Not to argue with you, because I'm also against this kind of things, but so far Mantle is AMD and GCN exclusive, with no idea of when it will stop being that way.

well, PS3 is stronger as 360 but you still bought something like Skyrim for PS3. Sure, they didn#t deliberately make the PS3 version worse but it still seems as if they didn't really put much time in the PS3 version.

I bought it for PC as well. Just like I did both Fallout games. I played those games on PS3 first, but then modded the crap out of them on the PC some years later when my PC could handle it with zero optimization crap.

Key thing about me personally. I will happily wait 2-3 years for technology to get cheap enough where I only need a $100-200 video card to play games at high settings on cards that used to cost $300-500. 

It is the exact same from a business standpoint. Developers are choosing to work together exclusively with one hardware manufacturer. Cooperating with developers and basically acquiring exclusive features is a legitimate practice. It existed for decades and so far has apparently not destroyed any industry.

The article only shows one perspective from the standpoint of an AMD executive. Of course he would say that it's bad for the industry. It's his job to say that. What he's not saying is why the developers chose NVIDIA over AMD. Which is a failing on his side. What he's also not mentioning are the exclusive deals and technologies they are using with developers on games that run significantly better on AMD than NVIDIA.

It's called competition and everyone is doing it. No need to call out the apocalypse.

NVidia got a deal this time... watchdogs is bundle with some cards...

Odd Ubi would use this Nvidia exclusivity in its code considering the consoles use AMD.

I agree though. Open source and sharing really should be there.

not something you would recongise by OSI PI has the same policy with my software.  it works to a certain extent ar maintaining a leadership position but it can also hurt them. OSI PI lost several massive accounts to us last year specifically because of their policy to lock out and obfuscate dealing with third party products. 

this is basically the same as MS's launch parity clause.  it seemed like a good idea at the time but it promoted their self destruction. no one wants to do business with those that don't play well with others. 

And now, to add even more gasoline into this fire, I've read a preview for this game's performance without using AA at [H]ardocp, and guess what? If your card has less than 3GB of RAM, forget about enabling Ultra textures... and even the 3GB 780 and 780Ti struggle with it while the 290X handles Ultra with just a minor performance drop

http://hardocp.com/article/2014/05/27/watch_dogs_amd_nvidia_gpu_performance_preview/1

If this is really the effect that Gameworks has on 40% of the market, then expect devs to stop supporting it in a couple of years. Pissing off 40% of your customers is not good business for a developer. I suspect Gameworks will be niche by 2016.

Ya...if only that Forbes article included proper GPU testing of this game. The little detail they forgot to mention is how a $330 770 2GB flops hard against a $270-300 R9 280X (and that would mean against a 7950/7970/7970Ghz) at 1080p since it can't run Ultra textures.

While looking at the average frames per second, 780Ti SLI beats R9 290X, the frame latency graphs reveal stuttering on the much more expensive NV setup from Guru3D review:

http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/watch_dogs_vga_graphics_performance_benchmark_review,8.html

"The AMD Radeon R9 295 was doing better, very likely due to its larges graphics memory partitions. Mind you that these tests have been performed at Ultra quality."

The problem with GameWorks is that it prevents a developer to accept feedback/recommendations from the competitor. In the end, that hurts 40% of the consumers. If GameWorks worked in conjuction with AMD's Gaming Evolved developer relationships, then gamers would have a maximum amount of features to use as things like TressFX or Forward+ is brand agnostic unlike TXAA and PhysX.