Early Thursday morning, Nvidia launched the first of its 3000 Series graphics cards in the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080. To say it was challenging launch would be an understatement. Nvidia had near-exclusivity to sell the 3080 Founder's Edition through its own Nvidia storefront. It sold out instantly, with many believing that bot-driven scalpers claimed the entirety of Nvidia's available cards. Nvidia has now acknowledged issues with the 3080's launch, issuing an apology.

"We apologize to our customers for this morning's experience," reads a message posted in Nvidia's official forums. In its summary of this morning's 3080 graphics card launch, Nvidia describes demand as "unprecedented." That goes for the launch on Nvidia's own store, as well as on retailer websites across the world. Nvidia doesn't clarify whether its apology is just for Nvidia store shoppers or for all potential 3080 buyers, but it can be assumed to be all-encompassing.

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With regards to the specific issues that Nvidia's own storefront experienced, Nvidia doesn't go into detail. It does acknowledge "an error" that was encountered when traffic hit. What this error was isn't clear, but Nvidia says that it was resolved and that "sales began registering normally" afterward. In other words, Nvidia believes that its 3080 sales were normal. This runs contrary to the belief of many PC enthusiasts who tried to purchase a new card Thursday morning.

nvidia apology for 3080 launch

As for whether bots or scalpers were involved, Nvidia again has an ambiguous response. Nvidia says that it's doing "everything humanly possible" to stop bots and scalpers. Nvidia is even going so far as to manually review orders. But Nvidia does not say whether it believes there was a massive bot or scalper presence in this morning's orders, leaving PC enthusiasts to their theories.

In other words, while Nvidia did apologize for the situation, it doesn't clarify exactly what it's apologizing for and it doesn't offer any solutions regarding why a similar situation won't happen again. As far as apologies go, it's not the best. But at the very least, it acknowledges that people are frustrated. The 3080s are just that popular, which Nvidia is probably quite happy about.

What's next for PC gaming enthusiasts is up in the air. Amazon still hasn't opened up availability of its entire 3080 stock, so that's one option. The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 card, which retails for $1,499, launches on September 24. That will be followed by the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 in October. In other words, PC gaming enthusiasts will have other options for upgrades in the weeks and months ahead, as well as some restocks of the 3080. If all goes to plan, everyone will hopefully have the card of their choice by the time Cyberpunk 2077 launches in November. But given the state of things, that might be a pipe dream.

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 is now available, as stock allows.

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