Nvidia Further Explains Botched RTX 3080 Launch, Citing "Unprecedented Demand"

The pre-order launch of Nvidia's much-anticipated RTX 3080 was an unmitigated disaster, and many would-be customers have yet to get their hands on a confirmed order. Yesterday, Nvidia posted a more detailed explanation on its website, citing a heretofore unseen level of traffic and answering a few of the questions that frustrated fans have been asking on sites like Reddit.

In the statement, Nvidia generally blames the "truly unprecedented" level of demand for the RTX 30-series as the source of the trouble, saying that it and its partners underestimated it. The manufacturer notes that the traffic to retailers exceeded Black Friday numbers, illustrating just how many people wanted to buy the card. Nvidia notes that it began shipping GPUs to retailers in August, and that such shortages are relatively common when it comes to the launch of high-end graphics cards.

Later in the statement, Nvidia blames a wave of "malicious bots and resellers" for snatching up many of the orders, saying that it has made several changes to its own Nvidia Store to prevent future occurrences, including CAPTCHA integration. The company also says that it has cancelled hundreds of "confirmed orders" that were later detected as originating from bots.

This statement comes after a less-thorough apology posted on Nvidia's own forums on September 20. Customers that are subscribed to Amazon's "in-stock" alerts are being sent to listings that are asking for wildly-inflated prices, up to $5000.