You may be right, but I'm not sure this is completely true. Let's say I'm a sales guy for XYZ Co. (say ATI or nvid or...) and want to promote my product. I'd have a somewhat easier time if I can point to "independent" 3rd party research that says I'm the most influential player in the market. Or let's say that I want to convince HWP that they should promote my new graphics solution in their business class of PCs (because I have the fastest 2D and great 3D). Again if I can point to various 3rd party research that says this market is poised for explosion and I'm the (or one of the big) leaders in it, I'll have an easier time to achieve my goal. On the other hand if various opinion makers in the industry are not even acknowledging me as a serious player, not only I have to convince the OEM that there is a need for this type of product, I'll also have to convince them that *I* am the person they should buy from. And that may not be so easy. This is to say nothing of the fund managers who would browse such news to see which company may be the next great winner they should invest in.
3Dfx has consistently failed to take advantage of marketting opportunities that would bring them recognition beyond the developer community. They have been most incompetent in this regard with both the investment and technical communities. I can present at least 10 different lost marketing opportunities which 3Dfx missed with the investment community but that would take too long and you all know it any ways. With the technical community the poor judgements included lack of AGP 2 for Banshee, not enabling SLI on Banshee, not providing a way for Banshee to work with Voodoo 1 and/or Voodoo 2, not campagining against the nvid hype, realizing too late that the rules of the marketing have changed with regards to presenting the specs, calling their latest product "Banshee" when they had already build up the name "Voodoo". At least they somewhat fixed the last one.
The way I see it, 3Dfx's competetion is presenting itself as serving exotic dishes of great nutritional value (sushi) while portraying 3Dfx as selling dead cold fish (sushi). Yet 3Dfx's does nothing on the grounds the taste will speak for itself. It will. But they will sure have a hard time getting the customers in the door. It's a good thing that 3Dfx considers marketing and branding of great importance. If this is the way they handle it when they consider it important, I'm afraid they might just join the anti-voodoo parade if they ever stopped believing so.
Sun Tzu |
