NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang was able to boast about yet another positive quarter during the company’s Q2 2021 earnings call.
When asked by an investor to comment on the ‘gaming visibility’ for the second half of 2020, the NVIDIA CEO went on to proclaim that it could very well be the ‘most amazing season ever’ for the industry.
We are expecting a really strong second half for gaming. I think this may very well be one of the best gaming seasons ever and the reason for that is because PC gaming has become such a large format. The combination of amazing games like Fortnite and Minecraft, and because of the way people game now, their gaming and their e-sporting, even F1 is an e-sport now, they are hanging out with friends. They are using it to create other content. They are using game captures to create art. They are sharing it with the community. It’s a broadcast medium. The number of different ways you could game has just really, really exploded. And it works on PCs because all the things that I described require cameras or keyboards or streaming systems and – but it requires an open system that is multitasking. So, the PC has just become such a large platform for gaming. And the second thing is that RTX, it’s a home run. We really raised the bar with computer graphics, the games are so beautiful, and it’s really, really the next level.
It’s not been this amazing since we introduced programmable shaders about 15 years ago. And so, for the last 15 years, we have been making programmable shaders better and better and better, and it has been getting better. But there’s never been a giant leap like this. And RTX brought both artificial intelligence as well as ray tracing to PC gaming. And then the third factor is the console launch. The game developers are really gearing up for a big leap. And because of how vibrant the gaming market is right now and how many people around the world are depending on gaming at home, I think it’s going to be the most amazing season ever. We are already seeing amazing numbers from our console partner, Nintendo. The Switch is about to sell more than Super Nintendo, more than all the Famicom, which was one of the best gaming consoles of all time. I mean, they are on their way to make Switch the most successful gaming platform of all time. And so, I am super excited for them. And so, I think it’s going to be quite a huge second half of the year.
The elephant in the room that the NVIDIA CEO didn’t address is the upcoming launch of the company’s new series of graphics cards, the Ampere-based GeForce RTX 3000. NVIDIA hasn’t officially said anything about it yet, but they did start a countdown to an event due to take place on September 1st, where the new GPUs will be formally unveiled. According to rumors, their availability should begin in mid-September.
Beyond the purely financial standpoint, though, there are plenty of reasons for gamers to be as excited as NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang for the upcoming gaming season, with two next-generation console launches and plenty of exciting game releases (Marvel’s Avengers, Crash Bandicoot 4, Star Wars: Squadrons, Watch Dogs: Legion, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, Cyberpunk 2077, Spider-Man: Miles Morales, just to name some of the biggest ones). Stay tuned on Wccftech to get all the latest updates on both games and hardware.
