Taken from CEX
Monday 14th April 2003
Oops. EA's announcement that they would be 'exclusively' working with Nvidia ruffled a few feathers in the online world after the press release was misinterpreted as meaning EA games would only be playable on Nvidia graphics cards.
EA today made it clear that all their games will be playable on any machine regardless of which brand of graphics card was being used. An Nvidia spokeman made this comment:
"...it's by no means exclusive; these games will still run perfectly well and look great on competitor offerings. But there may be little things in there that the developer has programmed specifically because only nVidia hardware can expose it."
"However, I would very much doubt that there will ever be a game that's one platform only."
Indeed, EA would be fools to try and limit their games to Nvidia hardware. The PC community are notorously intolerant of companies limiting their options, so making games playable only on one type of hardware is a quick route to bankruptcyville.
But if there's no exclusivity, what exactly does the deal achieve? Unfortunately, the reality is quite pedestrian. The agreement will see EA's development teams move across to Nvidia-based workstations (presumably at a massive discount) whilst Nvidia get to splash their logo all over their boxes, along with the phrase, "Nvidia: The way it's meant to be played", which should help shift a few units.
Monday 14th April 2003
Oops. EA's announcement that they would be 'exclusively' working with Nvidia ruffled a few feathers in the online world after the press release was misinterpreted as meaning EA games would only be playable on Nvidia graphics cards.
EA today made it clear that all their games will be playable on any machine regardless of which brand of graphics card was being used. An Nvidia spokeman made this comment:
"...it's by no means exclusive; these games will still run perfectly well and look great on competitor offerings. But there may be little things in there that the developer has programmed specifically because only nVidia hardware can expose it."
"However, I would very much doubt that there will ever be a game that's one platform only."
Indeed, EA would be fools to try and limit their games to Nvidia hardware. The PC community are notorously intolerant of companies limiting their options, so making games playable only on one type of hardware is a quick route to bankruptcyville.
But if there's no exclusivity, what exactly does the deal achieve? Unfortunately, the reality is quite pedestrian. The agreement will see EA's development teams move across to Nvidia-based workstations (presumably at a massive discount) whilst Nvidia get to splash their logo all over their boxes, along with the phrase, "Nvidia: The way it's meant to be played", which should help shift a few units.
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