After NVIDIA’s launch woes with their new RTX 3000 GPUs, there was likely some curiosity about whether rival AMD would experience the same with their new products. While AMD’s RX 6000 Series hasn’t launched yet, the recent launch of its Ryzen 5000 Series CPUs did experience a similar case of selling out fast. TechSpot and PCMag wrote that they sold out in minutes, with the former adding that they also sprung up on eBay with inflated prices.
As reported by TechRadar, the Ryzen 5000 Series launch prompted Twtter user rya to write, “5900X is a paper launch tho,” in a quote-tweet to a late-September tweet reply by Frank Azor, AMD’s Chief Architect of Gaming Solutions & Marketing. In that late-September tweet, Azor was responding to a VR developer who had not managed to get an RTX 3090 and expected AMD to face the same launch stock issues. The VR developer had said, “$10 says AMD will be a paper launch too,” with Azor replying jokingly, “I look forward to taking your $10 :).”
As PC Gamer puts it, the term “paper launch” is “generally used to describe a product launch with extremely thin quantities, for the purpose of saying a product has launched. This is oftentimes as a way to claim a performance victory over the competition as well”. In response to rya using the term to describe the Ryzen 5000 Series’ launch, Azor replied, “There's a big difference between a 'paper launch' and shipping tons of units but demand exceeds supply.”
Nevertheless, Azor said in a separate thread that AMD was “analyzing what has gone well and what hasn't from different recent launches and adapting our plans as we learn”. He also responded to a query about bots by saying, “Yes, we made a strong effort & succeeded in many cases. It's a battle that is never completely won but I applaud our teams efforts & those of our partners during this round. We continue to learn & adapt with every launch. We want our products in the hands of their intended users.”
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