I don’t necessarily think that’s what retailers are saying.
What happened is that AMD has already sold a lot of cards before they even finalized the MSRP, then AMD offers a rebate if they announce a different MSRP than the planned MSRP. This is apparently pretty standard practice.
The actual issue occurred due to a series of smaller issues:
AMD announced an MSRP that was significantly lower than their expected MSRP, which led to significant negotiations for what the rebate should be. It appears that not all of the already-bought stock is covered by the current rebate. Piecing together clues from AMD and AIB’s, it sounds like negotiations are still ongoing, so the current rebate is likely a patchwork fix for day 1 pricing.
AMD did not have a reference model, which serves to force AIB’s from pricing their cards too high above MSRP
Rumor has it that AMD prioritized stock for physical stores over online stores, possibly for marketing/PR reasons.
Nvidia made next to no cards this generation, causing significantly higher demand for AMD’s cards than anticipated
Rebates are definitely normal, but as for your first point, I honestly believe AMD were just going to give them for the launch, and thought they could get away with it. AMDs marketing is so bad, that this makes the most sense to me.
Even a Reference Model wouldn’t have mattered, in this case, because to me, it looks like AMD wanted to be too much like NVIDIA and set the price for the chips too high (which they sell to the partners to make the GPUs). That’s why AMD needs rebates to get the cards actually to MSRP.
As for your third point, it looks like they didn’t just prioritize brick and mortar stores, but only those in the US (see all the posts about Micro Center stock). Another genius move by AMD marketing?
I don’t necessarily think that’s what retailers are saying.
What happened is that AMD has already sold a lot of cards before they even finalized the MSRP, then AMD offers a rebate if they announce a different MSRP than the planned MSRP. This is apparently pretty standard practice.
The actual issue occurred due to a series of smaller issues:
Rebates are definitely normal, but as for your first point, I honestly believe AMD were just going to give them for the launch, and thought they could get away with it. AMDs marketing is so bad, that this makes the most sense to me.
Even a Reference Model wouldn’t have mattered, in this case, because to me, it looks like AMD wanted to be too much like NVIDIA and set the price for the chips too high (which they sell to the partners to make the GPUs). That’s why AMD needs rebates to get the cards actually to MSRP.
As for your third point, it looks like they didn’t just prioritize brick and mortar stores, but only those in the US (see all the posts about Micro Center stock). Another genius move by AMD marketing?