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Technology Stocks : 3DFX -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Peter S. who wrote (13255)	6/14/1999 2:08:00 PM
From: Sun Tzu	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 16960

Ok, let's look at the Glide issue logically. I am still to meet one person who decides on which card to buy based on which API the card uses. At the margin, all things being fairly equal, one would prefer to buy a card that supports more APIs (including Glide) than less. But this is only at the margin. A week ago I was at a few computer stores and made a point of looking to see how many games mention 3dfx or glide on their boxes. The answer was about 1 in 10. This is hardly the kind of publicity and developer support that can make Glide a consideration. As it stands, Glide is only valuable to 3dfx because it let's them implement whatever functionality they want. But that is valuable so long as developers are willing to support Glide. What is Glide going to be worth a year from now if nobody (or very few) write games for it? Like you said, it is rather like the hot movie tickets; but this show has been on screens for a while now. Had 3dfx been smart, they would have long enticed the support of other card makers for Glide, thereby assuring its survival. >> What if nVidia implemented Glide and id it faster. That would be a disaster for 3dfx. And that would be excellent. It would force 3dfx to keep innovating and improving Glide rather than sitting on its behind. The way to succeed in high tech is not by trying to corner the market via exclusionary techniques. Rather it is by innovating and giving the customers what they want. With or without 3dfx, someone will make a better API than today's Glide. It is in 3dfx's best interest to see that the best graphics API 2 years from now is Glide X rather than something else. Even if that better Glide is made by nVidia. Here is an example to illustrate the point. When Sun Microsystems grew out of the Motorola CPUs, they invented the SPARC chip and based all their workstations on it. Rather than saying that SPARC is great and we'll keep it all to ourself, they spun out the architecture to another company that lincensed it to all, including Sun. As it turned out, other manufacturers such as TI, Matsushita, and Ross Tech., proved to be better producers of the SPARC chip than Sun itself. As a result, Sun folded its lousy chip making unit and now buys the SPARC chips for its workstations from others. Last I checked, SUNW has grown imensely since the days they spun out SPARC and the practice actually helped them grow rather than kill them. This is something that Jobs never understood and still doesn't. ST P.S. I must have been sleep, what movie shows Jobs vs Gates and when?