Intel's pressure on manufacturers

Let's say it's not the first time we hear something like this... The Inquirer is running a story about the absence of big manufacturers' hardware showing at Opteron's launch. Don't get me wrong, AMD sure is getting a lot of press and support from the industry, a lot of Opteron products have been announced already, just that they were simply not shown at launch...

[COLOR=royalblue]I ran into Tyan, MSI, ATI, and Nvidia representatives, all of which had some really cool hardware to tell me about, but nothing to show. In fact, other than the people there, the glossy product sheets, and the names listed as 'partners' on the official launch materials, there was a decided absence of anything proving their existence. It was a small venue (Historic in PR terms), but not that small. I thought it strange, but quickly rationalized it by thinking that it was a server launch, not a parts, or even an architecture launch. Today was meant to show AMD's server capabilities.[/COLOR]

The rumour is that companies received a call from Intel prior to the event, any thoughts? Like I mentioned before, not the first time we hear something like this.