What is a large company that you never expected to fail, that did?

[dalekphalm]

3 minutes ago, Catsrules said:

HTC

 

I mean, they're not doing too hot, but they haven't failed. HTC still exists.

 

Earlier this year they partnered with Google for a $1.1Bn USD transaction that allowed Google access to a large chunk of HTC's IP, along with 2000 of HTC's employees, to use internally to help evolve their Pixel and other internal hardware.

 

This deal isn't exclusive though. HTC remains owners of that IP and can use it for their own products as well.

 

Will they eventually die? Maybe. Only time will tell.

 

Lots of people are posting about companies that are frankly, far from dead lol.

[Catsrules]

2 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

I mean, they're not doing too hot, but they haven't failed. HTC still exists.

 

Earlier this year they partnered with Google for a $1.1Bn USD transaction that allowed Google access to a large chunk of HTC's IP, along with 2000 of HTC's employees, to use internally to help evolve their Pixel and other internal hardware.

 

This deal isn't exclusive though. HTC remains owners of that IP and can use it for their own products as well.

 

Will they eventually die? Maybe. Only time will tell.

 

Lots of people are posting about companies that are frankly, far from dead lol.

True they haven't all out failed but it sounds like they are looking to get bought. I think they are going to be bough out by Google. Mostly for there IP I believe. If google buys them I think all of the HTC phone will go away and it will just be Google Pixels, HTC did make really good phone back in the day it is saw to see that go away.  

[dalekphalm]

1 minute ago, Catsrules said:

True they haven't all out failed but it sounds like they are looking to get bought. I think they are going to be bough out by Google. Mostly for there IP I believe. If google buys them I think all of the HTC phone will go away and it will just be Google Pixels, HTC did make really good phone back in the day it is saw to see that go away.  

Google, I think, would have no reason to buy them at this point. They've already got an agreement for the phone IP anyway. Why spend more money to get what they already have?

[Eduard the weeb]

Blockbuster is obvious probably  Nokia, DC's decline even with heroes like batman and super man.  Also target Canada was a surprise

[Dissitesuxba11s]

4 minutes ago, Eduard the weeb said:

target Canada

I was actually talking to a friend that works at Target and even in the US they are not doing so hot. They are making money, but not at the numbers that they aimed for.

[dalekphalm]

Just now, Eduard the weeb said:

Blockbuster is obvious probably  Nokia, DC's decline even with heroes like batman and super man.  Also target Canada was a surprise

Really? Target Canada surprised you? It sure didn't surprise me. Target Canada failed for several reasons:

1. They didn't wait it out enough to break even, after expanding too quickly

2. They expanded too quickly to begin with

3. Their prices were frankly too expensive - Target US has some goddamn awesome deals all the time - the Canadian segment had prices comparable to Sears or The Bay (Meaning: expensive), when they needed to compete with Best Buy and Walmart instead

4. They had distribution problems - mostly due to #2 above - they expanded too quickly and couldn't keep products in stock

 

Basically, Target did everything you shouldn't do when expanding into a new Country. They were doomed from the start due to their strategies.

 

Blockbuster is a good one. In the 90's, imagining Blockbuster going out of business? Impossible. Even during the late 90's to early 2000's they still held strong with DVD's. But they didn't adapt to the Internet, when Netflix first popped up as a direct competitor with their mail-DVD service, and then when Netflix started streaming, Blockbuster had literally nothing.

 

Blockbuster, like many giants, could have avoided it's fate by competing head on with Netflix. I do miss the home movie rental store vibe.

 

DC's decline is in my opinion mostly due to mismanagement of the DCEU (Officially the JLU - Justice League Universe). Man of Steel, while controversial, was a damn fucking good movie. However, rather than taking their time for a cinematic universe, they rushed things. Batman v Superman should have been at least 3 different movies: Man of Steel 2, Batman Solo movie, and FINALLY a team-up film.

 

Suicide Squad had it's moments, but was a bit of a wreck. Wonder Woman is a kickass movie. Justice League looks good, but this could easily go either way.

 

As for the comics side of things? I couldn't tell you the state of DC, and whether they're doing "good" or not.

[IKnight]

1 hour ago, pzspah said:

Perhaps not large, but I wish 3dfx was still around and gave the remaining two some competition.

I was just going to mention this. It's a shame they went broke, but at least NVIDIA managed to use their ideas like SLI. 

[dalekphalm]

2 minutes ago, IKnight said:

I was just going to mention this. It's a shame they went broke, but at least NVIDIA managed to use their ideas like SLI. 

3dfx had a lot of problems near the end. Their GPU's weren't selling well, and NVIDIA and ATI were starting to crush them at the end, with performance far exceeding the best Voodoo chip.

 

They also banked on their own internal API - which is essentially the same issue that DirectX12 and Vulkan have, except even worse because only 3dfx cards could use it. Kind of like with Mantle, except AMD was smart and handed Mantle code over to Kronos to help with Vulkan development. AMD knew that Mantle would never fully succeed by itself.

[mrchow19910319]

5 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

They also banked on their own internal API - which is essentially the same issue that DirectX12 and Vulkan have

er... which is??

[dalekphalm]

2 minutes ago, mrchow19910319 said:

er... which is??

Uhm... serious?

 

The problem is that DirectX and Vulkan still have poor support. There are a fair amount of newer games with DirectX "support", but it's pisspoor DirectX11-migrated-into-12 support. There are very few AAA games out there with proper, full, native DirectX12 Support - same with Vulkan.

 

That problem is slowly being mitigated - but only because all current gen GPU's support both DX12 and Vulkan.

[mrchow19910319]

1 minute ago, dalekphalm said:

The problem is that DirectX and Vulkan still have poor support. There are a fair amount of newer games with DirectX "support", but it's pisspoor DirectX11-migrated-into-12 support. There are very few AAA games out there with proper, full, native DirectX12 Support - same with Vulkan.

i see...

[Loot]

Pontiac

[Sir Asvald]

Juicero... Oh wait. It was expected for them to fail..

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

Target Canada. You would assume they would've came in with a good business plan. But they didn't. And as a result, they left in utter failure after just 2 years of announcing their interest of expanding into Canada (correct me if I'm wrong on the time frame). 

[dalekphalm]

5 minutes ago, Loot said:

Pontiac

Pontiac didn't offer enough good cars to keep up with the current market. The Aztec was a colossal failure, despite not being that bad of a vehicle (just as Walter White). The rest of their lineup was uninspired.

[IKnight]

17 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

3dfx had a lot of problems near the end. Their GPU's weren't selling well, and NVIDIA and ATI were starting to crush them at the end, with performance far exceeding the best Voodoo chip.

 

They also banked on their own internal API - which is essentially the same issue that DirectX12 and Vulkan have, except even worse because only 3dfx cards could use it. Kind of like with Mantle, except AMD was smart and handed Mantle code over to Kronos to help with Vulkan development. AMD knew that Mantle would never fully succeed by itself.

If only they had been able to keep in the game... 

10 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

Uhm... serious?

 

The problem is that DirectX and Vulkan still have poor support. There are a fair amount of newer games with DirectX "support", but it's pisspoor DirectX11-migrated-into-12 support. There are very few AAA games out there with proper, full, native DirectX12 Support - same with Vulkan.

 

That problem is slowly being mitigated - but only because all current gen GPU's support both DX12 and Vulkan.

DX12 will become more and more common the year(s) to come though, so AMD cards will benefit. 

[dalekphalm]

2 minutes ago, IKnight said:

If only they had been able to keep in the game... 

DX12 will become more and more common the year(s) to come though, so AMD cards will benefit. 

3dfx didn't see the writing on the wall it seems. They were counting on game devs still implementing their custom API (Example: the original Doom had massive performance improvement with their API). They also counted on their SLI technology (Which, coincidentally, bears little resemblance to the NVIDIA technology - the Acronym SLI doesn't even stand for the same thing  lol).

 

As for DX12? Sure of course AMD will benefit as it becomes more wide spread. As will NVIDIA and Intel.

 

One could suggest that AMD would benefit more than NVIDIA, but that's largely due to NVIDIA having much better DX11 drivers with less overhead. AMD's biggest problem for a long time has been getting better driver support that can actually squeeze out the hardware performance that's trapped inside their cards.

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

8 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

Pontiac didn't offer enough good cars to keep up with the current market. The Aztec was a colossal failure, despite not being that bad of a vehicle (just as Walter White). The rest of their lineup was uninspired.

The Pontiac Vibe was just a rebadge Toyota Matrix for both generations. The Pontiac G5 was basically a rebadged Cobalt. Their mini vans were also rebadged Chevy models. Yea. The line up was stale and uninspiring to say the least. Even lazy if I may add.

[rip]

LTT and their thumbnails/contents

[dalekphalm]

Just now, BlueChinchillaEatingDorito said:

The Pontiac Vibe was just a rebadge Toyota Matrix for both generations. The Pontiac G5 was basically a rebadged Cobalt. Their mini vans were also rebadged Chevy models. Yea. The line up was stale and uninspiring to say the least. Even lazy if I may add.

Well to be fair, rebadging of an existing model into a different "brand" under the same ownership (Eg: Doge and Chrysler both selling Neons) is fairly common among pretty much all car brands.

 

But when that's all you have to offer? It gets stale quickly. The Vibe was frankly a rebadged and worse looking Matrix - just saw one the other day and gagged a little.

[Eduard the weeb]

42 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

Really? Target Canada surprised you? It sure didn't surprise me. Target Canada failed for several reasons:

1. They didn't wait it out enough to break even, after expanding too quickly

2. They expanded too quickly to begin with

3. Their prices were frankly too expensive - Target US has some goddamn awesome deals all the time - the Canadian segment had prices comparable to Sears or The Bay (Meaning: expensive), when they needed to compete with Best Buy and Walmart instead

4. They had distribution problems - mostly due to #2 above - they expanded too quickly and couldn't keep products in stock

 

Basically, Target did everything you shouldn't do when expanding into a new Country. They were doomed from the start due to their

I never have lived in Canada but they are superior in many's eyes to Walmart and others and some but they did have expensive price I have heard And within I think two years it was already at 100 locations. But I thought they would be successful from when they announced the move to Canada till they said it would takes many years to start making a profit, but I think within the next 2 decades they may try again.

[Eduard the weeb]

49 minutes ago, Dissitesuxba11s said:

I was actually talking to a friend that works at Target and even in the US they are not doing so hot. They are making money, but not at the numbers that they aimed for.

wow I thought they were doing great Amazon maybe?

[Dissitesuxba11s]

2 minutes ago, Eduard the weeb said:

wow I thought they were doing great Amazon maybe?

Maybe, and also they grew too fast. Too many new stores without the demand for them.

[AlwaysFSX]

2 hours ago, Dissitesuxba11s said:

Toys R' Us

I wasn't surprised by that, they were expensive.

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

12 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

Well to be fair, rebadging of an existing model into a different "brand" under the same ownership (Eg: Doge and Chrysler both selling Neons) is fairly common among pretty much all car brands.

 

But when that's all you have to offer? It gets stale quickly. The Vibe was frankly a rebadged and worse looking Matrix - just saw one the other day and gagged a little.

It's common in the auto industry, but the fact that most of their line up in the last few years were rebadged cars is just insulting to their fans.