NVIDIA’s Summer GeForce Game Bundle Announced - Splinter Cell Blacklist
by Ryan Smith on July 9, 2013 9:00 PM EST
NVIDIA sends word this evening that they’re launching a new GeForce video card game bundle for the summer timeframe. This time around NVIDIA is partnering with Ubisoft to get their latest Splinter Cell game, Splinter Cell Blacklist, included with most NVIDIA cards.
Much like the previously expired Metro: Last Light bundle, the Splinter Cell Blacklist bundle is for the GTX 660 and above, including the complete GTX 700 series, but strangely not NVIDIA’s most expensive cards, GTX 690 and GTX Titan. As is usually the case, all of the typical etailers are participating, with participating etailer and retailers throwing in a voucher for the game with qualifying purchases. The specific edition being bundled is the Digital Deluxe edition, which among other things includes bonus items and a copy of the previous Splinter Cell game, Conviction.
This promo comes about a month before the game actually ships - Blacklist won’t be shipping until August 20th – so GeForce video card buyers will have to sit tight for a bit before they can playing the game. The promo itself will run until the end of the year or until NVIDIA runs out of codes; though historically NVIDIA is likely to replace the bundle before the fall/winter game rush.
On a side note, while Blacklist isn’t being branded as a The Way It’s Meant to Be Played Game, NVIDIA’s press release did note that they’ve been providing engineering resources to Ubisoft as part of their deal. So “tessellation, NVIDIA HBAO+, TXAA antialiasing and surround technologies” appear to be NVIDIA additions to the game. Of note, this marks the first TXAA enabled game to ship in several months and the first such game released since TXAA creator Timothy Lottes left NVIDIA earlier this year for Epic Games.
Finally, for GTX 650 buyers, a quick check shows that NVIDIA’s $75 Free-To-Play bundle is still active for those cards. However that looks to be coming to an end at the end of this month.
| Current NVIDIA Game Bundles | ||||
| Video Card | Bundle | |||
| GeForce GTX Titan | None | |||
| GeForce GTX 690 | None | |||
| GeForce GTX 760/770/780 | SC Blacklist | |||
| GeForce GTX 660/660Ti/670/680 | SC Blacklist | |||
| GeForce GTX 650 Series | $75 Free-To-Play | |||
| GeForce GT 640 (& Below) | None | |||
Source: NVIDIA
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chizow - Wednesday, July 10, 2013 - link
Precisely, there's definitely an increase in value to the end-user vs. the actual cost to the game developer and Nvidia. I'd say each code costs Nvidia $5-$10, but to the end-user, especially for an unreleased AAA title they would buy anyways, the value is easily in the $40-50 range. At the very least, it's $20-30 on Ebay for a solid pre-launch title.It's just marketing cost, goes into overhead, which makes a lot more sense to these companies than reducing MSRP across the board.
chizow - Wednesday, July 10, 2013 - link
AMD's Never Settle promotions are still better overall imo, although they are certainly due for a refresh given all the titles are a bit long in the tooth. It doesn't look like Nvidia is changing course though to match AMD, looks like they are content with just 1 big pre-launch AAA title or 2 older titles over the 2-3 pre-launch or 4-5 old titles AMD is bundling.I liked Conviction though, although I never finished it because it had a weird SLI scaling bug with 3D Vision.
crimson117 - Wednesday, July 10, 2013 - link
That right there is a big ol' F.U. to early adopters who bought a 760 the last week in June when it was released. Thanks, nVidia!drewp - Wednesday, July 10, 2013 - link
yeah tell me about it. I just checked evga's website and because i bought my 2 evga 780s last month i don't get this game.this just reminds me not to spend $1300 on videocards
kwrzesien - Wednesday, July 10, 2013 - link
So could I start playing Conviction right away?LwEEs - Wednesday, July 10, 2013 - link
I got a GeForce gtx 650 Ti GC last week, no codes no bundle nothing. I got it at TigerDirect retail store. Sucks.TheJian - Thursday, July 11, 2013 - link
No need to bundle a game with Titan when NV sells every chip they make according to their own people. Why would I give you free games if I can't keep my product on the shelf at current prices? Giving away tons of free games causes your gpu division to make 17mil in a year like AMD. That's dumb and AMD should stop this junk. Nothing wrong with making games run BETTER on your hardware and investing in that, but then handing over games after is just costing you all your profits as one quarterly report after another shows from AMD.Also, Neverwinter uses TXAA and was just released last month. I guess you've never heard of it?
Tomshardware benchmarked it :)
http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/neverwinter
That's right, you guys keep claiming AMD cpus are ok, and as they show at toms you really don't want an AMD cpu and nothing below i5 :)
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/neverwinter-pe...
AMD cpu's SUCK. Never mind you guys recommending a A8-5600...LOL For all single cards. Umm, better check their cpu scaling chart and revise your recommendation to INTEL ONLY. :) If you'd like I can point out another dozen that show AMD cpus suck with single cards too :) At 1080p (only 1.25% play above 1920x1200, so even that will show the same) you will be watching your gpu be gimped by your cpu which is why you guys wrote the 1440p articles to fool people I guess... ;) At 1440p all cpus are waiting on gpus. Drop it down and oops, my cpu sucks as video cards go wild...LOL.
"Only Intel's Core i5-3550 demonstrates a significantly better result, and we have to assume that higher-end Core processors are really what it takes to let AMD's single-GPU flagship achieve its best showing."
Their statement at toms sort of blows the whole A8-5600 recommendation for single cards out of the water right? They say even i5 isn't enough here for a lowly 7970 (it's not a titan/780/690/7990 etc)...LOL. FX8350 barely breaks 30fps with 7970. If you want your gpu to be held back all day by your cpu buy an AMD chip :) Poor? Save your money for another month or two until you can afford Intel.
Assassin's creed 3 (while released in end of Nov) has had 3 dlc's released in the last 6 months that of course use txaa like the main game.
Call of duty black ops 2 also same story (uprising and revolution packs, vengeance coming 8/1). It's not like they don't have current games using it.
http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/nvidia_30479...
The first drivers to enable it were released less than a year ago. How much support do you expect in under 12 months? Games take a while to create right? It's a chicken egg thing. Release spec first, then make games based on said spec. It can't happen the other way around...LOL. Always trying to take slaps and NV Ryan...You're so transparent.
"Of note, this marks the first TXAA enabled game to ship in several months and the first such game released since TXAA creator Timothy Lottes left NVIDIA earlier this year for Epic Games."
I'm kind of thinking that might be on purpose to get TXAA into any unreal 4 based games of the future. It certainly doesn't hurt shipping your SPEC maker to a major game engine house right? Again, chicken then egg...If unreal 4 supports TXAA out of the gate, I'd guess that would make a lot of TXAA enable games right? It is the most used engine (u3) in history, so having that feature built into unreal 4 should make devs get on board more. I digress...Lets not forget phsyx is also in games so TXAA isn't alone as an NV feature. The guy left, what April 16? How many games can be made in 3 months?...ROFL. And since he can only affect Epic games now (realistically, he only works there right?), what would you expect? A dozen since he left? How many good games (period) have been released since april? So how useful is a comment like that other than just taking a poke at NV as usual?
Sabresiberian - Thursday, July 11, 2013 - link
Well, to be fair, any game has to be something you are interested in. Like I got Grid2 with my Intel processor, but I could care less about racing games. I loaded it up and ran it for an hour or so, looks like a great racing game, but it will never see any actual use in my house.That being said, it did look to me like what happens when you get marketing guys together that are thinking more about the bottom line than what will suit their customers. "Give them a bundle designed to get them hoked on the "F2P" model" - which means buying store cash to spend on stuff in the game. It's fee stuff, but still...
Games, rebates, memory, whatever, none of those things influence my purchase. I'm not going to buy an AMD card over Nvidia, or vice versa, because of the game bundle; I buy the product I want.