What happened to Graphics Card box art babes?

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Waifu edition 4090s
 
The simple fact is that box art is NOT a money-making proposition for the card mfgr's.... that artwork has to be paid for somehow, either thru licensing fees to the artists, or an in-house creators, and that would mean squeezin a few moar $$ away from those absurd profit margins, which would in turn mean that some exec or middle manager would have to delay the purchase of their next Lear Jet, beach house, Tesla etc... and we certainly can't have that now, can we ??????
 
dogDAbone said:
The simple fact is that box art is NOT a money-making proposition for the card mfgr's.... that artwork has to be paid for somehow, either thru licensing fees to the artists, or an in-house creators, and that would mean squeezin a few moar $$ away from those absurd profit margins, which would in turn mean that some exec or middle manager would have to delay the purchase of their next Lear Jet, beach house, Tesla etc... and we certainly can't have that now, can we ??????
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Or maybe, just maybe, the "sweet spot" in the market for expensive GPUs has changed. Gotten older. And again maybe box art doesn't have the same appeal today for that market sweet spot as it did say 10-20 years ago. More forcefully, the box art today could be a turnoff.

I mean like, when I'm upgrading my rig and getting packages from Newegg or B&H Photo or Amazon, those packages typically sit around the house unopened for a few days. Maybe I'm still waiting for that new motherboard or PSU. My wife looks at these packages and says something like, "What's that for?" All she wants is about a 1 sentence answer. More than that is TMI. But I have to think that a box art babe would get a different sort of question.
 
pippenainteasy said:
In general you see less and less of that in advertising so I'm sure it's a culture shift as well overall when it comes to ads.
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It's not an organic culture shift, more like sex appeal has become the wrongthink. It's not like forced perfect diversity is actually better at selling things. In my case it is good at making me put things back on the shelf.
 
ZodaEX said:
Back in the 90's to early 2010's, the box art for gaming graphics cards were usually adorned with GCI renders of beautiful fantasy or sci-fi babes. If you were exceptionally lucky you'd get a poster of her too for the bedroom.
Why have Nvidia and AMD all but stopped this practice? Why have they cancelled my poor gaming babes and instead changed to super boring box art? There was a time that I'd always keep my graphics card boxes for home decor but I don't even bother to now these days, I don't even see a point anymore. Hopefully Intel will step it up and bring back these beauties soon.
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9 year old gamers can't afford today's GPU's. And those same 9 year olds can easily find far far better porn than GPU boxart with a little searching.

Adult gamers are too smart to be swayed, many have their mind already made up on the GPU they want. Reviews and techtuber endorsements are the marketing of the day.

BoxBabes are rendered pointless due to the above.

Or, we can all cry about wokeness, blame it on that (it must be!), and have a manly circlejerk about the 'good ol days'...
 
I am thankful it is mostly gone. It always looked stupid. The bad renders also looked, well, bad. ATI branded things are an example. My X700 had a mouth-less reptilian man thing on the box.

I know Asian market oriented companies still do it though.
 
Westwood said:
yea, it was LUA, LGA, IGA? something like that. PC tower that came from a store.
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FYI I think it was that the old half life games emulated 3D on 2D hardware. It was called Software 3D or something. Looked like shit, played worse than shit. Actually owning a 3D accelerator was the shit at the time.
 
They always seemed kinda cringey to me, but who cares at the end of the day.
 
ZodaEX said:
Back in the 90's to early 2010's, the box art for gaming graphics cards were usually adorned with GCI renders of beautiful fantasy or sci-fi babes. If you were exceptionally lucky you'd get a poster of her too for the bedroom.
Why have Nvidia and AMD all but stopped this practice? Why have they cancelled my poor gaming babes and instead changed to super boring box art? There was a time that I'd always keep my graphics card boxes for home decor but I don't even bother to now these days, I don't even see a point anymore. Hopefully Intel will step it up and bring back these beauties soon.
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Well at least they are on chocolate bar wrappers now!
 
Video cards became the "art" itself.

Back in the older "mascot" days, video cards were ugly, just moderately sized chunks of heatsink and fan. If it was fancy, the PCB was a different color, that was it. Now that video cards have styling like a car would, they showcase the card itself.

Also, CGI renders of "chicks" or other character were meant to conjure the image of something it could render. Given that putting a photorealistic female character on the box would be a deterrent now, why take that route?
 
Maybe since most don't walk through a video card aisle anymore and box art was used to capture your attention to get you to buy a card. Now most know about the next video card LONG before it launches, no longer stumbling upon it in a best buy "OMG when did Voodoo3 come out?!" *grabs scary looking box and runs to counter*.
 
Skarth said:
Video cards became the "art" itself.

Back in the older "mascot" days, video cards were ugly, just moderately sized chunks of heatsink and fan. If it was fancy, the PCB was a different color, that was it. Now that video cards have styling like a car would, they showcase the card itself.

Also, CGI renders of "chicks" or other character were meant to conjure the image of something it could render. Given that putting a photorealistic female character on the box would be a deterrent now, why take that route?
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I agree with the fact that the cards themselves have become MUCH better looking!
 
Fan shroud artwork, and then mount it facing down so youll never see it until you have to remove it haha.
 
As an adult I'm glad to see most of that crap all gone. I remember I was buying a lot of AMD cards and they were sending out provocative girl statuettes with each card (the kind of 'toys' that if anyone over 15 collects and displays, I see as a cry for help). They all went straight in the recycling.
 
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