Conclusion/Game devs (cont’d)

Brad Wardell: CEO of Stardock (Galactic Civilizations 2)
I think it will put more pressure on Intel and nVidia to at least work together more closely on implementing new game-related features into their chipsets.


Michael Lewis; CEO Combat Studios (Battlefield 2 Tour of Duty)
I think that the AMD ATI merger will adversely affect the PC gaming
industry because it will reduce the incentive for AMD to provide optimal
support for NVIDIA graphics cards. I can understand the need for the
merger from AMD's perspective: they're facing a tough market since Intel
has a graphics accelerator division, and they want to move into the
mobile market. This move, however, could hurt consumers, who depend on
broad support. It will also put NVIDIA in hot water since they will
face potential exclusion from AMD's market coupled with the difficult
competition Intel is giving them. If ATI merges with AMD, consumers,
particularly PC gamers, will ultimately lose out.

If AMD stops providing quality support for NVIDIA cards it will
adversely hurt developers as well since it may force them to jury rig
their own sollutions without close support from the hardware
manufacturers themselves. The chipset manufacturer-developer
relationship is critical for ensuring consumers are supplied with the
best configured games possible, and if that is jepordized gamers and
developers will both suffer.

Summary

In closing, the merger of ATI and AMD has the potential to a very big deal in the PC industry. AMD feels this move was necessary to truly take on the juggernaut that is Intel. Intel has successfully leveraged their platform strategy into their very successful Centrino brand in notebooks, and based on recent sales data, Viiv is picking up well, going from 0% at the beginning of the year to taking home 10% of the US retail desktop market in a matter of months.

With ATI’s successful heritage of delivering notebook platforms for Intel, AMD certainly couldn’t have picked a better partner to take on Centrino, while AMD should be able to leverage not only ATI’s chipset division but also their multimedia unit (and their successful lineup of TV Wonder and All-In-Wonder products) as well to take on Viiv head-on. Going forward Dirk Meyer has given us an intriguing direction of where the combined entity would like to go moving forward, we should see the first real fruits of the combined entity in the 2008 timeframe when AMD debuts their first CPU-GPU hybrid.

It will be interesting to see how smooth the transition takes place, and what, if anything AMD plans to do with the ATI brand. Obviously the two companies feel they complement each other well going into the deal, but things always look rosy early on.

In any case, this was certainly a bold move by AMD, acquiring ATI. If everything turns out well, the rewards could be significant, a combined ATI-AMD would be a worthy challenger to Intel’s dominance in the desktop and mobile segments. But at the same time, if the deal goes bad the industry could lose two very key players. AMD’s timing is particularly interesting as well, they’re locked in the middle of a bitter legal battle with Intel, and just lost the desktop performance crown to Intel as well. A more conservative AMD would’ve attempt to resolve these key issues before pressing forward with a plan as bold as this one, but clearly Hector Ruiz and Co. have their eyes fixed on the bigger picture and felt that a bold step was necessary to ensure the future success of the company. We’ll just have to wait and see if this was the right decision for AMD or not…