NVIDIA Announces Holiday GeForce Game Bundles
by Ryan Smith on October 18, 2013 8:15 AM EST
As part of NVIDIA’s Montreal game showcase festivities, NVIDIA has announced that they have once again updated their game bundles. This time it’s one of their biggest bundles yet.
Replacing the outgoing Batman: Arkham Origins bundle will be a what NVIDIA is calling their GeForce GTX Holiday Bundle, which is a tiered system that sees NVIDIA’s most expensive GTX cards on one tier, while NVIDIA’s cheaper GTX cards will be on a lower, cheaper tier with fewer games. NVIDIA is by no means a stranger to tiers – they already did this to split between their Batman and Free-To-Play bundles – but this is the first time they’ve had fine grained tiers that separated the various GTX cards.
In any case, the top tier will be occupied by the GTX 770, GTX 780, and GTX Titan, which on a side note makes this the first appearance of Titan on any game bundle. The upper tier products will receive a 3 game bundle of Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, Batman: Arkham Origins, and Splinter Cell: Blacklist (notably, a previous bundle game that had been replaced by Batman). Meanwhile the lower tier will be composed of the GTX 660 through GTX 760 (and everything in between) and will receive a lighter bundle, dropping Batman but keeping Assassin’s Creed and Splinter Cell. As the latest addition to NVIDIA’s bundles Assassin’s Creed will be NVIDIA’s new featured game, and while we won’t rattle off all of the additions, it has received the usual slate of technology/feature additions from NVIDIA under their The Way It’s Meant To Be Played program.
| NVIDIA Holiday Game Bundles | |||||
| Video Card | Bundle | Shield Discount | |||
| GeForce GTX 770/780/Titan | Assassin's Creed IV, Batman: Arkham Origins, Splinter Cell: Blacklist | $100 | |||
| GeForce GTX 660/660Ti/670/680/760 | Assassin's Creed IV, Splinter Cell: Blacklist | $50 | |||
| GeForce GTX 650 Series | $75 Free-To-Play (Continuing) | None | |||
| GeForce GT 640 (& Below) | None | None | |||
Furthermore in a far more unusual move for NVIDIA, both tiers are also coming with discounts on NVIDIA’s recently launched Shield handheld game console. The upper tier will come with a coupon good for $100 off a Shield (bringing it down to $199), while the lower tier will come with a coupon for $50 off (bringing it down to $249). NVIDIA has been cross promoting GeForce and Shield for some time now due to the fact that Shield’s remote game streaming capabilities require a GeForce GTX 600/700 series card, so this appears to be an extension of that integrated promotion. NVIDIA has never offered a bundled hardware discount quite like this before (there have been some 3D Vision bundles over the years), so it’s hard to say just what kind of an impact it will have on GeForce or Shield, especially since it’s just a discount on further hardware versus a freebie like the games.
In any case, any NVIDIA customers will want to make note this specific bundle is going to be shorted lived. The bundle starts on October 28th – a week and a half from now – and ends just less than a month later on November 26th. NVIDIA typically runs bundles for longer than this, though there may be some significance to terminating the bundle right before Black Friday. Fulfillment will as always be through NVIDIA’s usual participating etail/retail partners, with partners including vouchers with qualifying products.
Finally, it’s interesting to note that with NVIDIA’s bundle additions as contrasted to AMD’s current lack of a bundle on the Radeon 200 series, we’ve reached an interesting inversion in the typical game bundle tactics the two companies have used over the last year. Now it’s NVIDIA who’s offering the bigger game bundle, and largely for the same reasons AMD did. NVIDIA has not cut the price on the GTX 770 or GTX 760 despite the spoiler situation presented by the R9 products, so it would appear NVIDIA is going the value added route to try to equalize their offerings rather than just cutting prices.
Source: NVIDIA
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silverblue - Friday, October 18, 2013 - link
I think AMD have said that they are reintroducing Never Settle for the R9 series. Regardless, this is good from NVIDIA, though despite the quality of the games, it's a get-what-you're-given deal, like AMD's used to be.Can't complain too much about free stuff though. :)
hughlle - Friday, October 18, 2013 - link
I'd rather just a discount off the cards price :(Acquilae - Friday, October 18, 2013 - link
Selling the codes for Never Settle games is already very popular on forums and you won't have a problem getting at least $100 from these games :)Hrel - Friday, October 18, 2013 - link
Except the games don't cost Nvidia anything. So margins aren't affected. Reducing the price would hurt margins.TheJian - Friday, October 18, 2013 - link
ROFL...Yeah, game companies just give games away to Nvidia because they like them a lot...For a look at how free games affect margins check AMD's profits since this crap started...ROFL.
For so many people asking for lower prices and free games it seems MILLIONS of gamers have no idea AMD has lost 6Billion in the last 10yrs. Even the meager profit they eeked out this Quarter (31 or 48mil depending on which numbers you look at) will be eaten along with next quarters earnings by the Global Foundry 200million payment owed Dec31. So essentially they again make NOTHING this Q or next Q and probably end with a loss for both as i don't expect them to make more than 150mil next Q...LOL. So while they show a profit today, it's really gone next Q and likely a loss for both when added together. But hey, at least AMD got to claim a temporary profit for the first time in 5 quarters. :( FREE GAMES cost both companies which is why NEITHER should do it and both should NOT drop prices. We need both companies to make more money. NV hasn't made it back to 2007 profits yet (that's 6 years making less money), but people (the DUMB ONES) still whine about them gouging people. Apparently NONE of those "NV GOUGED ME" people read balance sheets or quarterly reports. If they were gouging you they should be making MORE than 2007. They haven't in 6 years and don't look like they have a shot at that for another year. AMD meanwhile, clearly needs to start "GOUGING" all of us and quit giving out games. Maybe they wouldn't have driver problems all year then huh?
Consoles only sell 10mil each per year so won't make AMD more than 200mil if lucky (20mil x $10 per $100 chip) and that's all gone next month with 200mil payment to GF. So console profits for the next year are already shot. Translation: They need to make more on GPUS or CPUS right? You can't make money on GPU's while giving away your profits in free games (that are NOT FREE to AMD or NV).
You can thank your cheap prices and free games for your next year of crappy drivers (albeit with a great piece of hardware no doubt) from AMD. Throw a thanks in to consoles development also, as they are what created the crappy drivers this year and what caused them to give the cpu race up to Intel in the last few years (console dev surely started 3+yrs ago when R&D on cpus tanked and Intel left AMD in the dust every year since).
I'm guessing AAA games are $10 at least a pop. Mantle cost AMD 8mil to get into BF4. It will cost them every time a company optimizes for it because it isn't needed and only for a niche amount of users. Unlike NV's tech which gamers will really want as it changes what we see all day and no coding needed to see some improvement as shown with tombraider. It's easier to pitch something we want, as opposed to something you'd like us to have but most couldn't care less about supporting (just costs them more, but won't improve profits). There will likely be a premium on Gsync tech so companies WANT to push it for a at least a few years (and it pushes new monitor purchases for some, more cards etc - not to mention allows game dev freedom in the future to add stuff) until it is in everything bringing cost down. For Mantle to succeed MS/Sony needed to embrace it, but to them it is the enemy making things run better OFF of consoles. They will never support it so it's dead even discounting the fact that it's for a small subset of a AMD's small subset of discrete cards. Wasted R&D. Consoles won't support a tech that makes them NOT needed in the long run. I don't see MS putting this in directx either. Why make it easier to port a windows game to android or linux etc?
szimm - Sunday, October 20, 2013 - link
I think it's fair for people to say that they find graphics cards too expensive, even if the companies making them aren't necessarily rolling in money. There can be many causes for any company to be in trouble, such as mismanagement, over-staffing, bad investment choices, etc. What matters is, can be the product be purchased at a reasonable price by the majority of the intended audience? This valuation is completely subjective to the average income and spending power of that market segment. If the answer is no, then maybe it should be considered that the high-end PC GPU business (in its current form) is actually not a sustainable business. If it's yes, and the companies are still losing money, then maybe they are simply not up to the task of keeping themselves afloat in this market, and they should leave it for someone else to pursue.thesavvymage - Friday, October 18, 2013 - link
they cant do that. They probably pay 5 bucks tops for the games because they get them in such massive quantities, and the game companies know not everyone is going to activate the code either.sidesw1pe - Tuesday, October 22, 2013 - link
Why would they care whether people activated the code or not? The thing is, once they have a code they ain't gonna be buying the game now, are they? So whether activated or not, it would make no difference to the publishers.conorvansmack - Friday, October 18, 2013 - link
I bought a GTX770 at the end of August. It came with SC: Blacklist, but I'm seriously bitter.Drumsticks - Friday, October 18, 2013 - link
To be fair, by the time this starts August will have been two months ago.But I do sympathize with you, that honestly sucks :(