NVIDIA: We’re not bribing anyone to use PhysX

Robert Hallock 12 Mar, 2010 at 1:48pm ET Article published in Tech

In an interview conducted by Xbit labs, NVIDIA Worldwide Director of Developer Technology Ashutosh Rege denied accusations that NVIDIA is actively bribing game developers to use the company’s PhysX GPU physics engine.

“Physics engines are critical components of games. The game developers are not going to choose a physics engines based on any kinds of incentives if that is going to jeopardize the game itself,” Rege said.

Rege’s interview comes in response to statements made by chief rival AMD on Tuesday, which accused NVIDIA of bribing developers to implement PhysX. AMD’s European Senior Manager of Developer Relations Richard Huddy claimed that developers are not implementing PhysX because they want to, rather because they are being paid to do so.

Rege took the counter, saying, “Primary criteria for game developers [when selecting a physics engine] are feature-set, algorithms, tools, support from the vendor. The most important factor for game developer today is market platform. In other words is whether that supports X360, PS3, PC and some developers are targeting iPhone and Wii with our PhysX engine. We support all of those, which is the reason why PhysX has become so popular.”

Rege also took the time to fend off comments that PhysX bears a similarity to Glide, the ill-fated rendering API pushed by 3dfx prior to its subsequent bankruptcy.

“The comparison of Glide against PhysX is not smart. PhysX is not an API, it is a full set of software, it is a middleware. In the middleware business you have game developers saying ‘I’ve got these features, I’ve got these licensing terms and I need to deploy on these platforms. What is the best solution here?’,” he said.

“Of course, the cost of license is also important to developer. Based on all of that, they make their decision what package to choose.”

Comments

12 Mar 2010 ~ 2:22pm Cliff_Forster â€œPhysics engines are critical components of games. The game developers are not going to choose a physics engines based on any kinds of incentives if that is going to jeopardize the game itself,â€

That reads like a creative dodge. I read the full xbit piece and he never says, hell no, Nvidia does not pay developers to use PhysX, he just says, well, they wouldn't if it was going to harm the game. Mr. Rege should run for public office.

People from Nvidia have gone so far as to say that they spend significantly more on "developer relations", and that in part is why they feel like they are successful in getting some of their items implemented. That was the tiff over the AA issue on Batman, Nvidia would say yeah, they implemented AA that worked better on our hardware, so what, we were there to help them do that and AMD was not, and AMD is saying, whoa, why do we have to be implementing AA in a way that screws our cards performance?? Its AA, its nothing special? Its the same thing with PhysX, a big pro for developers is the added labor and support from the graphics manufacturers. Nvidia says, "why should we be punished because we offer superior support to the developers" AMD says, "why does Nvidia go out of its way to shovel these non standard implementations down developers throats that ultimately hurt gamers and the graphics market"

And the wheels on the bus......
13 Mar 2010 ~ 1:43am mirage Why is AMD often in the whiner position? Instead of complaining about unfair competition, why don't they have an alternative offering to PhysX and CUDA? Did they have something better to offer? Don't tell me about open standards and OpenCL since Nvidia has also contributed to OpenCL at least as much as AMD. Is constantly dragging the competition with complaints/lawsuits beneficial to consumer? This is free market, not kindergarten. If you have a product, of course you will try to make it popular. See below how.

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13 Mar 2010 ~ 2:06am Sledgehammer70 If PhysX isn't available on the GPU it will run on the CPU. Look at BFBC2 it is not using Nvidia's PhysX, they used their own system that will make use of some of Nvidia's tech. I am sure everyone knows Nvidia pays developers of games money in marketing dollars to advertise their tech overall, but 80% of those conversations begin when the development team says "hey look what we did with your tech" If Nvidia likes it they give a nice chunk of cash to the team for further dev cycles with it or for marketing budgets.

They also pay money to companies to have their logos on the games. AMD does this just like Nvidia. 90% of the time the game is shown to both groups and its a thumbs up or thumbs down for money support or company budgets.
13 Mar 2010 ~ 2:52am Cliff_Forster My understanding is that the CPU implementation of PhysX is often limited to a single thread.

Listen guys, its just a matter of whats fair competition?

Sledge lets say you and I are competitors on the avocado distribution business. Lets say I'm the more established competitor with better capitalization. On the manufactured side, what do all avocado's want to be? Delicious guacamole on the plates of Mexican food lovers of course. So I have a team of guys that go around to the kitchens of every nice Mexican joint to sit in their guacamole R&D lab and help them develop their recipe, and while they are at it, they might work the dishwasher, and bus a few tables.....

Your not going to see this as being very fair. This is what I suspect goes on with the "way its meant to be played" "developer relations" program. Mr. Developer, here are a couple free employee's, they get some major coding help and in return developers don't mind making a few accommodations to help position their perk supplier in the marketplace. I mean, even if they are not handing them cash outright, whats a couple of free programmers worth to a game developer? The line between building good relationship with your client and bribing them is extremely thin.

Now, as a sales guy, this is how things work, I know it. I show up with the better donuts and sometimes it equals the sale. Is it ethical? Just depends what we mean when we say donuts....
13 Mar 2010 ~ 4:19am Snarkasm You're silly.
13 Mar 2010 ~ 4:33am Sledgehammer70 I know how the system worked, i worked on the Dev/Marketing side int he game world and saw how both ATI & Nvidia work with developers. In all cases they do it the same.
13 Mar 2010 ~ 7:44am coldalarm @mirage; that is the funniest thing I've heard in a while. Nice!

But in regards to the topic... I think ATI/AMD are complaining about nothing. Instead of complaining about nVidia and PhysX, they should get out there and make their mark. How many games do you buy that have "nVidia: The Way It's Meant To Be Played" on the box? I checked mine the other day and quite a lot of them do. Not as many use PhysX (some use Havok too), and really it's just marketing. If nVidia aren't interfering with a game in a negative way, and they're supporting development, then I say that's good. After all, this product may be run on their hardware!

I think I saw it on The Escapist, but someone said it's a sorry state when an engine w/ physics from 2004 (i.e. Source with Valve's modified Havok physics engine) is more efficient than most recent engines.
13 Mar 2010 ~ 10:19am Cliff_Forster

Snarkasm wrote:

You're silly.

For the record, I'm not suggesting anyone is necessarily doing anything wrong, I'm just trying to provide some perspective. I've been in the trenches against competing vendors, and the little bit some guys will sell out for is amazing. Its a constant dog fight. I'm not saying AMD should not just fight fire with fire and spend more on a program and kick down the door with the most delicious donuts, but in a perfect world you both offer a product or service, and may the best one win on its merits alone. The nature of PhysX processing makes it less available to gamers, hell, I can't even buy a stand alone card anymore to accelerate it next to my Radeon, that kind of sucks for Radeon owners, why shouldn't AMD air that gripe.

And look, you can read the xbit piece, does the interviewee from Nvidia straight up say, no, we don't offer any form of bribe to further our agenda? He just more or less says, well, a game developer would not accept a kick back unless PhysX offered our customers an exceptional experience. If I'm the guy being interviewed, and I have any confidence at all in our ethics practices, I'm pointing straight at the camera like Rafael Palmeiro (okay, bad example).... but you get the point.
13 Mar 2010 ~ 1:15pm Leonardo Cliff, whether or not I agree with your arguments, I enjoy reading them.

On another topic, dear Cliff, this is one of the most painful mixed metaphors I believe I've ever seen:

I'm not saying AMD should not just fight fire with fire and spend more on a program and kick down the door with the most delicious donuts

If Nvidia is doing illegal activity by spreading money around, then AMD should go after them. If generously supporting preferred developers is common industry practice, so be it. Without knowing the facts, I think I might be disinclined to take AMD seriously. After all, AMD is notorious for bland marketing and lackluster public outreach.
13 Mar 2010 ~ 2:28pm Cliff_Forster

Leonardo wrote:

Cliff, whether or not I agree with your arguments, I enjoy reading them.

On another topic, dear Cliff, this is one of the most painful mixed metaphors I believe I've ever seen:

If Nvidia is doing illegal activity by spreading money around, then AMD should go after them. If generously supporting preferred developers is common industry practice, so be it. Without knowing the facts, I think I might be disinclined to take AMD seriously. After all, AMD is notorious for bland marketing and lackluster public outreach.

Like I said, whats equals outreach and relationship building, vs. what is unethical, if not necessarily illegal, is a very fine line.

In a broad sense its just part of doing business, but at the same time if you think part of that harms your customers, you might have something to complain about.

I'm not claiming to know what goes on, I just have heard both sides of the argument.

Lets change pace for a moment, what if AMD wakes up tomorrow morning and decides to do something to make it really difficult to use Nvidia graphics on an AMD chipset? Some will say its an apple vs. and orange argument (snark), but when you think about it, its just about restricting consumer choice. I'm an AMD customer, but if I wanted to buy a Nvidia card, or a PhysX based standalone of some kind just for physics, why should it be so hard to implement? Why is Nvidia going out of its way to punish people that prefer Radeon for rendering. Why are they working with developers to bork the AA implementation of their competitor in one of their showpiece titles?
13 Mar 2010 ~ 3:09pm Snarkasm

Cliff wrote:

Why is Nvidia going out of its way to punish people that prefer Radeon for rendering. Why are they working with developers to bork the AA implementation of their competitor in one of their showpiece titles?

Has any of this been proven? Serious question.
13 Mar 2010 ~ 4:05pm Cliff_Forster

Snarkasm wrote:

Has any of this been proven? Serious question.

I think there is some evidence that leads to some reasonable suspicion.

Once again, I don't want to say Nvidia did anything illegal, or even anything anti competitive, but I can see AMD's argument if what they suspect is true.

There are two sides to the Batman AA story. AMD says that Eidos said hey, its an unreal engine game, no native AA, but meh, who needs AA in the game engine, if a gamer wants it, they will force it in AMD's driver. Then, in the last two weeks of development Nvidia helps them code in game AA selectable in the menu in such a way that made it unavailable to AMD's customers, then AMD had to scramble and patch it after the benchmarks were done. Nvidia's side of the story is that AMD's developer relations dept drooped the ball for Eidos because AMD, to its own admission did not see Batman as a priority title (which makes sense, wimtbp, PhysX on the box) AMD said there was absolutely no reason for Eidos to code in game AA to lock out AMD hardware other than furthering their agenda in benchmarking the title as a showcase for Nvidia.

Now as far as pairing an Nvidia card for PhysX with an AMD card for rendering, they borked that in the official drivers a while ago, and if I am correct some Icrontic forum members experienced this, I think Bobby and Bean both wrestled with this issue? I'm not certain though...
15 Mar 2010 ~ 7:35am Zuntar I just think the crying baby part is funny!!

This reminds me of Chevrolet and Ford whining about who has the better aerodynamics when it came to Nascar. Now look what happend.... Big babies.