All very valid points. I hadn't even thought of the Asian market where years old hardware is still in stock new in box...
rhallock probably has been called into the boardroom with Lisa Su and a dozen lawyers who make more in an hour than we do in a month, and been given a massive lecture on, basically, being careful of what you post because you just caused us a reduction of $X in sales due to negative press and your comments here and here now will cause us to pay out $Y if a lawsuit were to be filed, and so on and so forth, since like he said if AMD had left it at "UNTIL 2020" AND launched the B550 at the same time as the X570, and if AMD, especially Hallock, hadn't acted like obsessed fanboys on Reddit bashing Intel yet turning around and doing the same thing because of necessity, there wouldn't be an issue.
But at the same time you can't blame people for their reactions. Well, some people, as he calls them the vocal minority (which is why I don't use social media), which is true, went off the deep end and landed about a mile from the water with their reactions. Most people were rational in their response, wanting to hold AMD to their "Through 2020" revised claim and get support for Zen 3 on 300 and 400 series boards while keeping level heads, understanding there might be issues which have arisen because of that claim, but, like Judge Millian says, that's a "you problem", and a "you problem" doesn't cause everyone else to be at a detriment.
And, of course, AMD's handing of the situation from the beginning was flawed, starting with the delay of the B550 boards for so long it forced users to buy B450 models. Take that out of the equation, and their continued silence with the absence of official press releases, and they could have said something to the effect of, "Due to technical reasons unforeseen since 2017, we can no longer reliably guarantee stability and support of Zen 3 on pre X570/B550 motherboards. We will therefore be working with our AIB partners to offer a prepaid card in the amount of $50 for each X370 and X470 motherboard, and $25 for each B450 and B350 motherboard purchased as compensation. Thank you all for your amazing support of Ryzen products which has (insert lots of marketing PR here.)" Not only would that generate positive PR, show they're "not Intel", and satisfy likely everyone except the few who bought a low end 3000 series CPU and B450 motherboard, it'd also reassure people going forward that this mistake would not be repeated. Yes paying out millions in rebate checks would hurt the bottom line, but measure that against all the negative press this is receiving, potential lawsuits, and likely future lost sales from users feeling alienated, and I'm willing to be that cost/benefit analysis would look mighty good in comparison.
Another thing to consider is that although desktop chips, specifically retails sales of such, amount to a small amount of the overall revenue, the HEDT and EPYC lines have a much higher profit margin and are sold in amounts with three or more digits at a time, imagine an IT manager or advisor who feels hostile to AMD over their treatment of him because he's an X370/X470 owner. This could cause him to only advise the purchase of Intel Xeon systems, which could cost AMD tens of thousands of dollars in lost sales.
