author: Bart Swiatek
Nvidia: RTX series sales below expectations
During the Monday investor meeting, Nvidia’s CEO – Jensen Huang – admitted that the sales of GeForce RTX series were worse than expected.
IN A NUTSHELL:
- Nvidia recorded a weak quarter – revenues were $0.5 billion lower than predicted;
- The reason is reduced demand for graphics cards, as well as the weak debut of GeForce RTX series chipsets.
Nvidia's CEO Jensen Huang admitted at the Monday investor meeting that sales of the Turing-based GPUs had so far been lower than expected. The fourth quarter of fiscal year 2019 (ended on 27 January) turned out to be a “punch in the gut” for the company - on February 14, he will present a financial report for the period, expecting a revenue of $2.2 billion. The forecasts had to be reduced by 0.5 billion dollars.
According to Nvidia, the main reason for the poor results is the worsening of macroeconomic situation in some regions of the world – especially in China – which is expected to result in reduced demand for graphics cards. Undoubtedly, customers do not buy new chipsets as willingly as they did a few years ago, and their prices are also far from the levels observed at the time. The direct cause of this state of affairs is the collapse of the cryptocurrency market.
However, is market situation really the main cause behind the RTX failure? Not necessarily. Unfortunately, everything seems to indicate that the new Nvidia cards simply did not live up to the hopes that the players placed in them – they turned out to be expensive products that did not offer enough performance to justify their price. What’s more, modern features like ray tracing and DLSS may look great in promo materials, but – despite the many months since the release of the first Turing – there are very few games that can exploit their full potential. Yes, Battlefield V does look beautiful on a GeForce RTX 2080, but how much can you play Battlefield and only that? Even Nvidia is aware of the issue.
"These products deliver a revolutionary leap in performance and innovation with real-time ray tracing and AI, but some customers may have delayed their purchase while waiting for lower price points and further demonstrations of RTX technology in actual games," Nvidia said.
We would like to remind you that the last card so far based on Turing architecture is GeForce RTX 2060, which debuted in mid-January.