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State of the Game Industry: September 12th, 2003.
(Click here to view the original thread with full colors/images)
Posted by: Jack G.
At the center of this edition: controversy and Valve. Lately, these two seem to go hand and hand, but this week, it came to a head. For a little back story, the fun started at E3 this year, when Valve burst back on to the scene with Half Life 2, a game that had only been rumored to be in development. They dropped a bomb: Not only did the game totally steal the show on all fronts, but they claimed it will ship for September 30th. Somewhat more questionable, however, was that their entire E3 getup was practically covered with ATI ads. In the presentation I saw, they even mentioned that the game was meant to be played on a Radeon 9800 Pro.
Fast forward four months, and here we are, weeks from the projected release date. News breaks on the hardware sites about potential performance. Apparently ATI's midrange card performs as well as Nvidia's top contender. Not only that, but Valve recommends that you don't use the Direct X 9 codepath with nvidia cards (Which means cutting out the fancy pixelshaders). The news is ominous for two parties: Nvidia, and Valve. Nvidia's problems are obvious: If their cards suck on what is arguably going to be the biggest hit of 2003, it looks really bad for them. They've botched things so badly in their market that this might give ATI a significant lead. However, I find it unlikely that this is entirely Nvidia's problem. In fact, I think it is mostly Valve's problem. While one poor performing game might not help Nvidia's reputation, it is only one game among a multitude. Valve, though, is cutting out fully half their audience. Probably more. One has to wonder if ATI is paying Valve to do this. I know for a fact that Nvidia will offer engineers to help make game code faster. So why hasn't Valve taken advantage of this? They claim that they've added no specific optimization... but I have serious doubts about that.
Barring specific optimizations, they've done something very wrong. When the benchmarks show that the game not only goes against common performance numbers for Nvidia cards, but comes out with completely absurd differences, well, something isn't right. Someone isn't playing fair, and I sure hope it isn't Valve. Nvidia has claimed that they have a driver bug that needs fixing, but will it make that much difference? Seems unlikely.
The issue at hand for Valve is the difference between a best seller, and a Half Life quality seller. Doesn't seem like much of a difference on the surface, but if Half Life 2 is 'only' a best seller, they'll make only a fraction of the money that was made with Half Life. Half Life's popularity was half driven by its accessibility. The game would run on damn near any system, and run well. The game even had a software renderer, meaning you didn't even need a 3d card to play. Even today, requiring a hefty video card is bad business for game companies. A lot of budget systems ship with plenty of processor, but little 3d strength. So it is in the best interest of a game company to make sure their product runs on the lowest system possible. (Which is why games take years to support new graphical features).
Yet, this recent controversy centers around more than just the graphics. Steam's role is not only a gamble, but it is so poorly explained, that almost no one knows what is going on. Even intelligent people are baffled, arguing with each other over interpretations. Speculation runs rampant and unchecked, and it seems that every time Gabe Newell posts anything about it, he does nothing except confuse everyone. For a long time, there was no information, and then Gabe spoke, and now there is nothing but confusion. Valve needs to hire a Public Relations person or two, and have them write up a proper press release that details in a nice concise fashion how Half Life 2 will be distributed, what role Steam plays, and where money factors in to the whole thing. Until they do, people will continue to bounce around uninformed opinions, and those opinions will spread around until people think they are Truth, and when the real truth doesn't match up with their Truth, they'll become Angry. Not a good situation for a developer.
Sadly, this isn't the worst of all. The real kicker is that Half Life 2 is most likely not going to hit the September 30th release date, and indeed, may not even ship this year. I had a premonition, and a little bird confirmed it. Who knows if the little bird is accurate or not, but I tend to believe it.
Oh well, plenty of other games to play in the meantime. Max Payne 2 is set for October 15th on PC, and I believe it. Warren Spector confirmed that Deus Ex 2 will ship before Christmas, and Gamespy seems to think that it could be out in November. This also strikes me as likely. Gothic 2 is set for a late October release, and since I've been playing the UK import, I can guarantee you that this game will be worth your money if you like RPGs. A modern day Ultima VII, and truly, what Ultima IX should have been.
There will be no rest for the gamers this holiday season, and it'll be a hard job. But I'm sure we'll persevere.
Posted by: taco_fox
 Quote:
The first thing that comes to mind when you see results like this is a cry of foul play; that Valve has unfairly optimized their game for ATI's hardware and thus it does not perform well on NVIDIA's hardware. Although it is the simplest accusation, it is actually one of the less frequent that we've seen thrown around.
During Gabe Newell's presentation, he insisted that they [Valve] have not optimized or doctored the engine to produce these results. It also doesn't make much sense for Valve to develop an ATI-specific game simply because the majority of the market out there does have NVIDIA based graphics cards, and it is in their best interest to make the game run as well as possible on NVIDIA GPUs.
Gabe mentioned that the developers spent 5x as much time optimizing the special NV3x code path (mixed mode) as they did optimizing the generic DX9 path (what ATI's DX9 cards use), thus it is clear that a good attempt was made to get the game to run as well as possible on NVIDIA hardware.
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From AnandTech's recent article, page three.
Quote:
Originally posted by Jack G.
Sadly, this isn't the worst of all. The real kicker is that Half Life 2 is most likely not going to hit the September 30th release date, and indeed, may not even ship this year. I had a premonition, and a little bird confirmed it. Who knows if the little bird is accurate or not, but I tend to believe it.
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Please elaborate as to what your sources are.
Posted by: Jack G.
Yes, I caught that update today. I planned to address it later on, though I don't feel it significantly changes the impact of my article on any level. It is good to know that Valve has actually worked with Nvidia's engineers to try and optimize the game, however, Valve still doesn't really seem to be playing fair.
From the same article, nvidia's statement:
Quote:
We're confused as to why Valve chose to use Release. 45 (Rel. 45) - because up to two weeks prior to the Shader Day we had been working closely with Valve to ensure that Release 50 (Rel. 50) provides the best experience possible on NVIDIA hardware.
Regarding the Half Life2 performance numbers that were published on the web, we believe these performance numbers are invalid because they do not use our Rel. 50 drivers. Engineering efforts on our Rel. 45 drivers stopped months ago in anticipation of Rel. 50. NVIDIA's optimizations for Half Life 2 and other new games are included in our Rel.50 drivers - which reviewers currently have a beta version of today. Rel. 50 is the best driver we've ever built - it includes significant optimizations for the highly-programmable GeForce FX architecture and includes feature and performance benefits for over 100 million NVIDIA GPU customers.
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Posted by: taco_fox
The 50s are going to have to be damn good drivers to pick up the slack.
Posted by: SKYHN
Quote:
Originally posted by taco_fox
The 50s are going to have to be damn good drivers to pick up the slack.
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I think nVidias track record on drivers speaks for itself.
I thought this pic was quite funny. Im just surprised he wasnt wearing an ATI T-shirt as well, perhaps a hat or some kind of laser etched monacle.
Posted by: chaosisreality
haha..... well it's hapened before, people make beyond this world games, and simple development errors just kill it.... but i think the half life names just going to sell itself
Posted by: Dogleg
In the words of the 'Bud' man
"True"...
I myself will buy it as soon as it's out.
Posted by: Cinderno4
Quote:
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Originally posted by Jack G. There will be no rest for the gamers this holiday season, and it'll be a hard job. But I'm sure we'll persevere.
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No rest! We will continue to perform our great duty to humanity no matter what hardships they lay upon us! Never give up! Trust your instincts! Stay L337! May you live long and prosper! Use the force!
Posted by: Dogleg
I don't understand all this L337 stuff!!
Could someone explain?
Posted by: SpecOpsHoov
Nice article.
I personally agree that the bias towards ATI has gotten out of control. But, unfortunately, there's nothing I can do about it. I like both companies (ATI and Nvidia), but it's simply not fair for a developer to choose one or the other. That'd be a huge insult to a large portion of the gaming community.
Posted by: taco_fox
ATI has a better DX9 card than nVidia right now. Plain and simple.
Posted by: Rifter
Well, we all now know why HL2 is gonna be delayed...unless you've been under a rock. I'll explain anyways, encase a few ppl have been asleep or something. A few months ago Valve got hacked into and part of the source code to HL2 got stolen. (I'm not sure of the exact amount, although a few days after their was some sort of a partial compile, that I believe is playable)
Here's the article from one source if you want to read about it:
http://megagames.com/news/html/pc/h-l2thiefspeaks.shtml
As for the bias on the cards there's always going to be some. Although I really don't have bias, I just want the better card for my money. I started off with a GeForce 256, then my next card happened to be the Radeon 8500 (64mb DDR, which I still use) Right now I'm sort of waiting til some of this fuss over the Nvidias drivers and HL2 problems settle. I want to be able to make an informed decision on which card is better for my money and which will last for longer time. I'm not sure about my GeForce 256, but I sure know my Radeon 8500 can play anything you throw at it. And the comment about companys being biased towards a vid card isn't new, Nvidia has done that with many games. I'm not sure about you, but everytime I go to play UT2k3 I see this huge fat Nvidia logo on my screen.
That's all I have to say for now....
Posted by: Canis Lupus
Quote:
Originally posted by Rifter
Well, we all now know why HL2 is gonna be delayed...unless you've been under a rock. I'll explain anyways, encase a few ppl have been asleep or something. A few months ago Valve got hacked into and part of the source code to HL2 got stolen. (I'm not sure of the exact amount, although a few days after their was some sort of a partial compile, that I believe is playable)
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Uhm, yeah, it was slashdotted earlier this month ... but it's been already delayed even before the alleged code leak...
Posted by: The-AoD
Great article. I just want to add my three cents 
First, HL2 is just another game to watch for. Myself, I'm watching for Doom 3. But, I won't discount HL2 in the least. I've learned not to base my "waiting" on a game's passed reputation. I like the original HL, it wasn't bad at all. On the other hand, I haven't played a single ID software game that I haven't liked. Therefore, I look for Doom 3 before I do HL2, but like I said, I won't discount it any.
And as for the whole video discussion. I've learned to stay right the heck away from those discussions, they have become way beyond pure bias. I'd rather see it to believe it before I buy. And the best way to do so, is go somewhere to see them. When I got my GF4 I looked at some of the elite systems at a couple local shops, specially HP Systems which closed about 4 months ago. The GF4 just looked outright better than the ATi card did, the framerates were almost neck and neck, but the actual "realism" the cards pushed was quite different. And I liked how the GF4 looked better.
Other than that, the article was nice and in depth. But I'll add this to Canis's addition. From the latest I've read, it's looking closer to a dukeout between HL2 and Doom3 than anything
(Just remember, it's all in what you like) And I liked that article
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