I *highly* doubt that this will have any effect at all on Creative
Labs' sales, or at the very least the effect it might have will be
totally negligible compared to the having virtually every single
motherboard with HD-Audio built in (as we have now).
Note that this audio is unlikely to be much more than a Realtek or ADI
codec chip.
I think it's a bit more problematic for Creative than that. Until now,
Creative has been taking refuge, by selling to gamers and power users,
who still buy add-on sound cards thinking that they are superior in
quality to built-in audio. These are the same people who buy high-end
video cards. If they buy a high-end video card now, will they still feel
a need to buy a separate audio card if it's already built into their
high-end video card? They'll probably feel that a high-quality video
would also come included with a high-quality sound.
Also if any of these gamers/power users decide to connect their
computers through the HDMI outputs to a HDTV set, then they may not have
any choice but to use the sound that comes through their video card.
Since the HDMI plug integrates the video and the audio outputs together,
there's no way to connect that between separate sound and video cards,
it all has to come through the one card.
Also the this new sound/video device has to be able to send Dolby
Digital-encoded multi-directional sound, through an S/PDIF output
integrated into the HDMI plug. I don't think there are any Realtek or
ADI sound chips that can send digital sound through an S/PDIF connector.
At one time, one of the reasons for buying after market sound cards was
for the ability to output through digital links to a home theater system
-- that market is now threatened.
Yousuf Khan