RE: Perception
If there is one thing that has plagued 3Dfx has been it's perceived position in the market at any given time. Tom had said that the PVRNG was going to be the king of the hill (this hurt perception), his credibility was shot then all of a sudden he started to link his site to Sharky, and got notoriously quite on 3d accelerators for a while (ripping S3 in the process).
I appreciate that 3dfx delivers what it promises, and that is one of the reasons why I invested in it, but the flip side is that since they only talk about what they definitely can do, they tend to be on the tight-lipped side. On the other hand, we have nVidia that tends to run at the lip (ex: TNT beat V2 SLI, 128 beat V1, ETc...). They have not been as verbal since their IPO, but maybe through Tom, Sharky, and a possibly alienated Metabyte, they have found an alternative source of FUD (Fear- Uncertainty- Disinformation). Even if this TNT-SLI is bunk, the perception is that 3dfx is in harms way.
This is not an unfamiliar cycle with 3Dfx, and unfortunately as much as I like 3dfx the company and 3dfx the product, TDFX the stock has been taking the brunt of this perception problem. Hopefully, 3dfx will deliver V3 effectively, market efficiently, and the merged company will have improved margins even at a potentially (probable)lower unit volume.
Somebody should post over on the Yahoo board, NVDA could use some shorts :P.
Jeff "never thought I'd be frustrated about being long" P.
P.s. I hope if anything good comes out of this SLI fiasco, I hope that 3dfx seriously takes a look at multiple processor / card solutions as the crazed gamer will always consider adding cards for framerates. Cost is generally not much of an issue, just performance. Proof is in the 16 year old gamers online that have a T1 line... (green with envy). |
