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3dfx/Gigapixel: Where Did it Go Wrong?
nvidia3dfxatibobby writes "According to this interview & 3dfx tribute, gambling upon buying Gigapixel and then hoping to book a spot in Microsoft's Xbox is the theory or rather last gamble that failed and thus brought the curtain down on 3dfx interactive. Of course since then, NVIDIA booked their spot in the Xbox and 3dfx were left in the dust. The interview also looks at a former 3dfx employee's perspective now working for NVIDIA and hence talking for NVIDIA."
...and articles such as this one make me sick to my stomach. Why? Because most of them are full of ill-researched speculation, that couldn't be further from the truth, but nevertheless seem plausible-- so people believe them.
Now, this particular article on Sharky isn't so bad. I've seen worse. Brian Burke was with us almost to the end, so he knows what he's talking about.
Anyway, my point to this post is to clarify a few details that people tend to get wrong in these articles:
* nvidia did NOT buy 3dfx. Rather, 3dfx became insolvent, and so asked nvidia to buy their assets, so they could afford to dig their own grave. That is why my TDFX stock is work pennies today. If nvidia had acquired 3dfx, the stock would be going up, not down (because eventually, the stocks would be one-and-the-same.)
* 3dfx did not "refuse" to let OEMs sell their products. 3dfx WANTED to sell to OEMs (such as Dell, Compaq, etc.) That was the whole reason they changed their logo-- to look more professional! But Napalm and Rampage were woefully late, and 3dfx fell so far behind on the performance curve, that OEMs weren't all that interested. 3dfx's inability to meet the OEM's product schedules didn't help, either. In the end, all that was left for 3dfx was the retail side-- something 3dfx had wanted to de-emphasize, with the STB merger.
(In defense of some of the people who made the above claim I just refuted... by "OEM" some people might have meant board companies, like CREAF-- in which case, they are absolutely right; 3dfx did stop selling to those companies intentionally. But that's not what killed 3dfx; retail sales only accounts for a very, very small portion of the 3D graphics market. By far, OEM sales (Dell, Compaq, etc.) is where the money is at. This becomes more evident if you consider the fact that 3dfx became insolvent, despite having the top-selling products in the retail channel. Reason? Because retail is just a trickle, compared to OEM sales.
* The gigapixel merger is NOT what killed 3dfx. The gigapixel purchase was the smartest thing 3dfx did in a long time. But it was too little, too late. The purchase of STB is ultimately what killed them. The problem was, the business model changed on them. Prior to the STB acquisition, companies such as Dell and Compaq bought boards from board companies. But by the time the acquisition took place, the OEMs started buying chips directly from the chip suppliers, and then contracting companies to build boards overseas. STB was a middleman; our days were numbered, but we didn't realize it at the time. And neither did 3dfx, and they paid dearly for it. What we should have done (hindsight being 20/20 and all,) was sell or lease Juarez to someone like Solectron, and return to being a chip company. 3dfx realized this, but we realized it too late; Mexican labor is considerably more expensive than that of the pacific rim sweatshops, so Juarez's market value declined before we could sell it.
HSJ$$*&#^!#+++ATH0
NO CARRIER
I would guess that a similar future awaits graphics card technology. So on what criteria will Graphics cards of the future be judged upon? What will be the defining factors that will give one card an edge over an other once this graphical end of history has been reached? The only one I can think of is price.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
There is no