There has been a lot of talk about game bundles and the new R-series GPUs lately and AMD just put it to bed with Battlefield 4. Yes if you buy just about any AMD R9 card you now get Battlefield 4 free.
The reason for this is simple enough, AMD cut prices on their mid-range GPUs and priced Nvidia out of the game. Nvidia responded by cratering prices and adding a somewhat lackluster bundle of games. While bundles don’t make up for massive price or performance disparities, when things are close they can sway people here and there. As a response AMD did the expected and bundled the season’s hottest game with their cards.
R9 = BF4, R7 260X = Silver, got it?
As you can see above you now get BF4 with any R9 level card, a AAA-level game that most of the target audience for an R9 will probably end up buying anyway. Since the R9 270X currently retails for about $199, getting a $60 game in the box is a pretty hefty discount. This bundle will sway a lot of gamers, count on it.
Of lesser import is the Never Settle Forever Silver bundle that comes with the R7 260X card. The news here is that the choices now include Thief, pick any two of the nine games. Most of the Silver titles however are a bit long in tooth and are available for far less than their $60 MSRP if you do any poking around. That said for a $139 device it is still not a bad deal even if you just want one of them..
In the end this is just another round of the GPU price wars where hard prices are tweaked with various sweeteners. AMD started with hard numbers, Nvidia responded with some hard numbers and a few soft nudges. To this AMD responded with the headshot of Battlefield 4, clean kill. Until next time which if history is any guide won’t be long now.S|A
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Charlie Demerjian
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