To: Jeff Lins who wrote (7036 ) 9/10/1998 2:10:00 AM From: Sun Tzu Read Replies (3) | Respond to
Jeff I concede you some points but you are stretching my points. Yes I am only making a judgment call based on STBI CC and it is possible that others have lined up other OEMs. But I have to go with what I know, now not what may be. And yes trusting 3Dfx blindly would not have been very wise of the OEMs, but something along those lines is what effective marketing is about. 3Dfx was so tight lipped about Banshee that I think they missed the pre-release window of opportunity. They could have leaked bits and pieces of information over the course of its development to keep a high level of interest and draw attention to themselves week after week. They could have sent their engineers and sales force to the OEMs to give OEMs the latest update on Banshee progress (detail enough to give them confidence and excite them, but fuzzy enough not to give advantage to the competition) and ensure OEMs that Banshee will be the must own chip. They could have also used such meetings to get a feel for the changing requirements of OEMs so that they would not have been surprised by the marketing significance of AGP 2X (though technically it is insignificant). Look at the way ATI (or even Nvid) markets itself and then look at 3Dfx. IMO 3Dfx falls short as much in marketing as they are ahead in technology. I don't think it is too bad to arrive about the same time as your compitition or even a little later, so long as you can use the time effectively. Meaning that (a) you do not miss any major windows of opportunity (i.e back-to-school, or Christmas) and (b) you use the time to expose the weaknesses of your competition and build pent up demand for your product. There are people out there who view the latest product more favorably regardless of who it is from. Marketing has two objectives: promoting your own sales and preventing the sales of your competition. I've seen nothing from 3Dfx in the past two or three months to convince me they were doing this. And of course they should not have waited till Christmas to release Banshee. I never suggested that they should have. But if waiting till October would have meant that they'd use 0.25u process, provide AGP 2X, expose nvid for the fakes that they are, and advertise Banshee effectively, then the 6 weeks wait would have been worth it.
