NVIDIA’s Latest Q&A Provides Insight on GeForce RTX 3080 Launch Disaster

[Tsing]

Image: NVIDIA



Bots, scalpers, busted websites, and a whole lot of frustration. Now that the GeForce RTX 3080 has officially gone down in history as one of the messiest and embarrassing GPU launches ever, NVIDIA has gone ahead and published a Q&A to answer some of your most heated questions, like what the heck went wrong, when the stock situation will improve, and what type of countermeasures are being implemented to fend off those despicable resellers.



We’ve copied the complete Q&A below, but one amusing claim is that NVIDIA had never dealt with this level of bots before. The company is working on CAPTCHA and other security upgrades to make the buying experience easier for legitimate enthusiasts. NVIDIA is also confirming orders manually before they ship.



What happened? I was really excited...

Continue reading...

 

[hubaduba]

P-A-P-E-R L-A-U-N-C-H

 

[Armenius]

P-A-P-E-R L-A-U-N-C-H

"Paper launch" implies that no products are shipping, yet. People have been getting their cards as early as this past Saturday, though. Words no longer have meanings these days, I guess.

 

[Riccochet]

It might as well have been called a paper launch. AIB's saying it's going to take months just to ship 10-20k units. That's pitiful.

 

[Armenius]

It might as well have been called a paper launch. AIB's saying it's going to take months just to ship 10-20k units. That's pitiful.

One board partner (out of 17) said it would take one month to fill 20,000 orders. How many orders are the other 16 partners currently fulfilling and how long will it take them? How many units are being sold and shipped to customers by NVIDIA, themselves? NVIDIA have already stated that new product is being shipped to partners and retailers every 2 days.

A paper launch literally means that a company says a product is launched, but nobody can buy it. As I said, people already have cards in their hands and are gaming with them. Just because one particular person is finding it hard to order does not mean nobody anywhere has one.

Ugh, people are making me sound like a fan boy trying to stop this FUD

 

[Peter_Brosdahl]

One board partner (out of 17) said it would take one month to fill 20,000 orders. How many orders are the other 16 partners currently fulfilling and how long will it take them? How many units are being sold and shipped to customers by NVIDIA, themselves? NVIDIA have already stated that new product is being shipped to partners and retailers every 2 days.

A paper launch literally means that a company says a product is launched, but nobody can buy it. As I said, people already have cards in their hands and are gaming with them. Just because one particular person is finding it hard to order does not mean nobody anywhere has one.

Ugh, people are making me sound like a fan boy trying to stop this FUD

I completely agree and was thinking the same yesterday but too tired to post it. I'm sure that NV has some legitimate business reasons for not wanting to post their numbers but it sure could help with a lot of the bad press and soured feelings about this event.

 

[hubaduba]

Ok -

T-O-K-E-N L-A-U-N-C-H

 

[MacLeod]

One board partner (out of 17) said it would take one month to fill 20,000 orders. How many orders are the other 16 partners currently fulfilling and how long will it take them? How many units are being sold and shipped to customers by NVIDIA, themselves? NVIDIA have already stated that new product is being shipped to partners and retailers every 2 days.

A paper launch literally means that a company says a product is launched, but nobody can buy it. As I said, people already have cards in their hands and are gaming with them. Just because one particular person is finding it hard to order does not mean nobody anywhere has one.

Ugh, people are making me sound like a fan boy trying to stop this FUD

Yeah I know what you mean. I said this in another thread but everybody blaming Nvidia for not predicting something that not only has never happened before but also something that Amazon, Newegg, and Best Buy didn't predict either. A bunch of Nike bots wiping out the entire, worldwide stock in literally seconds.

If anybody is to blame, it's these pieces of human debris that spammed the bots and are now gouging with 200% markups on Ebay.

 

[hubaduba]

Scalping video cards at launch is not a new phenomenon. Scalping was rampant during the mining boom. The 10XX and 20XX failed to come close to meeting demand at launch. Three times is a trend. Nvidia saying, "Golly, we just didn't expect people to want to buy the 3080 at launch, and we sure didn't expect scalpers to use bots" doesn't fly. They get credit for great performance after the 20XX series couldn't offer an substantial upgrade to the 1080Ti at the same price point, but (as is often the case), the marketing is so thick you need a shovel. Nvidia rushed the "launch" to beat Big Navi to market. We can debate the semantics of what constitutes a "paper launch", but can you buy a 3080 today?

AMD has been guilty of the same "launch" marketing tactics, but there seems to have been a change (at least on the GPU side) with the departure of Raja. I hope AMD has used the Big Navi delay to build stock. If not, they will deserve no more slack than Nvidia does now.

 

[Uvilla]

'Bots' made by a couple of cats in a basement defeated the supposed 'AI company' ok sure... That is more sad and pathetic than saying they let the 'bots' do their work.
Yes they let the bots do their work.... Expecting articles touting such high insane demand... Instead it is mostly backfiring big time, same as with price either due to scalpers or due to partners doing higher than msrp for no reason (if the founders edition has the most expensive cooler there is no reason why partners with 'normal' coolers go above msrp).
Are scalpers really 'demand'?

Also, AMD , are you taking notes?
Would it benefit AMD to have a smooth launch?,.. with a system fighting bots, and with orders being human approved on realtime and so on...With a more significant stockpile that perhaps even survives initial demand? In msrp or lower?
I think it would benefit them greatly... But not sure if this is just bs thoughts.

 

[Brian_B]

I don’t think you can effectively fight the scalpers.

what I do think would work:

Don’t take pre orders, or at least if you do, leave the quantity open ended and you know where you are in the shipping queue. Better yet, Do a hard launch with product. Announce how many units are shipping.

scalpers may still scalp, but by being transparent about it it sure takes a lot of the wind out of their sails (sales?)

 

[SmokeRngs]

If companies want to stop or hinder scalpers all they have to do is launch with a reasonable stock of product. If people can readily get their hands on the product there is little or no reason for scalpers to bother.