AMD Bundling SimCity with its A8 and A10 APUs
By - Source: Hexus
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40 comments
Starting next week, AMD will be bundling in a free copy of Sim City with its desktop APUs.
To promote the company’s APUs and demonstrate the integrated Radeon HD 7000D’s gaming abilities, AMD will be providing a free Origin-redeemable code for Sim City with purchases of eligible desktop APUs, specifically the A8-5500, A8-5600K, A10-5700 and A10-5800K.
When we consider that an A8-5500 APU can be purchased for $80 and SimCity currently retails for $60, the promotion offers an impressive value for money and may further entice “disgruntled majors” to Maxis’ controversial title.
The promotion is expected to start next week and run until the end of Q3 2013.
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Gotta say though, I tried the game, it's entertaining, and the online component's not bad, fun to play with friends. now it's not worth $60. maybe $20 or so. bundled with one of these APUs? definately worth it for someone needing an HTPC or entry level gaming box
I'm sure its capable, but the question is will you be able to log on to Sim City and play it?
Gotta say though, I tried the game, it's entertaining, and the online component's not bad, fun to play with friends. now it's not worth $60. maybe $20 or so. bundled with one of these APUs? definately worth it for someone needing an HTPC or entry level gaming box
Well, let's keep in mind that this is AMD's unofficial last stand. steamroller aside (who knows if it'll succeed or not), AMD has two decently successful product lines, their GPUs, and their APUs. AMD has been bleeding money since the bulldozer failure and then the series of yield issues and top executive change last year. while both their GPUs and APUs are good, they continue to lose market share on both fronts and they're almost out of case. And here they are throwing TONs of case into marketing for these bundles. This is their last chance to reclaim marketshare from Nvidia, Intel, and try to grab a foothold in the mobile market. Nvidia will not step it up unless they have to because they're in a very different position. all they need to do is defend. if they successfully defend their market expansion for a year or two, AMD will bleed dry. so c'mon all, buy an APU, you know it's good for you lol
otoh, amd must have a hard time selling their apus and gfx cards if they have to bundle this many freebies with them.
edit: a llano: amd making profit from selling llano apus and later losing more than that from overstock of unsold apus which partly caused trinity's delay.
Hopefully they can bring power consumption way down and when they do I will upgrade.
AMD also has to get rid of surplus Trinity APUs before Richland shows up. Otherwise, if Richland is launched, nobody would buy Trinity APUs unless if they're at bargain prices.
Intel? They're the king of the hill. If Haswell has to be delayed for a month or two because their inventory of IBs and SBs still haven't cleared out yet, then so be it. Price drops? Freebies? What are you smoking?
I'm sure its capable, but the question is will you be able to log on to Sim City and play it?
That's what I found odd. Of all games to give away, give the one that is currently the most controversial. I haven't played it so I can't say anything about it, but I'm surprised they didn't nab Bioshock Infinite.
Rory Read has got something going here, and even if some OEMs dont play ball, this will get AMD product into average Joes hands
The mindset is gaming solutions on the cheap, later APU/AMD.
First market, then brand
They're already giving away Bioshock Infinite with their GPU's. Guess they didn't want to make people mad that were getting both an APU and a discrete graphics card by giving them 2 copies of Bioshock. So they got SimCity, which despite the controversy, has sold fairly well so far. Also, they probably wanted a game that could play well on an APU, SimCity's system requirements are low enough to play on decent settings, but alot of other recent AAA games would have only played on low at 720p on an APU.
But then again, what is the cost of generating a serial number ...
It's a great APU but this baby runs way too hot.