Nvidia has apologized for the epic mess of the Nvidia RTX 3080 launch last week, and in particular, how bots slammed store pages to buy up units before real people could.
In a forum post, Nvidia said the company saw “unprecedented demand” for the new RTX 3080 at retailers around the world, as well as Nvidia’s own store. The company clarified that it planned to launch its own store at 6 AM on release day but the page was immediately “inundated with traffic” and it ran into issues before Nvidia eventually got it running again.
One of the problems was related to bad actors. In particular, Nvidia acknowledged that bots and scalpers were rushing to the Nvidia store to snap up the cards, and the company is attempting to address this. “We’re doing everything humanly possible, including manually reviewing orders, to get these cards in the hands of legitimate customers,” the company said.
If you weren’t able to get a new 3080 card right away, Nvidia said it is working with its partners to ship new units “every day” to stores. “We apologize to our customers for this morning’s experience,” Nvidia said on the 3080 launch day.
Nvidia’s new, more powerful graphics cards were not the only new piece of technology that ran into issues on its first day on sale. Retailers began accepting PlayStation 5 preorders immediately after the company’s price/release date event, and they quickly sold out almost everywhere. Sony, too, has apologized for the situation and promised more stock will be available before the console launches in November.
The next major piece of gaming tech that will go on sale soon is Microsoft’s next-generation Xbox line. The Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S will become available for preorder on September 22, and you can check out GameSpot’s Xbox Series X/S preorder guide to find out everything you need to know.
