WOW! AMD and Blizzard Partnership

[macroduo]

AMD and Blizzard Partnership

I don't know how AMD pulled this one off but this is a huge deal for AMD.

I just hope it's a long term contract and involves games like Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3 one day. Having AMD in association with Blizzard is going to give it one hell of a promotional boost.

 

[Sdashiki]

Since when does Blizzard need a boost?

 

[clevin]

Blizzard never make graphic intense games....AFAIK. But anything positive AMD pulled off is good news to me.

 

[Chone]

Since when does Blizzard need a boost?

This is a boost for AMD not Blizzard

This is a good marketing stunt because it will attract a lot of the gullible WoW folks but in terms of providing AMD an advantage in the graphics war... not so much, Blizzard games are never demanding, Starcraft 2 is already finished in terms of engine and core gameplay as far as I enough and the game doesn't look too demanding, I think today's hardware will be able to run it just fine but the game is still 1-2 years away.

As for Diablo III, the game has a lot of time to evolve but by the time the game releases in 2012, I think it won't be too demanding either.

 

[macroduo]

WotLK is coming out THIS year. SC2 will be out within the next phsyical year/ I would say this is going to be good for amd.

 

[Chone]

WotLK is coming out THIS year. SC2 will be out within the next phsyical year/ I would say this is going to be good for amd.

That's what I said, this is good for AMD for marketing purposes especially for the more casual, less hardware-tech oriented userbase of WoW but it does nothing for AMD in terms of providing firepower for the graphics war against NVIDIA. Nobody will care if AMD cards run Starcraft 2 better when GeForce cards will probably do 100fps already

BTW, I wouldn't be surprised if Starcraft 2 slips to 2010, come on, this is Blizzard we are talking about, then again the game pretty much looks finished.

Despite all the goodness I think AMD could have had better results partnerting with another developer/publisher, they need a studio that can release several games a year and hardware demanding games at that so that the AMD partnership yields better performance and therefore more incentives to buy AMD cards

Blizzard meets neither condition they release VERY VERY few games and they are always pretty tame on the hardware.

 

[n8236]

EA better get w/ the program and partner up w/ Intel

 

[Xavier]

Hopefully this is spark more intense graphics in Blizzards games. The only thing I worry about is AMD not supporting nVidia was well as they do ATI.

I imagine it probably won't matter, but I don't want SC2 to run a lot worse just because my MBP has an nVidia card.

 

[katorga]

Why?

Blizzard games are known for running on low end hardware. What exactly is the benefit to AMD/ATI?

I don't expect Blizzard to every go crazy on graphics. They make a lot of money because their games can run on every low-end PC on the planet. IMO, it is actually a very wise move.