It's already happened. There is a premium built-in when purchasing a Nvidia product. The reason why Nvidia invests in the software and features is the market may reward them with more premiums and higher margins, imho.
Maybe you should go read this thread if that is what you think.
Maybe it's me, maybe english isn't your first language? I'm honestly not sure how you claim to this conclusion but the bottom line is this would be a terrible thing to happen. We have people in this thread going up and down about how this will never happen, it will if we allow it. People need to stop being passive about issues like this.
That's like saying NSA spying is good because the GCHQ wants a piece of it. Is the GCHQ "competing" with the NSA?Competition shows they are doing something right - that's why competitors want in on the game.
LOL, wut?It's also good because if one service sucks we can go use another one.
The world also has a billion smokers. I guess cigarettes must be doing something right?Didn't steam just hit a new record of about 13.5 million concurrent users, clearly with that many users their will be issues, but equally they are doing something right.
There's no "ease of use". A simple comparison is to try to run a game after an OS reinstall.That's 13.5 million people who could use a console instead but have stuck with pc gaming, whether it makes you happy or not the ease of use and low prices steam provides is part of the reason why.
Old way: click the direct link to the driver in a browser.Pretty simple -- ease of use and value.
That's because those suggesting throwaway email address don't understand the issue, yet they continue to post as if they do.Throwaway email addresses have been suggested several times. But continually ignored by those who just want to make a big issue out of nothing.
The GFE client/application needs to be installed and running on the system (like Steam) to get drivers.
Its kinda absurd they're forcing this on us. Why can't we just download drivers normally and whoever wants to use the email address method with GFE can do it as an option?
Nvidia has to make GFE easy to use, convenient to use, and continue to innovate features to bring value to GFE. If Nvidia does these facets, then the gamer may not mind the hassle of giving an email address. Time will tell how GFE evolves.Old way: click the direct link to the driver in a browser.
New way: deal with a Steam-esque DRM client masquerading as a "service that adds value", requiring registration and to be running in the background to do anything.
Feel free to show us the steps to get an nVidia driver installed straight after an OS reinstall using the new "ease of use" GFE way. We'll be waiting for you to show us how it's "simpler" than the old way.
Why are people saying they are forcing it on you? Simply click the X in the corner, closes the window and run the program normally. Its been that away for a long time now, i've never had to register anything with them. Still get driver updates automatically shown.
You guys make me wonder how many times you signed up for websites you didn't need to.
OK, so I have to admit, I originally thought that forcing people to use GFE to update drivers might be a really bad/stupid idea but it is actually super convenient. I like it.
This will be why this works. The people who like it will FAR outweigh the people who don't, and the people who like, for the most part, will not UNDERSTAND the reason the people who don't like it.
Just saw on reddit this garbage has started in the geforce experience application. You need to register a valid email to download the latest driver. This driver is also available by direct download though, for however long that lasts. :thumbsdown:
Weird, someone posted a URL and I tried it and it worked! In, fact from two different source!
One straight from nvidia.com the other from Guru3D.com
So, don't need GFE and neither any DMCA take downs (yet).
I think he is complaining that you need an e-mail when downloading via GFE. How true that is, I don't know. Either way, I'm downloading the newest driver via website right now. :thumbsup:
Just saw on reddit this garbage has started in the geforce experience application. You need to register a valid email to download the latest driver. This driver is also available by direct download though, for however long that lasts. :thumbsdown:
As an nvidia user, I would think that you might verify stuff like this before you spread it.
Just as one poster already has, I took my time to see for myself as well.
And just as he has reported, there is no email required to download the new driver. Not even when i updated GE, I downloaded and installed the game ready driver without a GE log in and with never giving GE an email address.
I believe the information you posted here to be false. This "garbage" has not already started, not for me on win 8.1 and not for another on win 10
Only read what I quoted, I see you are still in the habit of writing a novella and not valuing brevity. As my link states, it appears it is only now starting in the beta version of geforce experience. I don't install that bloatware, so I can't test it myself and my post stated you can still get it from them directly, for now.
It's not just analytics of what you provide them. It's so they can do analytics based on the other information that exists about you, do an analysis, and generate advertising based on this.
They don't even need to sell your data to get advertising benefits. They can buy information about a group of people, identify who has registered for their service, and use that to do a few things:
1.Tailor their ads to what the bulk of their customers do
2.Identify the products their customers might be most interested in and sell advertising space.
3.Improve their service by identifying what their customers like to see
They need you to enter your information so they can correlate it with the information they can buy.
I think NVidia is only going to be buying the info and correlating it to the account information they have. Then they'll probably use it to either identify who it would be a good idea to sell ads to or to identify which games to focus developing driver optimizations for.
Optimizing drivers costs money and is an ongoing cost. NVidia has to keep selling cards in order to cover the cost of doing that. They also have to cover the cost of the R&D of a new card design. In order to maintain a profit margin, they have to do something else.
Not only that, but there's an increasing number of games coming out. NVidia can use the information to identify where to prioritize resources for game specific driver optimizations.
It's my thinking, but I really haven't done a lot of research into it. A lot of driver optimization is covering problems caused by engine developers not following all of the practices recommended by NVidia and Microsoft. Then NVidia ends up writing game-specific driver optimizations so the game runs best on their hardware.
I don't doubt that DX12 will make driver maintenance lower, but the analysis required to identify what needs to be optimized and developing new ones, when necessary, requires experienced developers who fetch a high price.
It's also worth noting that NVidia is a publicly traded company and Wall Street insists on continuing to grow profits. At this point, NVidia has reached market saturation. There's not much more they can do to grow their profits there as they have over 80% market share. Selling ad space is one way to increase profits, though it's likely to erode their market. The other way would be to buy ads, which they need the information to understand how to do best.
Lastly, while DX12 will reduce that load NVidia will still need to support DX11 for a few more years (until Windows 7 and 8 drops below a certain Windows market share that is probably internal to NVidia, I can speculate on that later). So they still need to be able to support the older DX model from before DX made driver maintenance easier.
You missed the flow of the conversation which also included concerns about privacy. I quoted someone who was replying to another who said this: "They aren't making it easier to use. They're making it harder to use by requiring email registration, and at the same time they're penalizing anybody who cares about privacy by preventing them from manually downloading the latest drivers."That's because those suggesting throwaway email address don't understand the issue, yet they continue to post as if they do.
It's like saying "just give Steam a throwaway email address, no problem!"
The GFE client/application needs to be installed and running on the system (like Steam) to get drivers.
The email address is actually quite irrelevant. If this is still unclear to you, please keep re-reading it until you understand it.