As the competition on the graphics card market heats up, two world’s leading graphics chip designers find new ways to show the advantages of products fueled by their graphics processing units and invite game developers for assistance.

After forming marketing and developer-relations programs called “The Way  It Is Meant to be Played” and “Get in the Game”, NVIDIA Corp. and ATI Technologies go further by asking top game developers to paste a sticker with graphics card recommendations on the box with graphics cards.

Early this year NVIDIA Corp. and id Software teamed up to promote the Doom III game, a highly-anticipated 3D title, along with NVIDIA’s GeForce FX- and GeForce 6-series hardware using the joint same marketing campaign. Under the terms of the latter id recommended NVIDIA’s latest chips for Doom III game, while NVIDIA asked its add-in cards partners to bundle the game with the GeForce 6800 Ultra and GT graphics cards.

ATI Technologies, whose RADEON 9800- and 9600-series products were recommended for the Half-Life 2 by Valve Software a year ago, is also likely to launch a yet another marketing campaign with the Half-Life 2 title shortly.

“Vivendi Universal announced the plan to launch Half-Life 2, with an expected retail ship date of November 16, 2004. To help your internal and end user communication we have prepared the […] program update,” a document from ATI seen by X-bit labs claims.

According to the document, ATI will have a number of marketing activities related to the Half-Life 2 and will advise its add-in card partners to bundle the title with the upcoming graphics products. Among the marketing campaign it is expected that Valve Software will recommend ATI’s latest graphics processors for the Half-Life 2 game, the most anticipated PC game ever.

Official representatives for ATI Technologies and Valve Software declined to comment on the news-story.