NVIDIA Dictates Advertised Video Card Pricing

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FrgMstr

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NVIDIA Dictates Advertised Video Card Pricing - Did you wonder why your GeForce purchasing experience may have changed? Have you wondered why you might have seen all cards priced the same or not priced at all? We have some answers for you on that front and it is called "UMAP."

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UPDATED: New GPUs now UMAPped. GeForce GTX 260; GTX 280.
 
I did actually notice at newegg it was implemented... this is a horrible policy that makes it unneccessarily difficult to shop for nVidia products. If they don't want to have a price overlap to help clarify their lineup for consumers, there are many other options such as dropping prices on overlapping products to clarify the lineup, using better model numbers with some sort of in-company performance metric, or simply making an official marketing-oriented guide to what nVidia card is the best for a given user type and how to decide/learn about the different cards.

Pissing off people who are trying to BUY YOUR PRODUCT with absurdities such as UMAP on vendor sites is not a wise decision. It makes it one more step too difficult, and the average consumer will simply go look at the cards they can see the prices on. Not to mention this is probably borderline illegal, if not entirely so, as it looks more like price-fixing even though it doesn't require the vendor to adhere to a given actual sale price, it just prevents them from advertising or even implying a sale discount is given to the product in a bundle, etc. It also carries very strict penalties that amount to little more than blackmail to the vendors to follow the policy, and hurts nVidia's largest customers that sell off-shore cards to the U.S. and are based entirely on price for their livelihood.

Two thumbs down and a spit of disgust toward nVidia's direction.
 
I read those pages and the article, I still seem to be a little dumbfounded on what this means exactly. I am also wondering what if any effect this will have on "OC" cards.

So this means once price (minimum) for one card, across all AIBs? This may be good for some of the lower volume AIBs like pny and zotac and leadtek and etc, maybe it will help them sell more cards than evga and xfx and bfg which can for the most part keep their prices 10+ dollars lower (usually) then these other smaller AIBs because EVGA and the likes can sell more volume, and more volume = cheaper. But even then, usually the AIBs with the better customer service gets the sales, so I don't see how this changes the game for smaller AIBs.

I really don't see how this helps any one, NV or the AIBs, but I do see how it eliminates some of the confusion with multiple cards falling into the same price range, but I wasn't really confused about it in the first place. I don't like the idea however of having to click to a separate dialog box to actually see the price.

Anyone have any idea on how this will work pertaining to mail in rebates? that may be a way these AIBs loophole NVs decision.

Edit. So this doesn't effect the "sale" price, (i just reread it), so then what does this effect? Company X can't advertise that card Y is less than Z price stipulated by NV, and if they do sell the card for less, E-tailers like newegg have to shadow the price in a separate dialog box? I hope im reading that right.
 
I don't know whether this pisses me off or disgusts me, probably both.
 
"Newegg told NVIDIA to “go pound sand,” or at least that is how it was communicated to HardOCP.com, then when NVIDIA threatened to cut off marketing funds paid directly to Newegg, the company changed its tune and followed the policy. "

Maybe this is rash decisioning by me but I would have removed all nvidia products from the Newegg website for a 244 to 48 hour period. A) It would have Nvidia's partners screaming at Nvidia management and B) Directed customers to alternative products.

Whether or not that would have worked is neither here or there. I'm sure some customers would go to TD or NCIX or whatnot, but this UMAP policy crap is just stupid. I thought we lived in a free market.
 
Seems like a silly policy that pisses off both retailers and consumers and doesn't accomplish anything in the end. Limiting the ability of retailers to control their own pricing removes their ability to effectively compete and goes against the fundamental concept of a free market. Hopefully nVidia will see how ridiculous this system is and will kill it within a few months.

Kudos to you guys for bringing this out into the open. Now that nVidia will probably be receiving tons of backlash from this, they'll be all the more likely to end this quickly(hopefully).
 
This really isn't anything new. nVidia has certain costs and they are trying to maintain the perceived value of their cards. Unilateral pricing is done to keep people buying cards consistantly. Imagine if you see an amazing deal on an 8800GT in a [H]ot deals thread for 129.99, but don't have the cash to buy it. Once you save up 130 bucks for it and you cannot find it for that you will either wait for it to fall to that price again or buy a different product. It hurts margin and without margin we get no innovation.

But just because it makes a sort of sense doesn't mean the Green Team isn't turning...Red? :D
 
SulSeeker said:
"Newegg told NVIDIA to “go pound sand,” or at least that is how it was communicated to HardOCP.com, then when NVIDIA threatened to cut off marketing funds paid directly to Newegg, the company changed its tune and followed the policy. "

Maybe this is rash decisioning by me but I would have removed all nvidia products from the Newegg website for a 244 to 48 hour period. A) It would have Nvidia's partners screaming at Nvidia management and B) Directed customers to alternative products.
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QFT
 
LaChupacabra said:
This really isn't anything new. nVidia has certain costs and they are trying to maintain the perceived value of their cards. Unilateral pricing is done to keep people buying cards consistantly. Imagine if you see an amazing deal on an 8800GT in a [H]ot deals thread for 129.99, but don't have the cash to buy it. Once you save up 130 bucks for it and you cannot find it for that you will either wait for it to fall to that price again or buy a different product. It hurts margin and without margin we get no innovation.

But just because it makes a sort of sense doesn't mean the Green Team isn't turning...Red? :D
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I fail to see how that's any different than someone seeing it on hot deals, clicking to see the price, and then not having the money anyway. They then go back and see it at a higher price anyway ;). It doesn't affect what they can SELL them at, it affects what they can ADVERTISE them at, and breaks all price sorting functions on vendor sites due to that.
 
With RV770 around the corner, I'd tell nvidia to go forth and multiply anyhow, nobody will be buying their shite.
 
Nv's price performance overlap for the massive number of different sku's led to this confusion. UMAP comes along to make it worse. Well, for myself, I will not bother to dig around for the price of an item. Nv has made it much less time consuming to just shop for Ati products on price instead.
 
SulSeeker said:
"Newegg told NVIDIA to “go pound sand,” or at least that is how it was communicated to HardOCP.com, then when NVIDIA threatened to cut off marketing funds paid directly to Newegg, the company changed its tune and followed the policy. "

Maybe this is rash decisioning by me but I would have removed all nvidia products from the Newegg website for a 244 to 48 hour period. A) It would have Nvidia's partners screaming at Nvidia management and B) Directed customers to alternative products.

Whether or not that would have worked is neither here or there. I'm sure some customers would go to TD or NCIX or whatnot, but this UMAP policy crap is just stupid. I thought we lived in a free market.
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i had the same exact thoughts...

not so sure if it would have worked, but if i was trying to sell enthusiast parts, i wouldn't want to be pissing off somebody like newegg...


nevertheless, this won't affect me much, as i do most of my shopping via the hotdeals forum.... which isn't under UMAP, so i'll know what i need to pay before i even get to the etailer's site
 
This might actually push to to go AMD for a GPU next time...no matter what.

Bad indeed :(
 
All we need now is an announcement from AMD saying they're going to be ramping up production of their next gen GPU.
 
I haven't used an ATI product in years, I guess since the 9800 series. I think I'll give them a go next upgrade, regardless of performance.
 
I've been looking for a video card for a few weeks now, and just a few days ago, I bought one. Certainly, this UMAP has left a bad taste in my mouth. My shopping experience at my favorite etailors were abysmal at best. UMAP made me not want to buy anything. I ended up ignoring the cards w/o prices.

I may be alone here, but I'm going to have to think twice about buying anything nvidia now. Having to add the product to the cart just to see the price is a pain in the ass.

If anything, I'll just find a site that lists the actual prices from etailors, bypassing the need to continously add-to-cart and this whole debacle.


EDIT: As of this time, it looks like ZipZoomFly hasn't been affected yet.
 
So they want to have a bunch of retail partners but don't want those retail partners to compete on price? What sort of ridiculous bullshit is that. Even if those "unauthorized" cards come in cheaper the big boys like BFG, XFX and eVGA still get the vast majority of sales even if they're priced slightly higher. Man Nvidia's arrogance will be their downfall.
 
It's beyond annoying and causes your customers to be less likely to buy your product.
 
Nvidia created this confusion by flooding the market with Geforce 8 and Geforce 9 cards that overlap each other both in terms of price and in terms of performance. This is not a good way to try and clean up the mess they created.

The Right Thing to do would have been to streamline their lineup by limiting it to maybe four or five models at e.g.: $100, $200, $300, $400 and possibly $500+, with a clear numbering scheme to indicate relative performance (if not accross generations, then at least within the same generation). The important thing is to have no more GTX, GTS, GT, GS, GX2.. those letters don't mean anything..they're just added because it "sounds good" when you say them.

ATI got it right. A 3450 is slower than a 3650 which is slower than a 3850, and the 3870 is the fastest. Serious gamers will still look up the models to determine what sets the cards apart (memory bandwidth, # of stream units, clock speed).. But just by glancing at the model numbers, you immediately get an idea of relative performance, and the casual gamer can rest assured that his 3650 is indeed faster than the 3450.

With the introduction of the 4000-series, ATI will suffer from some of this confusion for a short while (e.g. Radeon 3870 might be slower than the "bigger number" Radeon 4250). The idea is that as lower-end 4000-series cards are introduced to the market, the surplus stock of 3000-series cards should disappear pretty quickly. Nvidia's other mistake was allowing the 8-series and 9-series cards to be sold in parallell.
 
This must have something to do with margins on higher end products and lower end products being priced so low that nVidia thinks they are hurting sales of higher end products.

While it sounds bad on the surface, I don't think that this is an evil plot, just a way control price differentiation artificially. nVidia could have raised it prices for GPU's to AIB's but obviously didn't go that route.

We'll see how much backlash there is from all of this VERY quickly and the nVidia spin.
 
This is going to upset a lot of people and it shouldn't. Everyone already knows what sites offer the best prices online anyways, so just let it go. Anyways, it doesn't take much effort to add to cart to see the price in the first place.

The one thing that is a little irritating though is Nvidia says they are doing this to help make it easier to know what's card is better. Well you know what Nvidia? If you actually used a naming scheme that made since and didn't change from year to year, or, series to series as some may see it, then it would be easier. For example, the 8800gtx and 9800gtx... if you didn't know any better, ie. the casual consumer which you are trying to help, you would think that the 9800gtx was an upgrade. It's not; you put yourself into this mess and your in a way hurting yourself to get out.

This has entirely to do with Nvidia's stance that "PC gaming isn't dieing". They see a decline in sales and are worried that complications with choosing Video Cards is holding people back from buying newer cards, thus lowering new game sales because they can't play them.
 
bigdogchris said:
Anyways, it doesn't take much effort to add to cart to see the price in the first place.
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As a consumer who recently had to deal with this shit, it's annoying as fuck :mad:

Let me see you go to a store and have that store take down all of its price tags so that the only way for you to see the price is at the checkout line.
 
Other than making it a big pain in the ass to buy a video card......how is this helping nvidia???

I mean.......let's say the new 280GTX launches today......I'm trying to figure out which card to buy.......
by the time I load up a cart to check prices......oops, they all sold out.....

So guess what?? I'm pissed. What am I going to do???

Buy the 4870, that's what....maybe two. At least I can find the prices listed.:mad:

I mean, Jesus. Yeah, there were a bunch of 8800 GTs and GTXs to choose from.....who gives a shit.....read the description, find out which one you'd like to plunk down the cash for and buy it......are people really a stupid as nvidia thinks they are???? Of course not.

What exactly are they (nvidia) proving or protecting with this policy??? I mean, when did a product price become double-top-secret???? dufus move.
 
I have not bought anything from Nvidia in a long time. Their chipset bugs are what turned me off......my laptop has a 8400GS-M in it and if I could remove it and replace it, I would
 
JimmiG said:
Nvidia created this confusion by flooding the market with Geforce 8 and Geforce 9 cards that overlap each other both in terms of price and in terms of performance. This is not a good way to try and clean up the mess they created....
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Agreed. I was thinking of going Nvidia in my next purchase, but first with the above-mentioned overlaps, Nvidia's too-rapid product introduction (which just makes you feel you should wait till next month and see what's out then), and now with an increase in their strong-arming, I have to rethink where i was planning on spending my money.

Atech said:
I can't wait for Intel to enter the stage.
Will be damn good for competition, thus prices, thus me! ;)
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And I think Atech's mentioning of Intel is important. ATI is getting its ducks in a row (if slowly) and getting competitive again, Nvidia reportedly doesn't enjoy the performance gap it once led over ATI, and a few quarters later Intel is jumping into the game. It seems Nvidia is circling its wagons. Could it be there's a piece of tech they are having trouble with?
 
I sincerely hope that ATI's new cards prove competitive,I've had a bellyfull of Nvidia's tactics.Outrageous prices,all the "refreshes" of the same old cards,poorly designed motherboards intended solely to shove SLI down our throats. They're badly in need of a good dose of hubris. It may be wishful thinking,but imagine if ATI hits a home run this time,with cards that are a fraction of the cost? Cards that don't need Nvidia's problematic motherboards for multi-card setups? And if Intel follows through on it's threat to withhold the license for Nehalem,Nvidia could be in for a rude awakening.
 
michael.pa2 said:
I sincerely hope that ATI's new cards prove competitive,I've had a bellyfull of Nvidia's tactics.Outrageous prices,all the "refreshes" of the same old cards,poorly designed motherboards intended solely to shove SLI down our throats. They're badly in need of a good dose of hubris. It may be wishful thinking,but imagine if ATI hits a home run this time,with cards that are a fraction of the cost? Cards that don't need Nvidia's problematic motherboards for multi-card setups? And if Intel follows through on it's threat to withhold the license for Nehalem,Nvidia could be in for a rude awakening.
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I do agree with you in that I would like to see AMD do well this time. I'm not a fan of a lot of nVidia tactics. That said, I do think that consumers can be part of the problem as well. We all want the lowest price on stuff. And that's why we have a Super Walmart on every corner putting other stores out of business, paying slave wages and using illegal sources of labor with everything coming from China.

I'm not above that fray at all. I shop at Walmart all the time and I'm always looking for the best price I can find. However people need to understand that the lowest price to the consumer at all costs creates its own set of problems.
 
It would be great if people could sort of boycott Nvidia, or atleast buy more from the competition. This would spark more competition, fairer pricing, and revok this stupid policy.

Too bad it will never happen.
 
xdivenx said:
It would be great if people could sort of boycott Nvidia, or atleast buy more from the competition. This would spark more competition, fairer pricing, and revok this stupid policy.

Too bad it will never happen.
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Never say never. I just bought 2 GTX 280 for the sig rig because I've not seen anything that would indicate that AMD has a faster solution than 2x GTX 280 other than 2x 4870x2. I might very well pick up a pair of 4870x2 if they are all that for my disassembled Q6600.

After tomorrow the pressure is going to be on AMD however. There are a ton of leaked benchmarks out for the 280 that say it sucks and a another ton of implications that the 4870x2 is going to revolutionize gaming. If that's true I'll buy one or two because when it comes to computers, I really want the best I can afford, and if its the best AND affordable I'm there!;)
 
Well, I am in the market for a new graphics card, the 8800GT was susposed to be a stopgap until the 9800GTX hit market but it benches just a few % higher then the GT with a good OC.
I had hoped that the GTX280 would of fit the bill but for the price na nVidia can go pound sand, 499 was a bit high but I was willing to do it for the best single card setup. I think I will go get 2 4850's and crossfire them for cheaper then the single GTX280.
 
A ton of companies do that. You often see ads that say 'too low to advertise.' I buy a lot of car parts and almost every product is advertised this way. Really annoying having to contact the seller just to get a price.
 
nVidia not having a stable platform for SLI and overclocking (without ongoing data corruption errors etc) and now this? Not that I really planned on going SLI anyway but this just increases my intent to stay with intel chipsets for intel cpus. At least I know they'll work as intended.
 
xdivenx said:
It would be great if people could sort of boycott Nvidia, or atleast buy more from the competition. This would spark more competition, fairer pricing, and revok this stupid policy.

Too bad it will never happen.
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If the new ATI cards are as strong on price/performance, as they seem to be according to the preliminary benchmarks, Nvidia WILL lose a lot of business to the Red Team.
All this marketing bullsheat by Nvidia will make the transition even faster.
 
Note that the UMAP policy does not apply in any way to any party's actual selling prices; nVidia partner's sales price and the price charge by any consumer in nVidia partner's distribution channel for any and all products remains wholly within the seller's sole discretion.
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So wait, from this I get the impression that Newegg can still sell me an 8800 GT 512 for $100, they just can't advertise it?

Yes, this is a retarded policy, but I'm just trying to understand the fine print.
 
I've always loved the sheer power Nvidia cards have given me but I really do hate their BS marketing and strong-arm tactics

No wonder Intel is tired of their tactics as well
 
LaChupacabra said:
It hurts margin and without margin we get no innovation.
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Not really. The resellers buy for a set price, what ever they sell it for does not hurt NVIDIA getting that same price from the reseller. It just hurts the reseller's profit margin. In fact, the more resellers sell at reduced prices(compared to loser sales at higher prices) the more units NVIDIA moves which means more money for them.

This is something I have seen happen with numerous companies, the start enforcing set minimum prices or they do not allow you to sell their product. This usually stems from brick and mortar shops crying to the manufaturer that they can not compete with the online prices since their overhead is much higher.

Mant times the agreement is they can not advertise below a set price. This is a loophole. Denon is an example, authorized dealers are not supposed to sell below MSRP, yet if you call the online shops that are authorized, you get huge discounts even though their websites shows MSRP. My 3808 retails for $1,600, yet got it from an online authorized dealer for $1,049 shipped even though the websites stated the MSRP.
 
It seems that this is quite commonplace these days, particularly for any brand-name product that's sold both online and in retail. I'm shopping for a new TV and Sony just instituted a similiar policy. Granted, their price/performance tiers are well designated (though too numerous).

But, how many times in the last 2 years have you had to put a product in your shopping cart in order to see the price? I don't think this is new, I just think that these are standardized enforcement programs. But these programs have names to them, so they're being discussed by consumers, as opposed to the terms being in sales contracts as matter-of-course.

Which brings the next point--- companies are struggling to deal with relatively new scenarios brough by the internet, like near-real-time low price finds, deal aggregation sites, price comparison sites, and major etailers (amazon) that use sophisticated pricing engines. How do you compete in a marketplace where 50% of your individual customers know the exact best deal at any time? SRP will become meaningless, and they lose control over the perceived value of their product (and into the hands of those who evaluate products and run deals sites).
 
I am quite willing to screw nvidia over for this end user harassment. I use NewEgg everyday, I recommend nvidia every day, making me do extra work for no reason pisses me off.

Don't work my last good nerve Timo or you are going to get the exact opposite of what you hope for. Unless you are shorting nvidia stock? You loser.
 
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