At a recent investor’s day, Nvidia SVP Jeff Fisher revealed that people are spending around $300 more when upgrading their graphics card – but the company should be careful about being too jubilant about this.
"The GPU is offering more value than ever,” Fisher said, “Based on our data, [customers] are spending $300 more than they paid for the graphics card they replaced."
While Fisher’s point was that gamers are going for higher models when buying a new GPU (moving from a GTX 1060 to an RTX 3070 , for example), that comment could be seen as rather crass in the current climate.
Although we’ve started to see graphics card prices fall after several years of inflated prices due to stock shortages, chip shortages, the pandemic and cryptocurrency boom (basically, the apocalypse), many graphics cards are still selling for much higher than their original price.
As PCMag points out , the Nvidia RTX 3060 Ti should sell at $399, but is still being sold for up to $699. While Fisher may not have been talking about people paying $300 more this way, it can certainly feel like it.
Analysis: Lack of choice
When Nvidia seemingly boasted about people paying $300 more, they were talking about how gamers are choosing more powerful and expensive models. In normal times, this would certainly be noteworthy, and prove Fisher’s point about how new RTX 3000 GPUs offer better performance and value that convince people to splash out more on their GPU.
However, these are not normal times, and with graphics cards still hard to buy, it’s difficult to read too much into buying habits. The fact is, there’s simply not much choice out there, so when a GPU does come into stock, people may feel they need to buy it, regardless of the GPU they were hoping to get. There's a distinct possibility that many of the people who have paid $300 more for a more powerful GPU may not have done so entirely willingly, which makes Nvidia’s celebrations of the fact feel a bit in bad taste.
There’s no doubt that Nvidia’s current generation of graphics cards are generally excellent products, and there will be people looking to upgrade to one of the higher-end cards such as the RTX 3070 , RTX 3080 or RTX 3080 Ti . As Nvidia revealed, 29% of Nvidia owners have upgraded from an older GTX card to a newer RTX GPU. At the moment, the trusty Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 seems to be the most popular GPU, going by a recent Steam Hardware survey .
Not a bad number, but there’s still 71% of people still on GTX cards. That offers plenty of potential for Nvidia, but it’ll also face challenges getting some people to upgrade, especially with stock levels so low and prices still so high. Making statements that could annoy some of its customer base won’t help.
The best-hidden macOS and iOS Easter egg from PCalc is now its own app
You may have been using the popular calculator app PCalc for years, not realizing that there was a secret game hidden inside. Now, it's been separated as its own app, available to download for free from the App Store for iOS and macOS .
Called About by PCalc by developer James Thomson , you can manipulate the app's logo by flicking it around, changing the gravity, throwing bananas at it and even driving a car.
And if that's not enough, you can control all of this through a keyboard or gamepad... because why not?
Usually, 'About' screens in apps will show the team responsible for creating the app, with links to their social handles and even a tip jar to help reward them for their efforts. However, if you press a certain command in PCalc's about section, a fun hidden game pops up, and it's this game that has become a separate app.
Bananas, fire, gravity and cars
I've been a user of PCalc for years on iOS. It's an app that's tried to keep up with the new features that Apple brings out every year at WWDC, its developer conference.
Including customizable widgets in iOS 14 was particularly useful, and made the app a fair bit better than Apple's own calculator app. But it was PCalc's Easter egg that was the main reason why it stayed on my main home screen on my iPhone.
The About app doesn't have a purpose - I see it more like a fidget app. Something to play with as you're commuting on the subway or for when the Wi-Fi goes down.
But I've found my iPhone 13 Pro gets very hot if I use too much of the flame, light, and cereal effects, so be warned if you pass your device to kids who will most likely want to press every button repeatedly. However, using About on macOS with the M1 Pro chip in my MacBook Pro 14-inch (2021) , I noticed there was barely any slowdown, and the fans still didn't turn on.
Playing with my 8BitDo Pro 2 controller was also a surreal moment, where I could drive a car to a hidden castle on the macOS version.
Essentially, it's an app that makes no sense - its purpose is to be a fun distraction for whatever situation you may find yourself in. Some apps don't need a reason to stay on your home screen, they just need to be fun, and that's what this app has in droves.
Overwatch 2 is the top game on Twitch - but should it be?
The Overwatch 2 beta is finally here and players can, at last, get a taste of how the hero shooter plays. With such a long gap between announcement and release, as well as a two-year pause on updates to the original Overwatch, there's been an understandable drop in player numbers and viewers on Twitch. It's fallen behind competitors, such as Valorant. The question is, will the sequel bring that audience back?
If the first day of the Overwatch 2 beta is anything to go by, the answer is a resounding "Yes". At one point last night, Overwatch was the most viewed category on Twitch. It peaked at a staggering 510,000 concurrent viewers, the most it's ever had. It’s looking likely it'll peak even higher today. Can we believe the numbers, though?
In order to reach eyes, Blizzard is making use of a Twitch Drop program to get players watching. Invites to the Overwatch 2 beta were limited on launch day, and if you didn’t get picked then, the only guaranteed way to access the beta is to watch four hours of Twitch streamers between 10:00 AM PT/1:00 PM ET/6 PM BST and 6:00PM PT/9 PM PT/2 AM BST today. (For more information on how this works, check out our Overwatch 2 beta sign-up guide .) Naturally, this means there'll be a huge boost to the number of viewers on Twitch, as players look to get into the beta log on to watch streams and get themselves an invite.
On top of that, some of the biggest streamers on Twitch are taking part in the Drop promotion, including Pokimane and XQC (who famously was part of the Overwatch League). This'll mean that their already massive audiences, who are accustomed to more variety, will be tuned in to watch the Overwatch 2 beta.
Inflated hype has worked in the past
Of course, this will result in entirely inflated numbers for Overwatch 2’s launch, which is why you will see it flying up the most viewed leaderboards. If you only want access to the beta, all you need to do is join a stream, put it on in the background, and wait until you get beta access. Blizzard is essentially cheating the system to get Overwatch 2 to the top of Twitch, whether people are watching streams or not.
Blizzard didn’t invent this strategy. It's been used by several of its competitors; perhaps most successfully by Riot Games when it launched the Valorant beta, which reached a staggering 1.7 million concurrent viewers (according to SulleyGnome ). Players would watch streamers play Valorant and, eventually, they’d be given access to the beta; almost exactly in the same way Overwatch is operating.
It’s easy to look on Twitch Drops as some kind of trick, but it’s just a marketing tool and doesn’t indicate a game will be a flash in the pan. While Valorant’s viewer numbers aren’t at the same high as its launch, it’s still the third most-viewed video game on Twitch and achieved a healthy 157k peak concurrent viewers last month . Blizzard is gunning for the same success with Overwatch 2.
For the Twitch Drop strategy to work, Overwatch 2 still has to be good. For the game to remain a superpower in the streaming space, it’ll need to retain streamers and more importantly, everyday gamers.
While Blizzard is cheating the system here, having that many eyes on Overwatch 2 should make the audience stick. Sure, it’s inflated hype, but that’s better than none. Speaking as a devoted Overwatch player, it’s wonderful to see the game so alive again after all these years.