Quote:Nintendo's promotion for Zelda: The Wind Waker has been extremely successful...
For those of you who have been living in a cave, Nintendo has been offering a bonus disc containing The Ocarina of Time and The Master Quest when you pre-order Zelda: The Wind Waker for GameCube. The campaign had already led to 250,000 sold by the time it was supposed to start back on February 16th. Now Nintendo is claiming that the promotion has made it to 300,000 pre-orders. That number is likely to jump even higher, past 1/3 of a million, as the release date of March 24th approaches for The Wind Waker.
After reporting on a rumor that Mother 3 would be coming out for the Gamecube, Games Are Fun now reports that the former Earthbound 64 will be unveiled at E3! While it is unconfirmed, if GAF says it's so then I'll believe them.
Quote:Mother 3 at E3
We reported on saturday that Nintendo has plans to release a Mother 1 + 2 compilation on the Game Boy Advance, plus they are reworking Mother 3 for the GameCube. At the time, the report was unconfirmed but we had a suspicion it was true.
Today, we can inform you, through means unspeakable, that Mother 3, otherwise previously known as Earthbound 64 in North America, will be unveiled at this year's Electronics Entertainment Expo. E3 will be held at the Los Angeles Convention Center from May 14th to the 16th. GAF will be there to report from the floor, so you can expect the first coverage! However, we don't know if Mother 3 will be shown in video form or playable. It will be there, though. You can count on it.
Which relient K cover should I get? I only have one more week to decide.
I'm leaning toward the green one because the mountains, forest, and falling rocks seem more appropriate, but you gotta dig the pink limo. Pink seems to be a theme for this cd as well. One of their songs is about wearing a pink tux to the prom in the 80's (despite the fact that none of these guys were born before 1980). Also, anyone who buys the cd is entered in a chance to win a pink limo. I don't know what you would do with a pink limo, but it would be cool.
Don't make a wrong turn! Buy "Two Lefts Don't Make a Right... But Three Do" on March 11!
NVDA Morgan Stanley Conference
by: atyguy (36/M/Montreal) 03/03/03 08:25 pm
Msg: 55287 of 55375
Just listened to the webcast. This is a different Jen-Hsun than I have heard on a couple of other occasions.
Focus of the discussion was on non-core business, but he touched on all segments.
When questioned on what he expected from his new FX GPU family, he hesitated and said that he foresees a good year for the "GPU market" with no real reference to the expected success of the FX family specifically. Said that they are going to market 0.15u mainstream versions of FX, as opposed to the "competitor" which is going with 0.15u in the high end and 0.13u in the mainstream. Says it will provide NVDA with more capacity to meet high-volume mainstream demands and calls it a "clever decision" that should benefit NVDA. Admitted his disappointement with 0.13u delays and problems.
With regard to XBox, said the arbitration process has ultimately helped relationship with MSFT, but when asked about XBox2 he was very ambivalent and said that it represented a significant "technology risk" to any company that undertook the challenge. Uncharacteristically lavished praise on Sony's upcoming PS3 and its cell processor, insinuating that it would almost be miraculous to outdo it.
The only issue on which he sounded relatively confident was nForce2.
Lots of hesitation and uncertainty in his demeanor; he cleared his throat more often than Orton ever has, and sounded far less cocky and sure of himself than I've ever heard him.
Overall, my impressions:
He is far from confident that the GFFX family will be as successful as previous generations.
He is tipping the industry off on the very real possibility that NVDA will not be involved with XBox2.
Just my interpretation, but I recommend listening for yourselves.
On a further note, the Inquirer also had some interesting reportings...
Quote:Nvidia bullish about NV30, in both .15 and .13 microns
Jen-Hsun forecasts millions of parts and a $99 GeForce FX
By Mike Magee: Dienstag 04 März 2003, 10:08
JEN-HSUN HUANG, the charismatic CEO of Nvidia, told a meeting of analysts yesterday about his firm's future plans.
Nvidia had $1 billion in the bank at the end of last year, and $200,000 in cash flow money.
He said four new businesses were generating over $100 million in revenues for his company.
At the end of Q4, Nvidia grew its business and upped its gross margin by five points to over 30%.
Nvidia worked off its inventory successfully during Q4, he said. It shipped the GeForce FX and the QuadroFX during that quarter.
Graphics represents a billion out of its approximately $2 billion revenue. In the last four years Nvidia shipped over 200 million processors. Three out of four PCs has Nvidia technology in it, he said.
Moving to .13 micron was very hard and delayed its move to the marketplace by a couple of months, but now yields are better.
GeForce FX and DX9 will ship in large quantities this year. "Once every four years or so you'll see [the technology] move in a very significant way."
The last big revolution was Quake II, he said.
He claimed GeForce FX is the most powerful graphics processor in the market today.
It's made using copper interconnect and .13 micron by TSMC. "It's the only graphics device that has reached a 1GHz data rate," he said.
The workstation market is growing because the industry is in the process of transforming it. It's worth $50 million, and it's important strategically for Nvidia because of its place in content and digital creation.
The Quadro FX architecture has for the first time made it possible for hardware to play a role in the very high end content market, using programmable shaders, and for films and for cut scenes in video games, or in TV ads.
Mobile graphics, the GeForce Go! brand is a $150 million business for NVDA, giving it 25 per cent of the market. "We've every opportunity to make it continue to grow," he said.
Chipsets are an important part of Nvidia's business, worth another $150 million. It only has two per cent market share but it has much room to go. The Nforce 2 is "catching the imagination" of the marketplace.
He said he tried not to be angry with its Xbox business because it gives Nvidia hundreds of millions of dollars. This business is the first entry Nvidia has made into consumer electronics.
He's incredibly excited about what Microsoft is doing with Xbox, he said. There was no question that Halo was way above anything on the Playstation 2, he said.
Nvidia will take GeForce from top to bottom of the market. It has .15 micron versions of GeForce FX in production.
Did we know this already? I don't think so.
It will be used in "low end" GeForce FX and will ship "millions and millions" of chips.
2003 will be a good year for GPUs, he said. AGP 8X is the first major platform change from Intel – and will create an upsurge for graphics processors.
Most high end GPUs are expensive, but it's not until a GeForce FX card comes down to $99 that it really makes a big splash in the industry.
Nvidia has many different kinds of relationships with Microsoft aside from the Xbox, and include a serious involvement with Longhorn.
The arbitration process [with Microsoft] is a legal process and Nvidia learnt a lot about the process and understood much through this relationship.
He seemed to suggest that Nvidia may not necessarily go with the Xbox 2 architecture, because of the enormous engineering challenges.
Without the Xbox the world would not have learned about programmable shaders, he said.
The Playstation 3 will be a miracle machine but it will take an extraordinary effort for a company to create it. By the second half of this year, Nvidia's foundry will be able to produce 12-inch silicon dinner plates, so achieving economies of scale. µ
Reading the above makes you wonder and raises a few question:
a.) will Nvidia design the GPU of Xbox 2?
b.) thoughts on PS3 by Nvidia
If the above article is any indication, obviously Nvidia is very impressed by what Sony has been working on. Is this the reason why they may not join with Microsoft anymore? Also, if they don't, what will this mean for Xbox 2? ATI seems to be in talks with Nintendo, so who will Microsoft be left with? Time is running out. And lastly, with the decrease of the PC-gaming industry, Microsoft aswell as Nvidia are damned to loose marketshare - wwould it be clever of Nvidia to stay within that market? Particularly given the huge advancements that ATi have been making lately?
This appeared in the Richmond Times-Dispatch, my local newspaper. And it's probably the most sensible thing I've heard on the Iraq war in ages.
Quote:In the summer of 1999 warplanes pounded Serbia into submission. The U.S. flew the vast majority of the sorties in an operation that marked Europe's most sustained aerial assault since the era of the Stuka. The mission succeeded. Slobodan Milosevic fell.
Intervention had two goals. (1) defending Kosovo against Serbian aggression, and (2) changing the regime in Belgrade. Years of diplomacy had failed to restrain the malevolent appetites of Slobo and his wife, "The Red Witch". They responded only to the unassailable argument of Allied military might.
President Bill Clinton did not seek formal congressional approval before commiting the U.S. to war. Neither he nor Jacques Chirac nor Gerhard Schroeder sought permission from the UN Security Council. They acted without an official UN mandate.
Serbia never directly attacked any of the countries that staged the relentless offensive. The U.S. did not drop bombs to defend itself. The campaign failed several of the tests associated with the doctrine of the so-called "just war". Demonstrators did not take to the streets to say that war never accomplishes anything, that malignant violence cannot be met with countervailing violence, that the United States has no business pursuing regime change.
Slobo is a nasty piece of work.
Saddam is worse.
Truer words have never been spoken. The liberal anti-war movement is hypocritical and selective. War is only evil when a Republican president pursues it, I suppose.
Now more than ever I find no credibility with anti-war people.
Quote:FIC is now producing a huge range of advanced video cards based on ATI technology. New additions to the range include the A98 and A98P based on the ATI Radeon 9800 and 9800 Pro graphics engines respectively. The A98 and A98P both feature 400MHz RAMDAC, 8 pipeline architecture, 256 bit data width, 512Kb of serial flash ROM, AGP 8X/4X/2X compatibility, TV-out, support for simultaneous dual displays and DirectX 9.0/OpenGL support. In addition, the A98 will support 128MB of DDR memory and a core/memory clock speed of 325/310MHz. The A98P will support up to 256MB of DDR memory and has a core/memory clock speed of 400/460MHz.
The new A97 and A97P graphics cards are based on the ATI Radeon 9700 and 9700Pro graphics engines respectively. The awesome A97P features a 325/310MHz core memory clock and 256bit memory interface. The A97and A97P are AGP 4X and 8X compatible and advanced 3D features include SMARTHEADER 2.0, SMOOTHVISION 2.0, HYPER Z III, TRUEFORM 2.0 AND VIDEOSHADER. Both the A97 and A97P also support DirectX9.0.
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