Were you able to pre-order an NVIDIA Geforce RTX 3080 graphics card this morning? If so then you’re part of a very exclusive club, as most of the internet watched as “coming soon” buttons suddenly switched to “sold out” right before their eyes. While fans were ready for the launch at 9am Eastern Time this morning, it seems like NVIDIA wasn’t as prepared. They have now acknowledged the problems and are promising more RTX 3080s are coming.
“This morning we saw unprecedented demand for the GeForce RTX 3080 at global retailers, including the NVIDIA online store,” explained NVIDIA Community Manager Suroosh Taeb. “At 6 a.m. pacific we attempted to push the NVIDIA store live. Despite preparation, the NVIDIA store was inundated with traffic and encountered an error. We were able to resolve the issues and sales began registering normally.”
So that explains what happened on NVIDIA’s store right at launch, but with the GeForce RTX 3080 cards disappearing before so many potential buyers’ eyes, many assume that reseller bots ended up with the majority of what was available. Is the company doing anything about that?
“To stop bots and scalpers on the NVIDIA store, we’re doing everything humanly possible, including manually reviewing orders, to get these cards in the hands of legitimate customers,” the post continued. Of course, we’ll also have to rely on Best Buy, Amazon, and other retailers following suit, if more are to become available to real buyers. Or not, as NVIDIA is promising more RTX 3080 cards are going out to retailers.
“Over 50 major global retailers had inventory at 6 a.m. pacific. Our NVIDIA team and partners are shipping more RTX 3080 cards every day to retailers.” The statement closed by saying “We apologize to our customers for this morning’s experience.” Of course, whether gamers accept that apology or not will likely come down to whether they end up with the graphics card they desperately desire any time soon.
Published: Sep 17, 2020 02:41 pm