Sexy news! I've got sexy news here and on Christmas Day! Oh the scandal! Anyway, Happy Hannukah, Merry Christmas, Kwality Kwaanza, Rousing Ramadan, etc., to you all. I figure you all opened your gifts earlier this morning (or at least recently) and you're taking a break from all the wonderful games you got. Later today you'll endure family time some more and then spend the night hunched over the PC blasting aliens or other silly things like that. Let me tell you, I won't be doing that. It's the only thing that truly stinks about being a game reviewer/reporter. The last thing you want to do on your off time is play some games. Cry for me. Anyway, on to the Beatdown, it's the holiday thing to do….
Actual Game Quote of the Week: “She wants you all to run into traffic with your genitalia exposed…”
~Samurai Yan Smartie mistranslating Delphi, Giants: Citizen Kabuto
3dfx had it all. They dominated the market, they had the best deals and the best name brand recognition and they had the best prestige games (GLQuake, accelerated Tomb Raider). They had their own magazine, from Dimension publishing. They positioned themselves as a proprietary gaming platform (and succeeded too). They were burying S3's ViRGE and everyone else, including a plucky little company called nVidia. They had their own magazine and they bargained for primo-front space placement at Babbages and Software Etc. No one could touch them. They were untouchable.
Then they decided to abandon Creative, Diamond and all their other partners and dive into the manufacturing market. Voodoo Magazine died soon after but Voodoo's future seemed secure, what with the Banshee selling like mad and the Voodoo 3 around the corner. But they gave nVidia a massive hole to drive through and score a touch down. nVidia called a quarterback draw and did just that. Laying it all on the line to steal the lead from the now weakened 3dfx. First they partnered with Creative and the rest of the hungry card makers looking for a way back into your PCs and they flooded the market with TNT's, TNT Ultras, GeForces and GeForce 2's. They surpassed 3dfx in terms of power, speed and features but most importantly buried them at the marketplace and knocked them out of the hearts of hardware enthusiasts. So it shouldn't come as a surprise that nVidia just bought 3dfx, should it? Not at all. But, let me tell you, Intel had better be paying very close attention to this story….