Jen-Hsun’s Commentary

A critical look

At lunch, we humble members of the press enjoyed “a fireside chat” with the disarmingly matter-of-fact Jen-Hsun, and Todd Hollenshead, CEO of id. To get a full appreciation of the effect this had, it helps to remember that id has an untarnished reputation in the industry. Nobody is about to accuse John Carmack of fudging numbers or bias when it comes to computer hardware, while id’s financial status and fierce independence makes it rather unlikely they were bought a spot at the conference or compelled through contract to appear. A quick email to Todd Hollenshead resulted in the predictable response:

I went because we like what they're doing from a technical standpoint, they're a good business partner of ours, and they asked if I would come and talk about our relationship and DOOM 3. Frankly, there was little marketing benefit from that sort of event for a game like DOOM 3 and, as I said at the event, we're not under contract with them (apart from NDAs). I was there because I wanted to be there and I like getting an opportunity to interact with groups from the media. I wish I would have had a little more time to spend there.

I believe that's Nick Triantos

The changes in 50

With such unflinching support, it becomes very difficult to separate the honest statements made by both presenters, and the colorful angles presented by Jen-Hsun Huang along with the rest of the NVIDIA staff. This is compounded by the disturbingly open and honest discussion going on at the event, with NVIDIA being barraged by questions and a few accusations at many opportunities. Finding a great big lie is a lot easier than catching the small spins put on every answer.

Jen-Hsun’s pet Paper Tiger

During the dialogue with Todd, Jen-Hsun made it a point to downplay ATI as a rival despite their strong resurgence which coincided with the release of the R300 and R350. Rather, he was focused on Intel as a competitor, stating that NVIDIA lost its pre-eminent position to Intel because of the embedded graphics hardware market. “Free”, as he stated, “is hard to say no to”. Putting the onus on writers, Mr. Huang suggested including benchmarks of embedded chipsets, in order to demonstrate their inferiority to the public.

That’s fair enough, and in the future, this will be an issue that we, the media, will have to tackle. It’s easy to dismiss embedded graphics now, but if they dominate the market, game developers would be suicidal to not cater to the lowest common denominator. If the sales of add-in cards like Radeons and GeForces drop, there might not be a market for high-end games. It’s an unlikely scenario, but it’s ugly and possible enough to worry about.

Except, that isn’t NVIDIA’s concern right now. NVIDIA has to worry about ATI for now and for the immediate future, no matter how they try to paint matters. And indeed, NVIDIA’s CEO spent considerable time talking about ATI, though not how you might think.