PX,
You wrote:
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Mark said:
3Dfx said they will be ramping up their marketing in the second half of 1998. This means more mainstream people.
IMHO: if true, this is a strategic marketing error. Voodoo boards are not mainstream products. Only hardcore 1PS gamers buy Voodoo boards.
Mark said:
3Dfx is still a niche market, *BUT* has the potential to outgrow their niche market.
Nope. How exactly will they outgrow the niche market?
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This is why Banshee and the OEM market are important moving forward.
At E3, I was told by several TDFX people that their strategy moving forward was to leverage Glide as a platform and Voodoo as a brand to get into larger markets. This also came out in the Motley Fool interview that the CEO did two weeks ago. At E3, I got the strong impression that the box-makers see 3D gaming of all types as a way to sell higher-end computers to retail consumers. In addition to the pitches by the various graphic chipmakers, it was strongly confirmed by Intel's main marketing message at E3 - "Pentiums Make 3D Fun!"
While TDFX wasn't talking about Banshee at E3, I was given the impression that they are pitching it to OEMs using that same message. Anything they can do to strengthen awareness of the Voodoo brandname in the general computer marketplace would really help their efforts to get Banshee into OEMs' boxes. (Thus my frustration with their "quiet period" nonsense and my joy whenever they make a press release.)
Re: 1PS's - While First Person Shooters are (and probably always will be) the cutting edge for accelerated games, at least 40% (gut estimate) of the hardware accelerated games I saw at E3 were not First Person Shooters - Flight Simulators, Racing Sims, Sports Titles, Homeworld (a cool 3D version of C&C in space), Final Fantasy, etc.
BTW, There was also a couple of significant 3PS's (Third Person Shooters) there - Heretic and Dracon.
Chip
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