Nvidia responds to Batman:AA

[Ket]

Vote with your feet, buy the alternative. Once nvidia start seeing significant sales losses, then they will have to take a good long hard look at themselves and listen to their customers - their the ones that keep them in business.

[gallag]

Quite the contrary, the phillosophy with the companies I work with who have similar principles to ATi is very clear, their message is; any troubles let us know and we will help you out.

Ati can't be blamed because somebody at a games dev couldn't be bothered to pick up the damn phone.

Dont try to make out like one is better than the other, FFS people, AMD/Intel/ATi/Nv would all ring the neck of a cute kitten to get the profits up 1%.

[Ket]

I'm not saying ANY company is better than the other, its all down to the business ethics a company employs. Nvidia like a controlling dictatorship style, while ATi prefer a mutual respect and co-operation style. Both styles have their merits, but in the long run keeping participants in whatever project as satisfied as possible is more beneficial.

[AbelJemka]

Then you have no idea what it's like trying to work with them... There's a reason everyone in the know says they give NO support to developers.

So, by your statement, you say a company that never assists with anything is the type of company you like to work with, and that's a harmonious relationship?

I click AMD games i see game they're supporting.
So saying they give NO support to developers and that they never assists

[saaya]

Tapping on the shoulder of a company busy creating a game isn't going to get anything done. Nvidia has an entire marketing strategy and department based on this single thing called "The way its meant to be played" ATI has, hmm........idk....

Example: Me and you have the same product. You go out all over the place displaying the product talking about it, working closely with other companies pushing it. and I just
sit with my development team, doing nothing

right, ati guys are just sitting around, doing nothing...

That is my complaint. Not saying its right what happened, and theres no excuse for AA not to work with Batman on ATI hardware. But to be honest. This probably would haven't happened if
ATI made more of an effort to counter Nvidia's "The way its meant to be played"

i dont know man... i think that would only polarize the game dev community and cause lots of bickering and trouble and more compatibility problems...

We dont know whats happening behind the curtain. But even if Nvidia is bullying their way into the development of games and pushing ATI out. Its ATI's own fault
for not paying attention and being on top of their game with the marketing of their hardware.

so if your competition is a bully its your own fault if you dont act like a bully yourself... is that what your saying? :P

[Manicdan]

Dont try to make out like one is better than the other, FFS people, AMD/Intel/ATi/Nv would all ring the neck of a cute kitten to get the profits up 1%.

even i would ring the neck of a cute kitten to get a few hundred million dollars.

[DilTech]

I click AMD games i see game they're supporting.
So saying they give NO support to developers and that they never assists

The issue is they pick and choose who they work with, and leave the others in the cold. That's the problem.

Compare how many AMD work with to how many NVidia work with.

[Clairvoyant129]

Quite the contrary, the phillosophy with the companies I work with who have similar principles to ATi is very clear, their message is; any troubles let us know and we will help you out.

Ati can't be blamed because somebody at a games dev couldn't be bothered to pick up the damn phone.

So you never actually worked with ATI but yet you know what it's like?

I love how people think smaller company/underdog = more honest.

[Heinz68]

So you're one of the 5 companies that ATi will actually answer phone calls and requests for? Most people can't even get them to send test hardware...

It's all baloney and I doubt you have any prove to post such at news forum. I would like to see a Moderator on non-vendor specific site a little bit less biased.

The fact is AMD has a developers assistance team and sends ton of free hardware to game developers, the only difference is there is not always big check attached with the hardware. They're also not so stupid not to answer a game developer phone call. I'm absolutely sure Eidos doesn't have such problem.

Or are you trying to suggest that AMD's Richard Huddy is not telling the true (start watching at 10min mark).

I believe this was posted at Xtreme News before.

[saaya]

mhhhh not really... i worked for amd customer support and i did notice that dev relations arent exactly perfect... when game devs call the regular tech support cause they cant get a reply from any of their propper contacts for a while thats quite telling...

i still think its childish to turn a support offer down once you do get it... and its not really fair to your customers...

[DilTech]

It's all baloney and I doubt you have any prove to post such at news forum. I would like to see a Moderator on non-vendor specific site a little bit less biased.

The fact is AMD has a developers assistance team and sends ton of free hardware to game developers, the only difference is there is not always big check attached with the hardware. They're also not so stupid not to answer a game developer phone call. I'm absolutely sure Eidos doesn't have such problem.

Or are you trying to suggest that AMD's Richard Huddy is not telling the true (start watching at 10min mark).

I believe this was posted at Xtreme News before.

Ask around... Also, you DO realize I'm in the industry, right? NVidia send us hardware all the time(we had a DX10 part from them when they launched the 7800GTX 512mb), ATi? Never.

I do know what I'm talking about here, and many others have been vocal about it as well.

p.s. I can't say any more than that due to a little piece of paper they make us sign. Some people here know what I do, but I'm not going to get into a big spiel about it as we're preferred not to talk about it.

Saaya will back me up on developer issues with ATi.

[Heinz68]

Ask around... Also, you DO realize I'm in the industry, right? NVidia send us hardware all the time(we had a DX10 part from them when they launched the 7800GTX 512mb), ATi? Never.

I do know what I'm talking about here, and many others have been vocal about it as well.

p.s. I can't say any more than that due to a little piece of paper they make us sign. Some people here know what I do, but I'm not going to get into a big spiel about it as we're preferred not to talk about it.

Saaya will back me up on developer issues with ATi.

So who are you what's the big secret? You can't tell because somebody let you sign some piece of paper?

All I know you're moderator at this forum and as such you should not be biased, some of your post sure look like that.

It's not any secret that AMD sends ton of hardware to developers. I rather believe AMD's Richard Huddy who isn't secretive about who he is.

Beside I did see other AMD's interview about the same subject and confirming the same.

Why should I ask Saaya? Is he game developer or are you game developer? Why should I listen to somebody hearsay. Like everything posted at forums is true.

EDIT
Beside why should I ask around. You posted in the news section this baloney:
"So you're one of the 5 companies that ATi will actually answer phone calls and requests for? Most people can't even get them to send test hardware..

So it's up to you to prove it.

[DilTech]

Saaya worked for AMD's customer service... He'll tell you that frequently when game developers had to reach AMD they had to go through customer service because AMD's reps wouldn't take the call.

As for a piece of paper, ever heard of the letters N. D. and A? Before that, I use to freely talk about it. It's not so much secretive, but rather if I slip up and say something too far it won't fall back on my employers, which is why we're not suppose to talk about who we work for any more. It's a rather major 3d company, and we've NEVER been given a single piece of hardware from AMD, while NVidia has given us prototypes of cards that the consumer never even knows exists...

As for being "biased" do I have to remind you that in my rig right now is a 4850?

[flippin_waffles]

The most important thing to remember here, is that nv influenced the developers to disable features in Batman if you are running an ATi card. That's the bottom line no matter how complicated some want to try and make it. I seem to remember how big of a deal it was when Intel had a certain compiler that disabled features if an AMD cpu was detected. The similarities are striking.

[Chumbucket843]

By all means, please enlighten all of us oh master of knowledge. Your three troll posts on the thread thus far haven't added much value to my life. Are you withholding information that would settle this debate once and for all?

Why don't you tell us how this AA algorithm is both superior and at the same time inappropriate for ATI cards? Tech specs please, this is after all, a technology forum!

Now is your time to shine and show us all how much you know about game development!

you know he will pwn you on computer graphics. your just asking for it. maybe you should read some of his posts before assuming he knows nothing.

[gumballguy]

even i would ring the neck of a cute kitten to get a few hundred million dollars.

What if you only got a measly amount of stock options and had to give the rest to shareholders?

[Ket]

So you never actually worked with ATI but yet you know what it's like?

I love how people think smaller company/underdog = more honest.

I work with companies with similar ethics. I never said I worked with ATi. I love how people who don't own their own business have a opinion on something they know nothing about

[AbelJemka]

The issue is they pick and choose who they work with, and leave the others in the cold. That's the problem.

Compare how many AMD work with to how many NVidia work with.

When i look at Nvidia parnetship i see only big games from big companies. And for you thta's AMD who chose who they work with?

It's a rather major 3d company, and we've NEVER been given a single piece of hardware from AMD, while NVidia has given us prototypes of cards that the consumer never even knows exists...

Seems you greet Nvidia here at XS with nice unbiased post...

I understand why you understand Rocksteady attitude toward Nvidia. Nvidia both give you something that's totally fair you give us all can in return

[Sadasius]

*Why so serious?* Play nice!

I am pretty sure this thread was beat the hell out of anyway and I think most said what they wanted to as well.

[570091D]

Why should I ask Saaya? Is he game developer or are you game developer? Why should I listen to somebody hearsay. Like everything posted at forums is true.

EDIT
Beside why should I ask around. You posted in the news section this baloney:
"So you're one of the 5 companies that ATi will actually answer phone calls and requests for? Most people can't even get them to send test hardware..

So it's up to you to prove it.

mhhhh not really... i worked for amd customer support and i did notice that dev relations arent exactly perfect... when game devs call the regular tech support cause they cant get a reply from any of their propper contacts for a while thats quite telling...

i still think its childish to turn a support offer down once you do get it... and its not really fair to your customers...

heinz, saaya's quote is probably the most telling in the thread... but it seems you skipped right past it....

[Trembledust]

No AA on the 360 version...Trust me, I know.



I doubt anyone would care...battleforge isn't a good game to begin with.

Although, saying NVidia hasn't put out DX11 developer cards is a grave mistake....

No AA on the PS3 either. I downloaded the demo. Whooooa. Jaggies. I played the retail version on pc with a Nvidia sli set up with physx on high...yea she looks puuuurdy. Physx real does make the game pop in subtle ways. If its tru Nvidia seems to be sleeping on DX 11 IMO thats a huge business mistake considering the upcoming titles alledged to support DX 11.

This whole argument about Nvidia paying to have AA support on Batman sort of sounds a lil like the whole Assassins Creed issue a while back with Dx 10.1 implemented with ATI cards, and Nvidia allegedy catching a hissy fit with Ubi for doing it then having Ubi removing the DX 10.1 support from the game.

Personally I was mad that Ubi actually caved in and released a patch to remove DX 10.1 but at the end of the day it is business. Its not always fair. It happens.

If u really want to show your disagreement for things like that happening start a boycott or something. Try to get it big enough that people will notice. Put pressure on the big wigs. That's a start. Better then just complaining about it in forums and "hopping" things change on their own.

If Nv did step to Rocksteady and said listen..we know the Unreal Engine doesnt support AA natively lets work with you, and spend some cash so the game supports AA atleast on our hardware then hey...that was a smart move. They jumped on a heavily anticipated game and it paid off for them. If Ati just didn't bother to contact the devs and basically thought the game would run fine as is thats on them.

If there was foul play Ati should file suit. Not sure what precedence they can base the suit on though.

And people complaining physx cannot be run with Ati cards is like saying Burger King wont sell McDonald's fries with thier value meals. We know u can find a work around but why would u expect Nv to actually have their physx work with the competition natively? I wouldnt. That's just me.

[Your_Boss]

I ultimately blame the game developer! Some are weak and "whore" themselves out for money.

When NV said, "Hey, we want you to get AA working(in game) on our cards for the Batman game and here's some money/help." The game developer should have said, "Fantastic!, however, we will also try to make it work on ALL cards that can play our game, not just yours. If you don't agree with that then no deal!".

THAT'S what should have happened. The fact that NV "armtwists"(Huddy's word) the developers with all these different tactics only shows that NV thinks that bribing is the best way to help get their cards to work..and/or work faster than their competition. (This is arguably a shady tactic. I think there should be NO exclusivity. Help sure, exculsivity, NO!)

It's both company's fault. NV for throwing so much money, not just for extra features, but also for certain exclusitivity in certain games, but also the game developers who are "whoring" themselves out and not being up front and firm with NV and telling them, "Hey, we're going to make our games work the BEST with EVERY CARD we possibly can."

And I believe that any game developer would want EVERY card to run as fast as possible using their game...no way they would exclude any card from performing at it's highest possible unless they were told, bribed, coerced, (fill in the bank) by someone else.

[cstkl1]

how naive ppl are.
all those who complain are obviously worker bees hoping for a perfect world.
as pointed out by many. its a pure business.
this happens all the time and in many times ppl dont even notice it.
just because a big company like amd is ranting about it ppl notice it.

+1 for all those who just said this is just business.
every penny earned is always a penny less for somebody else regardless any self justification.

[DilTech]

When i look at Nvidia parnetship i see only big games from big companies. And for you thta's AMD who chose who they work with?


Seems you greet Nvidia here at XS with nice unbiased post...

I understand why you understand Rocksteady attitude toward Nvidia. Nvidia both give you something that's totally fair you give us all can in return

Oh, so because NVidia sends us hardware to test software on, we're automatically fanboys? They don't give us anything for our personal systems, only for the office, and it generally comes with a large NDA. Yeah, that's totally buying me off, isn't it. In fact, it totally bought me off into buying a 4850.. Yeah, NVidia did an awesome job buying me off with that one, didn't it.

I say AMD should work with whoever asks for their assistance. If a company is developing something that the their consumers will enjoy, then isn't it in their best interests to help said company so those consumers will have the best experience possible with their cards?

Think about this for a second, the last time ATi helped sponsor a game anyone actually cared about was HL2 and maybe guildwars which did well for a little while(but GW could be run on any hardware, usually maxed out even still at any resolution), and then just fell off the planet. Not saying ATi should only work with big companies, but working with these side-car gangs only and expecting it to make a difference in everyone's eyes is being naive.

Let's put it this way, the original CoJ was the last title ATi worked with AFAIK, which was around the time the HD2900 came out. Now, since there's no sales data on the PC version, we'll look at the x360 version(which the console versions generally sell 3x as many as their pc counter-parts)... 250,000. That's right, only 250k copies sold.

So, them putting in all that time and effort really made a big difference to AMD's costumers didn't it? They sure all did get to enjoy what AMD helped them accomplish. See the problem here? They should work with both small AND big developers, and multiple titles at the same time. The problem is, unlike NVidia, they lack the staff to do so.

Do you know why NVidia have multiple driver sets pop up every month? They have multiple driver teams all working at the same time, and it's no problem for NVidia to have each of those teams working with the various developers to make sure NV have a driver ready for the customer within 24 hours of the games release... ATi couldn't do that even if they tried to, that's the problem.

Basically, it narrows down to this. NVidia puts out a lot of work with it's developers, putting the costumers money to good use, in a way to gives back TO that costumer. AMD can't physically do it as they lack the man power or the money to do so, and as such everyone is all up in arms saying NVidia is bullying ATi around, because they're using the customers money to help bring more features to their customer? Are you serious? Do you NOT see how blatantly ridiculous this sounds?

Then, when NVidia does make something happen in a title that it wouldn't have happened in, and doesn't handle the testing for AMD, all of the sudden they're doing something bad for the consumer and should be burned at the stake? Lets see here...Compare some of the consumers having access to a feature to none of the consumers having that access.

I'm just going to say it, since I'm frankly tired of people complaining when ATi doesn't give developers support and NVidia does, so things end up bad for ATi and they blame NVidia. You knew ATi wasn't going to get the features added and NVidia were, why did you buy the ATi card.

p.s. Yes I know that sounded biased, but frankly it's the most realistic way to look at it. If you're that sick of ATi not having access to features, then why not buy the cards that do and quit complaining. Sounds like a common sense situation to me.

[Lane-k]

I ultimately blame the game developer! Some are weak and "whore" themselves out for money.

When NV said, "Hey, we want you to get AA working(in game) on our cards for the Batman game and here's some money/help." The game developer should have said, "Fantastic!, however, we will also try to make it work on ALL cards that can play our game, not just yours. If you don't agree with that then no deal!".

THAT'S what should have happened. The fact that NV "armtwists"(Huddy's word) the developers with all these different tactics only shows that NV thinks that bribing is the best way to help get their cards to work..and/or work faster than their competition. (This is arguably a shady tactic. I think there should be NO exclusivity. Help sure, exculsivity, NO!)

It's both company's fault. NV for throwing so much money, not just for extra features, but also for certain exclusitivity in certain games, but also the game developers who are "whoring" themselves out and not being up front and firm with NV and telling them, "Hey, we're going to make our games work the BEST with EVERY CARD we possibly can."

And I believe that any game developer would want EVERY card to run as fast as possible using their game...no way they would exclude any card from performing at it's highest possible unless they were told, bribed, coerced, (fill in the bank) by someone else.

- AA have been working with AMD/ATI GPU cards with the demo, by simply change the ID of the cards, or remove from the INI, all things related to the detection of hardware and force AA by catalyst ( demonstration was made on ati Blogs).. when the final game have been released: a Securerom have been added who prevent this manipulation.

I have not try myself this method: so i can't tell if AMD/ATI lies on this point or not. But if it's true, all the "theory " like ATI could not use AA with Unreal3 are useless in this discussion ..

We all know when a game is in project, game companies look for money for this: - Nvidia is an investitors in many games company for the project they choose ( crysis, batman, etc.. all games they think will become blockbusters, it's good marketing)... i know the time are hard for game companies, so find peoples who want put money on their projects are not easy...
I will not say it's the devs team fault; mostly i will mostly look who pay them ( the game company) and what interest they have to keep good relations with Nvidia.