John Carmack has proposed an auction system for popular gaming products such as GPUs, the PS5 and Xbox Series X. Carmack, co-founder of id software, believes: “It would be better to have a transparent auction system directly from the manufacturers and a more efficient market . ”
This type of auction system can be used to defeat scalpers, who are not willing to pay high prices on new products. “There will be a lot of outrage at the reported prices outside the gate, but the removal of intermediaries should ultimately be better for consumers,” says Carmack on Twitter.
Due to a worldwide shortage of chips and incredible demand, the true price of a PS5 in December was over $ 1,000, and RTX 3080s sold for $ 1,227 instead of the $ 699 sticker price. Even older graphics cards are currently sold out, and the resale value on eBay is climbing.
Nvidia is even bringing back its old RTX 2060 and GTX 1050 Ti GPUs to deal with this worldwide scarcity shortage. It seems that the supply situation will also last for months. Microsoft has warned that the Xbox Series X will run short until June, and Nvidia says its stock will be at least lean.
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Supply constraints are obviously an issue, but Nvidia revealed last month that it sold $ 499-and-higher RTX 30-series GPUs nearly twice as much as the RTX 20-series did after the same time. Many people are clearly trying to upgrade their computers, and even the PS5 sold just as well despite the offer restrictions as the PS4 did during the launch period.
An auction system can cut out the scale press that is trying to take advantage of this supply and demand cycle, but it is unlikely to have a significant impact unless every manufacturer participates in it. We have tried many times to stop scalpers, including retailers with their own rope systems, or by merging these new GPUs and consoles with additional products.
All the latest AMD and Nvidia GPUs can still be found at high prices on eBay, and additional taxes on graphics cards imported from China have also pushed up prices in the US.
Nvidia is even trying to address the demand for its upcoming RTX 3060 $ 329 graphics card by making it less attractive to Ethereum cryptocurrency miners. The drivers you need to get the RTX 3060 working will lower the hash rate of Ethereum mining by about 50 percent, to make the cards more focused on gaming.
Carmack is not a fan of Nvidia’s latest approach. “What a terrible engineering job to give someone – find out when we’re used to this thing in which we are good, and break it,” Carmack said on Twitter.