Burned by 3Dfx?

Monday's news that 3Dfx will purchase board maker STB has brought about all sorts of reactions from the industry. Part of the shock comes from the fact that 3Dfx and STB made no announcement that talks between the two companies were occurring. Two of 3Dfx's allies, both Diamond Multimedia and Creative Labs, have helped make 3Dfx what it is today. Now that the upcoming Voodoo3 will not appear in either company's next generation of graphics processors, this could change the entire dynamic of who becomes king of the 3D-acceleration hill.

And while both of the board manufacturers were shocked - Voodoo2 and Banshee products are selling well - they're both looking ahead.

Diamond was the first big supporter of 3Dfx Interactive's Voodoo technology early on with its Monster 3D line of products. At the time of the original Voodoo, gamers sat up and noticed that with the card Quake could take on a new dimension of visual experience. And as the first serious board came down from its lofty US$300 price range, gamers began buying the boards in droves. As more Voodoos magically showed up in more and more PCs, developers picked up the pace and began supporting 3Dfx's Voodoo technology. While 3Dfx's first attempt at a 2D/3D composite chip - the Voodoo Rush - bombed in the marketplace, 3Dfx picked itself up to deliver the Voodoo2.

And gamers were back at retailers buying the boards again. This time, Creative Labs, who had been watching the feeding frenzy from afar, decided to jump into the Voodoo2 market with the 3D Blaster Voodoo2. And just as soon as 3Dfx announced its second attempt at the 2D/3D composite chip called the Banshee - both companies announced support. All the while, 3Dfx's main competitor, nVidia, was playing catch-up. This is where the battle begins....

GameSpot News contacted both companies in the wake of the merger announcement to find out how it feels to be cut off from 3Dfx. Surprisingly, both had very similar things to say.

Diamond Multimedia has turned into a popular graphics card supplier to gamers over the years. It supports several chipsets in its products and has pushed to give customers a choice in scope and features. Because of this, Diamond has also supported 3Dfx competitor nVidia since the early days of nVidia's first lackluster chip, the NV1. Even today, the NV1 remains a joke among gamers. But nVidia didn't just walk away - it reinvented itself with the Riva 128 chip. While it didn't give gamers as much power as some of the 3Dfx offerings, it did offer 2D and 3D on the same chip and promised support for Microsoft's newer versions of DirectX. When nVidia released its Riva TNT, the benchmark numbers made it apparent that nVidia was getting closer and closer to beating 3Dfx. Perhaps this is one of the reasons for 3Dfx's decision to thwart nVidia's efforts in the manufacturing ring before nVidia even thinks about it. When we spoke to nVidia yesterday, a spokesperson said that "we have no need to get into the board business, and we'll continue doing business as we have been." The 3Dfx deal could spell good news for nVidia as well, since nVidia remains a top-selling independent chipmaker with multiple deals with board makers. This gives them the chance to attract gamers from multiple points and gives gamers more choice in what they want in a card.

Bob Nelson of Diamond Multimedia says that he was "surprised" by the announcement and had no idea that the deal was going to happen. "The deal will have no impact in the short term. We'll keep selling our cards as we have been doing." He admits that the company had been looking into using the Voodoo3 in its next generation of products as Diamond has supported the company through its beginnings, but now that just isn't an option. So will Diamond expand its relationship with nVidia? "Yes. Our take on it is that nVidia has a much better roadmap for the future." Nelson said that he had some problems with the Voodoo3 offering because it didn't offer enough features. Early on, 3Dfx was the darling of the industry and put down others because it tried to support every 3D feature possible. Since those days, others have been quick to beat down 3Dfx. Without 32-bit rendering and a lock-on memory at only 16MB, Diamond questions what 3Dfx was thinking (although we've seen reports on the web that 32MB may be a possibility). Was it looking for an evolutionary approach and strayed away from its revolutionary roots? No one knows.

"The Voodoo3 might be a good solution for the aftermarket but not for OEMs since 3Dfx's business has always been on the retail level," said Nelson. Despite that, Nelson thinks that 3Dfx has taken a hit from Microsoft as well. One of 3Dfx's hot features is its great-looking API, Glide. Its only competitor was the hard-to-program gaming API from Microsoft, DirectX. But the latest version of DirectX 6.0 has caught up with Glide in many ways, and Nelson says, "Glide was a huge advantage at first. Now that Direct3D has gotten up to speed with Glide, more developers are focusing on Direct3D. They just don't want to support a proprietary API for one specific chip."

On the other side of the fence, Creative Labs is set to keep moving along with sales and says that its short-term plan isn't affected but will change the long-term roadmap for Creative's offerings. GameSpot spoke to Creative Labs' graphics product manager, Jim Carlton, about the situation, and he said that "we have a very strong lineup for graphics cards, and we were challenged to find a position for the Voodoo3" when considering the chip for the company's next-generation lineup.

Carlton elaborated that the reason for the challenge was that the Voodoo3 lacked some of the options that Creative follows in its philosophy. To begin with, Creative was first to get on the 12MB bus for the Voodoo2 and thought that the Voodoo3's 16MB memory limit was, well, too limiting for the market, as competitors are already stacking their boards with 32MB. Next, Creative said that it had trouble justifying the quality of the Voodoo3. "In the old days, people measured a board by its frame rate. Now that we have such high frame rates, people don't need to think about frame rate anymore because it makes very little difference." Creative said, "Voodoo3 doesn't look like a market changer. Gamers want higher rendering, texture compression, and things like that." He went on to say that Voodoo3's 16-bit rendering was a real "down point" when considering other chip companies were working on 32-bit rendering.

The relationship between Creative and 3Dfx goes deeper than just selling products. Creative and Diamond help fund some of the development costs associated with the Voodoo2. So does Creative feel like it got stung now that it helped 3Dfx fill its coffers only to become a competitor? "Not at all," says Carlton in a very businesslike tone. "We made a business investment in 3Dfx. We made a profit from this, and we'll continue to invest when we find something else." Creative also bought a significant amount of public 3Dfx stock earlier this year as a vote of confidence in what the company was doing. Now that 3Dfx will become Creative's competition, is there a conflict of interest? "Not at all. We made an investment on the open market just like anybody else." From our conversation with Carlton, the investment hasn't brought up any bad blood inside the company, but one wonders if Creative will reconsider its choice and sell the stock.

So where to now? Creative's relationship with nVidia is considered "very good," and Creative has invested in nVidia as it has done with its partners in the past.

So as Diamond and Creative set off on the monumental task of reorganizing their lineups and tuning their marketing and advertising against their new competitor, 3Dfx, it will be interesting to see how gamers will respond to Voodoo3 when it releases. At this juncture, nVidia's future looks bright. But the tables can turn at a moment's notice - just like in any good game.