There has been some talk, and concern in some places, that now nVIDIA has the XBox nVIDIA would have the sway over Microsoft to dictate what features are in DirectX8.

Well, what you have to realise is that Microsoft have no inherent desire to make the XBox successful at the expense of the PC. Remember where their bread-and-butter is - it's the standard PC.

So, the wonderful thing about the XBox, because it is so consistent with the PC environment, is that it dramatically raises the minimum threshold of game development. Undoubtedly any PC developer will also be supporting XBox - why wouldn't you? It's the same development environment - that's really what the whole thing's all about.

So, we've been faced, for quite some time as an industry, with people to continuing to say that their games must still operate on Voodoo Graphics, or some of those early generation pieces of hardware, when we're coming out with things like the Voodoo 5 6000, which are orders of magnitude of difference in terms of capabilities. So, what XBox does for the PC business overall is it raises that minimum threshold because it resets the standard for that level of capability.

But Microsoft has absolutely no desire, intention or motivation to put XBox on an island and make it a console unto itself. It is a means of making the PC a content rich environment under the disguise of a console business model. Microsoft have been completely consistent with that with us and nothing has changed in terms of our relationship with them. The evidence of this is that you can virtually count on your fingers the numbers of developers that are doing XBox specific titles - its working exactly as Microsoft set out to do, which is everyone's working on both XBox and PC titles. And in that scenario 3dfx come out top as well, because the content just gets better.

I think you'll see when XBox actually ships the performance hype is much louder than substance, and once the XBox ships 3dfx will have something that's substantially faster than any game console.

How about the situation within 3dfx right now? Your obviously under pressure right now with the financial status because of the missed cycle, how's it all going at the moment?

Well, its obviously challenging when the stock is at an all time low. We're all winners in the company, and the people don't want to be on the loosing team; we feel its halftime right now, and we're a little behind on the score. We are streamlining our focus; making sure that the number one goal of the business is to once again become the unquestioned leader in the performance 3D segment. It wasn't that long ago when everyone in the world knew that if you wanted a high performance 3D accelerator you bought 3dfx - if you asked that same question today some people would say 3dfx, some would say nVIDIA; we don't like that. We want to be the unquestioned, leader in performance 3D graphics and we're absolutely on target to be able to do that.

NVIDIA seems to be following the natural evolution of other successful PC graphics companies in terms of attempting to broaden their product portfolio. That has killed companies in the past, Cirrus Logic and S3 being two good examples of that, and you've gotta look at nVIDIA - they missed nv20's development cycle. Are nVIDIA starting to show that they are spreading their resources out too thin by doing two high end CAD chips, GTS and GTS Ultra, an MX chip, several integrated Northbridge products and the XBox all at the same time - you don't think that hurts them in terms of being able to have laser sighted focus on high end 3D performance? Absolutely it will.

Right now, 3dfx as a company is going back to basics, going back to what we know, and what we dominated which is high performance 3D and we're gonna kick anyone in the teeth that's in that segment! We're gonna become king of the hill once again.

How about Alex Leupp? Since he's come in he appears to have change the company quite a lot, would you agree?

Alex is certainly running a different ship in terms of causing us to strip out products that may not have afforded us a long term success; causing us to refocus out efforts on what we do well; streamlining our expenses, I think we have been overspending in some areas of the company and we need to cut that back; and just getting down to the basics of tactical execution. What we are at the end of the day is a silicon company; we have a wonderful brand, a wonderful distribution channel, and a wonderful retail presence, but all that doesn't matter if we don't have a chip. Alex recognises that, and that's where his focus is.

Do you think its working with him?

Absolutely. I'd love to say we'd achieved our targets and we are now a profitable company again. We're not quite there, but I believe in the strategies we've outlined and I believe Alex is taking us in the right direction.

Well, I'd like to thank Scott very much for giving me the time and opportunity to do this interview. I know his schedule at ECTS was exceptionally busy, and I'm grateful that he allowed me take up some of spare time.