Event: Nvidia product sneek peek - Focus Group Event Date: 04/18/03 Written By: Warhawk Date Written: 04/18/03

I went to an event at Nvidia, and all I got was this T-shirt and a GeForce FX! Yes that's right a GeForce FX…. Not bad for a few hours of my time and an interruption of my schedule, which mostly consists of playing games at home and sleeping.

The event took place at Nvidia's corporate headquarters. There were about 40 people there. Docbron, Zer and myself were in attendance as well as my old friend Blisster from the WCE clan.

Being in the Nvidia headquarters was like being in the pantheon of gaming. The gods of 3d graphics walked through those golden halls... well ok, maybe it wasn't THAT great, but it was cool.

We were all invited to this event and told that we would see something extremely fast and extra special. Nobody had any idea what it would be, and the nvidia people were very hush-hush about everything. We were even forced at gun point, to sign nondisclosure agreements, and told that talking to anyone about what we saw would result in Nvidia death squads being dispatched to our house to cut out our tongues and then kill our families (well, ok, I may be exaggerating about the "cut out our tongues" part).

After signing the NDA, everyone was given pizza, soda, salad, cookies, etc. while they waited. There was a room setup with 4 computers where people could play eachother UT 2k3. Zer spent quite some time on there and I believe he came in first every single round… which wasn't much of a surprise.

The super-secret-product-of-mass-destruction was locked away inside a special room, where there were cameras set up to record peoples reactions when they saw it. They brought everyone into the room in groups of 4 or 5. This meant we had to wait a veritable eternity until it was our turn. Because I signed an NDA I can't tell you much about the super-secret new product, or else the Nvidia people will kill my family. What I can tell you is, once we were in the room looking at this product, we had the cameras on us and about 6 Nvidia employees intently watching us. There was extreme pressure to act impressed. It's not that it wasn't impressive (it was), but it's so much harder to be excited when someone wants you to be excited. Its like going to your own surprise party after someone already let the cat out of the bag. I felt like they wanted to see me jump up and down with excitement, or say something intelligent or do anything else that would look really good on the promotional video they were no doubt filming for. I would love to get on the promotional video, but I am afraid, under all the pressure, my words weren't clever, and my actions not excited enough. Oh well, better luck next time.

Next we were taken to a room that featured several computers that were running graphics demos, an HDTV that was playing mission impossible 2, and even an Xbox kiosk that had some sort of extreme sports game on it… all of which had been seen before. The room was baking… the kind of baking you get in a room thats packed with way too much electronics gear and not enough ventilation. We were given some Nvidia T-shirts, the kind you expect to get from any high tech company. You know, the kind that feature the usual clichéd designs and cheesy catch phrases that we've all come to love (or not). We also received a raffle ticket and were told that the raffle grand prize was none other than this new super-secret product (of doom).

We milled around, and talked about "the good ol" days (whatever those were) and anything else we could think of, until we were all out of things to talk about. Then we milled around some more and worked on our "excited" faces, incase we were ever invited back.

When raffle time rolled around, they told us that they were raffling off a couple Geforce FX cards, and the coveted super-secret product of "shock and awe". As it turns out, it happens to be my lucky day and my number came up. I won one of the Geforce FX cards, which has to be the best thing I've won in a raffle.

So even though I can't really tell you how awesome and amazing the stuff I saw was (or else I'll be shot), I can tell you that I had fun and you should get ready to change your diapers when you see what's coming out.

ADDENDUM - 01/25/2026 By Warhawk

This was one of a few focus groups that TMC was involved in, we did at least one more for Nvidia when they were getting ready to release thir 3D glasses, as well as some for EA and we hosted a Dell focus group at one of our TMC LAN events. Focus groups are always fun and interesting, because you get to see products before they are released. In these situations the company actually cares what you think, and your feedback can actually have some influence on the final product.

For this particular focus group, I don't remember the exact product we were looking at, but I am fairly sure it was the upcoming 6800 series of graphics cards that were about to replace the then curent FX series. I remember going into a room and being shown a tech demo that was some kind of monster with flames coming off it. They moved the moster around on the screen so you could see how the fire and smoke would react in realistic ways. It was impressive for the time. The Nvidia folks were filming and recording our reactions in real time. I think they were hoping he would lose our minds over it and have some kind of outrageous reaction, or exclamation. The thing about a lot of PC gamers is they are hard to impress and even if you do impress them, they tend to be pretty subduded in their reactions (at least in person). This was no exception, and while we thought the demo was cool, no one was jumping out of their chair or screaming about it. At most there was a barely audible "yeah. thats pretty cool". I could feel the tension as the demoers were clearly not getting the reactions they were hoping for. I felt bad for them and wanted to deliver them a corny line to both break the tension and hopefully make everyone laugh. So, while thinking of the announmcer from the game NBA Jam, I shouted "Its on fireeeee!!" it got the reaction I was hoping for. They actually used that sound clip in some kind of promo video for the card.

Other memories I have from this event is having a really good time hanging out with DocBron and Zer while we were waiting around in the lobby. We had a blast just riffing jokes back and fourth and laughing a lot.

Some months later, Phil Scholz from the Nvidia marketing team would agree to sponsor Octane LAN 10. As I was emailing with him about the event, he agreed to come to the event to check it out in person, and while he was making the trip he would also hand deliver to me the Nvidia FX graphics card that I won at this event's raffle.