The Price Tag of Exclusivity: ATI and Valve

The Inquirer has a piece up breaking down the millions of dollars ATI spent securing a "special relationship" with Valve prior to Half-Life 2 being released. The relationship resulted in a voucher being included with ATI cards for a free copy of Valve's hit game. From the article: "ATI gave Valve $2.4 million in cash for the deal. ATI also invested $1.2 million in marketing this great game. And last, but not least, was a cool $4.4 million that ATI and its partners spent for bundles. That amounts to some $8 million dollars....[ATI] sold an incredible lot of 9800XT and 9600XT cards just because of the nice voucher [for Half-Life 2]. That small piece of paper convinced many people to go out and buy an ATI card." A little salt with this article will help it go down easier.

Comments

One year later, HL2 came out.

[88NoSoup4U88]

And then to imagine that once Half-Life 2 finally came out, most of those videocards the game came bundled with were allready quite outdated.

Still, I know alot of people who, imo, fell for it.

Re:One year later, HL2 came out.

[mog007]

I bought my 9600XT just because it came with the voucher. I won't lie. I needed a video card, and I had just received my second batch of bad luck from an Nvidia offering. I figured ATI must be better at it, hell they make cards themselves, not solely whoring out the GPU to other third parties. Sure, they whore out their chips too, but they'll also sell the card themselves. Just tells my subconcious that ATI has more pride in their work than Nvidia, that's all.

Granted, I had to get my card locally for the voucher, but I was in dire need of a new card, and the 9600XT was in my price range, and it had the horsepower that I could use.

I still use it today, and it holds up pretty well, so I'd call it a sound investment.

Lack of information

[deinol]

Ok, so they spent 8 million getting peoples attention. That's nice. Did they sell 8 million worth of video cards? Or even better, did they even sell enough to make 8 million in profit from video cards? It's been a while since I felt the need to upgrade my video card. Then again, I don't have as much time to play games as I would like. And when I do, a console game is cheaper.

Certainly I like the fierce competition between Nvidia and ATI. The more they try and get an edge over the other, the better and cheaper the cards that end up in my PC or Console. I wouldn't want either to win however.

Re:Lack of information

[harks]

Even if they didn't, they have increased their market share and (hopefully) attracted some satisfied customers who could buy more ATI cards later on.

Bought the card for the game?

[faloi]

Nah, this is just like any other incentive. Not much different from bundling games with video cards (as has been going on for a while). The only difference was they bundled a game that didn't exist yet. I don't think anybody bought the card because it "came" with HL2. Having HL2 bundled with it *might* have been the last straw that pushed someone on the Nvidia vs. ATI fence over toward ATI. So ATI wins, they get possibly more people buying their card. Valve wins, they get pre-market sales to count on their accounting sheets before. And the customer wins, they get a decent video card and a good game.

Re:No Kidding!

[Leroy_Brown242]

If you think the cost of an application is just the CD and leaflets included, you are obviously not a programmer.