dumb downed computers with limited OS's. I bought a Wii U becuase its fun, and any game i need or want to play is on the PC with a great community full of people.

4) The market is changing, and SoC and IGP are being very strong. I refuse to buy an 800 non gaming laptop when i can get a 450 dollar tablet that has a better resolution and a longer battery life and isnt 8000lbs lol. Its just unfair to deny these facts.

5) High end card like titan z and Titan, and even 780ti to some extent are designed to be bragging rights, Yes its over priced, but if your friend bought one and has a tri-1440p setup play watch dogs or wolfenstien, you would probably drool everywhere. I know i would lol. (im mid range pc builder spend about 400 on vc and 800 on everything else.)

 

[somebodyspecial]

The problem for AMD is they don't make a good enough product (or driver to help it) to charge more vs NV, so they sell cheaper and get screwed even more than NV. We need both stronger! This isn't fanboy junk here, it's being a FAN of BOTH companies making REAL money to R&D the next round etc forever. Broke companies put out crap. I fear if both don't start making more we will start getting worse stuff than now, though in fairness both make great cards. If you have anything over 3-4yrs old you have some serious upgrade power at any price related to your old gpus price. We can't really complain here.

AMD had a better offering with the r9 290 cards. They have a weaker position as far as nvidia and its anti-competitive ways but I would go with an R9 over a 770 or 780 (that i could afford) any day. More ram and faster. Only real problem is power consumption.

as far as your other comments, you are right to some extent. The thing is though, new products are supposed to warrant purchase. The next cards should offer so much that even people with the best of the last gen would want something new, and its not much to ask when these guys have been using the same stuff for years now.

It's too much to ask when AMD is barely breaking even and NV is about 1/2 what they made in 2007. You're not getting the point I'm making here I guess. If they don't make money, how do they make your next great product? AMD has lost $6Billion in 10yrs. Read that again please and understand what I'm saying. NV would probably be in the same shape if they had paid 3x the price for a company like ATI which broke AMD's back in one shot. They have never recovered from that mistake. Worse they sold the mobile gpu division to Qcom for $65mil...Big mistake. That is what happens when your entire company goes on fire sale to cover stupid management mistakes. They should have paid $2B tops for ATI and they might still have fabs with less debt or no debt like NV. NV's debt and cash is the (low debt lots of cash) is what helps them through rough spots in either a product or the market. When that happens to AMD they lose money and sell more stuff (pretty much out of stuff to sell at this point).

AMD's 290x launch had throttle issues on all retail cards. That isn't a success. Then they had the 290 launch and via drivers had to up the speeds of the fans and in some cases (asus according to toms, at least them) caused the shipping fans to be out of spec (someone paid to fix that). On top of this, they had to ask reviewers to re-benchmark their cards because the fans being sped up would avoid the throttle that surely was affecting benchmarks BEFORE they did this and they wanted to avoid the same thing with 290 that they had with 290x.

You can choose to ignore reality if you'd like, but things like this on major launches are what happens without funding to do PROPER R&D. I don't think AMD is stupid, they just ran short of the R&D funds to make a proper launch of either card, thus you end up re-jigging your crap in the last hours before reviews hit the pages. Explain to me how either case was a "GREAT" launch? You do read tomshardware articles correct?

AMD didn't have a better offering with 290, they FINALLY had one that could force NV to put out big kepler which we ALL thought we would get before. How long did it take to catch 780? A LONG time. How long did it take to put out 780ti in response? Not long. What you're seeing is the difference between having 3.7B in the bank and having more debt than cash on the other side (IE, negative cash). It's the difference between freesync (maybe one day) and Gsync here now. AMD is still trying to fix their old drivers (old cards seem abandoned for the new), since they can't seem to afford to fix both. They had to fix the new ones, but let me know when all the issues are fixed for older cards than r7/r9.

I'm running a radeon 5850, but there's a slim chance I'll be buying AMD again next round after watching the last 3yrs take place. AMD would have to put out a card that puts NV's maxwell to shame at this point to even get me to ponder potential driver hell. I'll probably have to see them do good for another gen before coming back. I can't afford to buy a $500-1000 card and roll craps. Well I could, but what for? I'd like to help AMD but not that badly.

I don't see either side being any more anti-competitive than the other. Both have proprietary tech etc. IF anything AMD is being anti-competitive by pricing their cards where they themselves can't make money. Jen has said he wishes they would stop trying to price him to death as that is impossible, and he'd rather have them both making more money. Well, duh. AMD doesn't seem to get it. If their rep, and their product was as good as you say they wouldn't have to price it so low to sell correct? You're not making sense. Both sides make mistakes, but there is a premium paid for NV stuff because they make less of them.

Power leads to more heat. More ram is stupid if you can't hit 30fps MINIMUM when using it. Quick, so me 10 cases where MORE ram than NV cards have vs. their AMD counterparts can be used and STILL be above 30fps min. I'll be waiting for your list. Heck can you give 5? So me some 290/290x benchmarks where they use MORE than NV's ram and are above 30fps min. That's your claimed price range so show me the data. NV knows the ram at this point is useless, so they pocket the different in profits WISELY. AMD gives you more than they can use without being under 30fps so they make less per card hurting profits. See the point? That's not love or hate for either, just the facts and reality. NV isn't shafting users, they're allowing themselves to profit more in a situation where giving you more memory and taking less profits gains you nothing but bragging rights about having more memory. I'd rather have AMD give the amount required to hit 30fps in the res 98% of us are using (not pitching more for a res nobody can hit 30fps with anyway and only 2% play there). AMD's management needs to stop blowing profits. No profits as noted leads to all the other crap I mentioned.

 

[somebodyspecial]

They don't want to make any changes to the prices. How do you manipulate something when they're doing NOTHING?

If you actually read the article, when board manufacturers asked AMD and Nvidia to reduce prices on the GPUs chips, AMD and Nvidia responded by reducing chip production to maintain current chip prices. That definitely counts as doing something to keep prices up.

Who cares, neither is making as much money as 2007. What do you expect them to do? NV break even and AMD lose even more than usual per year? I'd rather have them keep pricing a bit higher and AMD maybe make some cash (or break even with the fine coming from GF soon), and NV make more than now. They are both far weaker than desired based on previous years. AMD will be in worse shape shortly as ARM races up the ladder and Intel races down the ladder. AMD gets crushed in the middle (the only place they exist). Explain why they should comply with board makers asking for price drops? "MR company, could you make less money or please lose some so I can have more?" ROFL. Jim, that's just not logical. Sorry my best spock impression 😉 You get the point. I commend BOTH companies for not bowing and blowing whatever earnings they have a shot at getting this year. It's not rocket science, board makers can keep pricing the same also. No profits will be had from next gen if they discount the price so much EVERYONE can afford one this gen at a price they make NOTHING from. That's suicide for a few years in a row on profits until we NEED a new card down the road.

Housing works the same way. OODLES of people lost homes. But the banks put very few out there so we don't shop them to death asking for low pricing due to there being so many available. On top of that, they don't want to lend you money at current rates as the risk is too high for return. IF interest was 6% right now there be far more homes on the market, but at 3.5-4% they don't see the point in giving you a house for not much return over time and a large chance in this economy they'll just be taking it back again later at more even more cost. I'm not sure you have a firm grasp on how business works or more importantly how it fails. 😉

 

[somebodyspecial]

3) Consoles are getting stronger every year, however so are pc's consoles are just dumb downed computers with limited OS's. I bought a Wii U becuase its fun, and any game i need or want to play is on the PC with a great community full of people.

5) High end card like titan z and Titan, and even 780ti to some extent are designed to be bragging rights, Yes its over priced, but if your friend bought one and has a tri-1440p setup play watch dogs or wolfenstien, you would probably drool everywhere. I know i would lol. (im mid range pc builder spend about 400 on vc and 800 on everything else.)

Consoles are not getting stronger every year. Wiiu sales are terrible (6.7mil in almost two years?), vita sales suck, 3ds is ok, ps4/xbox1 dropping momentum (already both off 50% just 1Q after release, we'll see how much more off in this Q shortly), MS won't even admit SELL-THROUGH numbers. Based on the rate they are dropping per month sony will be lucky to hit 11mil+ and MS won't hit 10mil this year. Devs ran from consoles and went to PC and mobile at last years GDC and this years 2014 GDC as the survey shows. So games will be massively on the PC/mobile vs. consoles and that won't help sales either. Until you hit 10mil only the big dogs can play in the console world which slows game releases and hurts sales.

Titan/TitanZ both have a purpose you're missing. PRO APPS with DP that is 1/2 the cost of TESLA (or same cost but double perf). They are not aimed at PURE gamers. Sure a few buy them for bragging rights, but most buy because they can't afford a tesla/quadro and want to get some work done at home AND play games. 95% of the people buying them know exactly WHY they are doing it and that it's a great deal.

 

[InvalidError]

I'd rather have them keep pricing a bit higher and AMD maybe make some cash (or break even with the fine coming from GF soon), and NV make more than now.

That only works if sales keep up. If sales drop by a larger amount than the extra margin per sale they are trying to maintain, net margin still goes down.

 

[vipboy28]

3) Consoles are getting stronger every year, however so are pc's consoles are just dumb downed computers with limited OS's. I bought a Wii U becuase its fun, and any game i need or want to play is on the PC with a great community full of people.

5) High end card like titan z and Titan, and even 780ti to some extent are designed to be bragging rights, Yes its over priced, but if your friend bought one and has a tri-1440p setup play watch dogs or wolfenstien, you would probably drool everywhere. I know i would lol. (im mid range pc builder spend about 400 on vc and 800 on everything else.)

Consoles are not getting stronger every year. Wiiu sales are terrible (6.7mil in almost two years?), vita sales suck, 3ds is ok, ps4/xbox1 dropping momentum (already both off 50% just 1Q after release, we'll see how much more off in this Q shortly), MS won't even admit SELL-THROUGH numbers. Based on the rate they are dropping per month sony will be lucky to hit 11mil+ and MS won't hit 10mil this year. Devs ran from consoles and went to PC and mobile at last years GDC and this years 2014 GDC as the survey shows. So games will be massively on the PC/mobile vs. consoles and that won't help sales either. Until you hit 10mil only the big dogs can play in the console world which slows game releases and hurts sales.

Titan/TitanZ both have a purpose you're missing. PRO APPS with DP that is 1/2 the cost of TESLA (or same cost but double perf). They are not aimed at PURE gamers. Sure a few buy them for bragging rights, but most buy because they can't afford a tesla/quadro and want to get some work done at home AND play games. 95% of the people buying them know exactly WHY they are doing it and that it's a great deal.

I was referring to Hardware in the consoles not growth in sales or popularity. I was referring to the fact that Consoles are just low budget gaming machines. You are correct and i agree, consoles arent doing well.

As for Titan the card is design for non-gamers however your missing the bragging rights. I have A LOT of single friends (lol) that bough this card and sli'd this card just to have that OMG Drool factor. The actual purpose for the titan/z is much more suited for non-gaming applications and its secondary function is for gaming 😀

 

[vagrancyx]

I've got my EVGA 670GTX FTW card and its still going strong. I will not pay another $400-500 to get a marginal increase in performance and fps. They need to be more competitive and lower their prices to attract business instead of staggering supply to keep making money hand over fist.

 

[somebodyspecial]

3) Consoles are getting stronger every year, however so are pc's consoles are just dumb downed computers with limited OS's. I bought a Wii U becuase its fun, and any game i need or want to play is on the PC with a great community full of people.

5) High end card like titan z and Titan, and even 780ti to some extent are designed to be bragging rights, Yes its over priced, but if your friend bought one and has a tri-1440p setup play watch dogs or wolfenstien, you would probably drool everywhere. I know i would lol. (im mid range pc builder spend about 400 on vc and 800 on everything else.)

Consoles are not getting stronger every year. Wiiu sales are terrible (6.7mil in almost two years?), vita sales suck, 3ds is ok, ps4/xbox1 dropping momentum (already both off 50% just 1Q after release, we'll see how much more off in this Q shortly), MS won't even admit SELL-THROUGH numbers. Based on the rate they are dropping per month sony will be lucky to hit 11mil+ and MS won't hit 10mil this year. Devs ran from consoles and went to PC and mobile at last years GDC and this years 2014 GDC as the survey shows. So games will be massively on the PC/mobile vs. consoles and that won't help sales either. Until you hit 10mil only the big dogs can play in the console world which slows game releases and hurts sales.

Titan/TitanZ both have a purpose you're missing. PRO APPS with DP that is 1/2 the cost of TESLA (or same cost but double perf). They are not aimed at PURE gamers. Sure a few buy them for bragging rights, but most buy because they can't afford a tesla/quadro and want to get some work done at home AND play games. 95% of the people buying them know exactly WHY they are doing it and that it's a great deal.

I was referring to Hardware in the consoles not growth in sales or popularity. I was referring to the fact that Consoles are just low budget gaming machines. You are correct and i agree, consoles arent doing well.

As for Titan the card is design for non-gamers however your missing the bragging rights. I have A LOT of single friends (lol) that bough this card and sli'd this card just to have that OMG Drool factor. The actual purpose for the titan/z is much more suited for non-gaming applications and its secondary function is for gaming 😀

I get your point now, that's true on the hardware of consoles but unfortunately for them they shot too low on that front and mobile will catch them at 14nm probably with a few tricks to help them out doing it (faster ram, stacked ram, faster clocks, more gpu cores etc). Well you must have a special group of friends, but most buy for DP and are repeat buyers yearly according to jen (cheap workhorse, just no driver support for pro apps) and I did say:
"Sure a few buy them for bragging rights, but most buy because they can't afford a tesla/quadro and want to get some work done at home AND play games." Noting the bragging rights. 😉 I guess you know most of the few I mentioned Dang, tell them send me one or two...LOL.

Many good points here; enjoy your day.

 

[mapesdhs]

If you actually read the article, when board manufacturers asked AMD and Nvidia to reduce prices on the GPUs chips, AMD and Nvidia responded by reducing chip production to maintain current chip prices. That definitely counts as doing something to keep prices up.

Yup, that's what I was referring to. RAM manufacturers do the same thing, ie. cut supply to raise prices,
and in the last year they did it bigtime. An 8GB/1600 kit today costs more than an 8GB/2133 cost 18
months ago.

Ian.

 

[vagrancyx]

If you actually read the article, when board manufacturers asked AMD and Nvidia to reduce prices on the GPUs chips, AMD and Nvidia responded by reducing chip production to maintain current chip prices. That definitely counts as doing something to keep prices up.

Yup, that's what I was referring to. RAM manufacturers do the same thing, ie. cut supply to raise prices,
and in the last year they did it bigtime. An 8GB/1600 kit today costs more than an 8GB/2133 cost 18
months ago.

Ian.

While there might be some truth to that, I thought RAM prices initially spiked due to the fire at one of the largest manufacturers plants going up in smoke.

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/sep/06/china-fire-memory-chip-prices

While prices should come down eventually (hopefully) it's kind of the same thing that happened to HDD's when all that flooding occurred.

 

[InvalidError]

RAM manufacturers do the same thing, ie. cut supply to raise prices,
and in the last year they did it bigtime.

Many of them converted lines to more profitable NAND and some of them have started converting lines to DDR4. They had very little choice to do something to raise DDR3 prices since most of them were making losses on DDR3 chips back then - so much so that Elpida went bankrupt.

DRAM manufacturing is a pretty harsh business and manufacturers have to take whatever profit they can while they can if they want to recover their losses from the previous lull and survive the next one.

 

[airborne11b]

3) Consoles are getting stronger every year, however so are pc's consoles are just dumb downed computers with limited OS's. I bought a Wii U becuase its fun, and any game i need or want to play is on the PC with a great community full of people.

5) High end card like titan z and Titan, and even 780ti to some extent are designed to be bragging rights, Yes its over priced, but if your friend bought one and has a tri-1440p setup play watch dogs or wolfenstien, you would probably drool everywhere. I know i would lol. (im mid range pc builder spend about 400 on vc and 800 on everything else.)

Consoles are not getting stronger every year. Wiiu sales are terrible (6.7mil in almost two years?), vita sales suck, 3ds is ok, ps4/xbox1 dropping momentum (already both off 50% just 1Q after release, we'll see how much more off in this Q shortly), MS won't even admit SELL-THROUGH numbers. Based on the rate they are dropping per month sony will be lucky to hit 11mil+ and MS won't hit 10mil this year. Devs ran from consoles and went to PC and mobile at last years GDC and this years 2014 GDC as the survey shows. So games will be massively on the PC/mobile vs. consoles and that won't help sales either. Until you hit 10mil only the big dogs can play in the console world which slows game releases and hurts sales.

Titan/TitanZ both have a purpose you're missing. PRO APPS with DP that is 1/2 the cost of TESLA (or same cost but double perf). They are not aimed at PURE gamers. Sure a few buy them for bragging rights, but most buy because they can't afford a tesla/quadro and want to get some work done at home AND play games. 95% of the people buying them know exactly WHY they are doing it and that it's a great deal.

Wii U sales sucked because they failed to have any killer games at launch, combined with a lot of consumers thinking the "Wii U" was just a controller for the Wii due to poor advertising. But now that nintendo is rolling out a lot of new killer titles and staple franchise games, the sales are skyrocketing. Mario Kart 8 alone increased Wii U sales by 600% lol.

When consumers can get their hands on the latest Smash Brothers, Zelda, Mario Kart and can see a growing library of interesting games, Wii U's are going to fly off the shelves.

You're right about a lot of devs moving to PC though, and the titan Z uses. Just wanted to note that the Wii U will do fine, and 3DS sales are beyond "ok". 3DS system and game sales alone could keep nintendo afloat for the next 5+ years without any issues lol.

 

[somebodyspecial]

If you actually read the article, when board manufacturers asked AMD and Nvidia to reduce prices on the GPUs chips, AMD and Nvidia responded by reducing chip production to maintain current chip prices. That definitely counts as doing something to keep prices up.

Yup, that's what I was referring to. RAM manufacturers do the same thing, ie. cut supply to raise prices,
and in the last year they did it bigtime. An 8GB/1600 kit today costs more than an 8GB/2133 cost 18
months ago.

Ian.

I got two sets of 16GB DDR3 1.5v for new PC's for my dad and I just waiting on Broadwell and to see who rises to the top of the Z97 boards (maybe not z97 now that OCing is coming to other chipsets). I got them both for $75-80 thinking there was going to be a shortage created due to tech news sites reporting it was coming (digitimes etc). It went down a bit more first but then wham, happy we bought near the bottom before they did the supply reductions. Unfortunately they are 4x4GB kits but I don't care, we're still saving nearly $70 per kit or more. It sucks that they do this manipulation but prices were so low I can see why as they can't make a much at $60 for 16GB (I think our kits went a bit lower even IIRC). Tough to make money on such low pricing due to the flooding of the chips then, exacerbated by the win8 rollout not selling any pc's they THOUGHT would be rolling off shelves immediately shipped with lots of it or needing more ram.

 

[mapesdhs]

Interesting idea there, that RAM makers would prepare production on the assumption that Win8 would drive
new PC sales. Hard to know if that was really a factor, but it wouldn't surprise me.

I wish I'd bought more 8GB/2133 kits when they were el cheapo (45 UKP or below);
the same kit today is about 67. Oh well, I did at least manage to win a few such
kits on eBay for reasonable prices, eg. item 111338530922.


Ian.

 

[vipboy28]

3) Consoles are getting stronger every year, however so are pc's consoles are just dumb downed computers with limited OS's. I bought a Wii U becuase its fun, and any game i need or want to play is on the PC with a great community full of people.

5) High end card like titan z and Titan, and even 780ti to some extent are designed to be bragging rights, Yes its over priced, but if your friend bought one and has a tri-1440p setup play watch dogs or wolfenstien, you would probably drool everywhere. I know i would lol. (im mid range pc builder spend about 400 on vc and 800 on everything else.)

Consoles are not getting stronger every year. Wiiu sales are terrible (6.7mil in almost two years?), vita sales suck, 3ds is ok, ps4/xbox1 dropping momentum (already both off 50% just 1Q after release, we'll see how much more off in this Q shortly), MS won't even admit SELL-THROUGH numbers. Based on the rate they are dropping per month sony will be lucky to hit 11mil+ and MS won't hit 10mil this year. Devs ran from consoles and went to PC and mobile at last years GDC and this years 2014 GDC as the survey shows. So games will be massively on the PC/mobile vs. consoles and that won't help sales either. Until you hit 10mil only the big dogs can play in the console world which slows game releases and hurts sales.

Titan/TitanZ both have a purpose you're missing. PRO APPS with DP that is 1/2 the cost of TESLA (or same cost but double perf). They are not aimed at PURE gamers. Sure a few buy them for bragging rights, but most buy because they can't afford a tesla/quadro and want to get some work done at home AND play games. 95% of the people buying them know exactly WHY they are doing it and that it's a great deal.

I was referring to Hardware in the consoles not growth in sales or popularity. I was referring to the fact that Consoles are just low budget gaming machines. You are correct and i agree, consoles arent doing well.

As for Titan the card is design for non-gamers however your missing the bragging rights. I have A LOT of single friends (lol) that bough this card and sli'd this card just to have that OMG Drool factor. The actual purpose for the titan/z is much more suited for non-gaming applications and its secondary function is for gaming 😀

I get your point now, that's true on the hardware of consoles but unfortunately for them they shot too low on that front and mobile will catch them at 14nm probably with a few tricks to help them out doing it (faster ram, stacked ram, faster clocks, more gpu cores etc). Well you must have a special group of friends, but most buy for DP and are repeat buyers yearly according to jen (cheap workhorse, just no driver support for pro apps) and I did say:
"Sure a few buy them for bragging rights, but most buy because they can't afford a tesla/quadro and want to get some work done at home AND play games." Noting the bragging rights. 😉 I guess you know most of the few I mentioned Dang, tell them send me one or two...LOL.

Many good points here; enjoy your day.

100% Agree with you here. I will tell my friends... but they love that single life lol shoot I want them to toss one my way. Its funny because they are EXTREMELY casual about it. "Hey, I did a minor upgrade on my pc.. I sli'd my Titan and bought 3 new 27 monitors..."

... COME ON!

 

[somebodyspecial]

3) Consoles are getting stronger every year, however so are pc's consoles are just dumb downed computers with limited OS's. I bought a Wii U becuase its fun, and any game i need or want to play is on the PC with a great community full of people.

5) High end card like titan z and Titan, and even 780ti to some extent are designed to be bragging rights, Yes its over priced, but if your friend bought one and has a tri-1440p setup play watch dogs or wolfenstien, you would probably drool everywhere. I know i would lol. (im mid range pc builder spend about 400 on vc and 800 on everything else.)

Consoles are not getting stronger every year. Wiiu sales are terrible (6.7mil in almost two years?), vita sales suck, 3ds is ok, ps4/xbox1 dropping momentum (already both off 50% just 1Q after release, we'll see how much more off in this Q shortly), MS won't even admit SELL-THROUGH numbers. Based on the rate they are dropping per month sony will be lucky to hit 11mil+ and MS won't hit 10mil this year. Devs ran from consoles and went to PC and mobile at last years GDC and this years 2014 GDC as the survey shows. So games will be massively on the PC/mobile vs. consoles and that won't help sales either. Until you hit 10mil only the big dogs can play in the console world which slows game releases and hurts sales.

Titan/TitanZ both have a purpose you're missing. PRO APPS with DP that is 1/2 the cost of TESLA (or same cost but double perf). They are not aimed at PURE gamers. Sure a few buy them for bragging rights, but most buy because they can't afford a tesla/quadro and want to get some work done at home AND play games. 95% of the people buying them know exactly WHY they are doing it and that it's a great deal.

Wii U sales sucked because they failed to have any killer games at launch, combined with a lot of consumers thinking the "Wii U" was just a controller for the Wii due to poor advertising. But now that nintendo is rolling out a lot of new killer titles and staple franchise games, the sales are skyrocketing. Mario Kart 8 alone increased Wii U sales by 600% lol.

When consumers can get their hands on the latest Smash Brothers, Zelda, Mario Kart and can see a growing library of interesting games, Wii U's are going to fly off the shelves.

You're right about a lot of devs moving to PC though, and the titan Z uses. Just wanted to note that the Wii U will do fine, and 3DS sales are beyond "ok". 3DS system and game sales alone could keep nintendo afloat for the next 5+ years without any issues lol.

www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2014/05/07/nintendo-misses-wii-u-and-3ds-sales-targets-posts-229m-loss
455mil loss for the year (more than 343mil predicted by nintendo), and even this last Q of that they lost 229mil. Not sure how you keep afloat on losses, they have to turn that around. But yes games can increase sales, no argument there. 1.18B in losses for the last 3yr total. Not sure they've sold 7mil yet in almost 2yrs for wiiu and that's not good. The 3DS as noted in the article has also missed sales targets. They predicted 18mil for the year then revised that to 13.5mil but in the final result actually only got 12.25mil. So off by ~50% (even though they have sold quite a few) from your own projections is not success is it? When you say 18mil, revise to 13.5mil and get 12.25...I say OUCH. That spike in sales isn't for long on any single game either, and a spike from next to nothing in sales for a quarter is still a small spike right? If I'm selling 1 unit today and sales go up to 6 units tomorrow it's still a small increase 😉 Overall they said sales increased 4 fold (666% in UK though...LOL@666) but comments just say that gets you out of the basement not much more, it will take more hits than this to even crack 10mil wiiu's sold by xmas (and I doubt this).

I also see 3ds going down, and most of what they got came due to the fact they got out of the game before mobile gaming really got going (as in past angry birds crap) as you can see from what happened to Vita who came after mobile was far past Angry Birds. Clearly from the sales tanking people are looking elsewhere already. You can do so much more with a unit like shield r1 ($200 now) and r2 is a month away. The specs on R1 blow away both vita and 3ds, and K1/shield2 is a whole other ballgame. NV will wash rinse repeat yearly on this too, as will ouya moving to T4 soon probably (or maybe just skip to K1), and all other android consoles will do the same if they have any success at all. I expect a full fledged ~125w android console at some point to directly compete with xbox1/ps4 as in 2x 20nm M1's (or whatever they call maxwell tegra), SSD or cheap HD, 8-16GB 125w psu etc. A steamOS/Android dual boot on it would be pretty awesome and cause even more problems for everyone else, assuming at some point NV or Valve ports steamos to android. This is a no-brainer IMHO, as valve surely wants to sell android games too so why leave all that to google? I think steam's store is better anyway than googleplay (difficult to find the great stuff on there compared to steam). I don't even have a steam account but go there to check stuff out at times. Great game stats (sales, info etc), forums, easy to search for what you're after etc. It's useful even if you don't have an account. Look out Google 😉

Also note nintendo is only predicting 3.6mil in wiiu sales even with all the titles you mention. That would barely be 10mil or so after more than 2yrs. With 20nm SOCS coming shortly your android tablet will be more powerful by quite a bit than a wiiu. That's a tough sell at that point games or not as some great stuff is already out or coming for them with 50% of devs paying attention per GDC 2014 (you have to or you're brain dead with 1.2B units sold yearly). The only thing beating that mark is PC's barely at ~51%. Wiiu isn't even on the map for devs, it's only nintendo which isn't good either. They'll need to cross 10mil before anyone looks at them especially smaller devs who can't wait for 5-7yrs of console sales (like an EA/Activision/Blizzard can). Games aimed at shield r2 (any kepler console) and even T4 etc should start to show more console like experiences. Once the 20nm versions all hit on SOCs everything will be kepler power level or more and with the engines all working on mobile (unreal4, unity etc) everything can be ported or made for these mobile units, again making life rough for all consoles. Sheer units will cause games to be aimed at mobile and pc. Mobile expected to grow to 2.5B in 2016. Consoles might have 20mil by then each. Hard for devs to look away from mobile, if not PC.

I'm not sure tons of people will by a new wiiu just for a title or 3 etc (I won't, not enough to woo me) with what is going on in mobile and xbox1/ps4 both at $400 and much more powerful. Their life is just going to get more difficult. I'm sure they'll get sales pops for each game you mention but I'm not sure they'll get enough to matter. Devs showed 60% making stuff for android last year and 40 for PC so it looks like ~10% switched back to PC but consoles didn't get much help. For another year or two games if aimed at consoles at all will mostly be aimed at xbox360/ps3 since there are already ~100mil each in the market (again especially small devs who require a huge audience for quicker returns). Clearly PC's making a major comeback if someone can even claim they ever left (more software money on PC now than console at $15.2B vs. 15B).

It will be an interesting next 12 months that's for sure. It will be very interesting to see the 20nm SOC effect on all consoles/handhelds (qcom/nv/apple all have great gpus inside and Arm's mali isn't bad either). To be honest I'd rather see nintendo port their games to mobile, and start making the new stuff for there and PC's. They could make a TON of more money doing this as they have GREAT games themselves, just not enough hardware to sell copies to. You're literally buying nintendo to play NINTENDO games, as most everything else looks better on other platforms and is already there too. We should have this conversation again after xmas We'll all know a LOT more by then. All the devs that were making mobile games during GDC 2013 should start to show up this xmas (1-2yrs dev cycles) along with a lot of new hardware (few T4 consoles, Shield2 and maybe other K1 based consoles/handhelds, even phones/tablets with 20nm socs etc). If the consoles/handhelds survive xmas/Q1 without tanking another 50% all around and all cross 10mil maybe they have some shot. Otherwise...It's going to get really ugly fast for them all.

 

[BlasterX]

When addictive games are still using light graphics, when majority is still using 1366x768 on their desktops/laptops, when people still feel no advantage having a video card in their computers, like games, 3D apps (VR for the help!), or webpages having advantage on video cards, then they'll never upgrade or get a video card, ever.
Maybe facebook buying oculus is a super idea, which will put graphically intense stuff into facebook, so people would maybe use PC more for the immersion.

 

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Maybe facebook buying oculus is a super idea, which will put graphically intense stuff into facebook, so people would maybe use PC more for the immersion.

Most people I know who used to use Facebook have sworn to reduce if not completely eliminate their use of it after all the privacy and content ownership BS from the past two years. Inserting ads in feeds also annoyed quite a few.

My own FB account has very little use beyond keeping track of family birthdays and general announcements.

 

[mapesdhs]

As for Titan the card is design for non-gamers ... The actual purpose for the titan/z is much more suited for non-gaming applications and its secondary function is for gaming 😀

Unfortunately some pro markets cannot use the Titan because it does not have ECC RAM, eg.
financial transaction processing. Also, as a gamer variant card, it lacks some of the features of
Tesla cards which are important for certain types of pro task, eg. full speed PCI return path,
caching mechanism, etc.

Ian.