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ATI Wins Bid For Next Xbox
TypoNAM writes "CNET News is reporting that graphics chip underdog ATI Technologies has signed a contract with Microsoft to produce components for future versions of the Xbox game console, beating out market leader Nvidia." According to the article, "The announcement ends months of speculation over whether Nvidia, the leading maker of graphics processors for PCs, would renew its troubled partnership with Microsoft on the Xbox."
If this is the case it seems unlikely that we will see any backwards compatibility between xbox2 and the original. The original Nvidia chip was based on a DX part (and it's likely the ATI one will be as well) but the better games access a lot of the hardware directly.
Of course it's possible that MS were smart enough to have conditions in the original X-Box contract with Nvidia that would allow them to produce a more or less compatible chip.
Hrmmm. Given that the CEO of Nvidia has made comments discussing his "platform on a chip" concept for the company, it makes me wonder if Microsoft views him as a potential future competitor?
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How do you think this will affect the current relationship between ATI and gamecube?
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Every company that ever deals with MS gets shafted. I give them a year before Microsoft discovers that it is perfectly able to produce its own graphics systems, using technology that is amazingly close to ATI's, yet incredibly much cheaper.
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to pick up some ATI stock. I thought about investing in Nvidia a while back but didn't really have the money to throw down at the time. IIRC, that was a little before they started winning all of those big contracts (like with MS). Would have at least tripled my money (or maybe more). DOH!
And the opportunity might be here again, and still no money to throw around. (Sigh)
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I would hope that this relationship will assist ATI in fine tuning their still awful drivers that seem to conflict with everything on my system.
Will this decrease the size of the oh so HUGE current Xbox? Frankly who wants to lug something of that massive stature into their homes? I for one think it hurt the sales of the original Xbox.
This poses the question of whom Nintendo will be using for their next consoles graphics processor. With the Gamecube it was ArtX (whom ATI now owns). So with this deal with the devil will Nintendo have to go else where? With all the talk of their next box coming in 2005 and that specs are already getting released to developers I would imagine they already have a team in place for this, but have they said who?
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It has been demonstrated that while nVidia may have the fastest overall chip, ATi has concentrated on a more balanced solution -- better color and clarity of the image. ATi's ship is not all that much slower than nVidia anyway when you look at the specs and benchmarks. I would rather have a game console that's fast and has a good, crisp image than a fuzzy-around-the-edges rendering. This is a good thing for XBox.
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EXACTLY - I have owned 3 ATI video cards in my life, and never again will I do that. The drivers were a complete joke, the worst product I ever owned was ATI TV. It was a pci card that was advertised to work with 98/ME, and I bought it in July 2000. They were at that time developing Win2k drivers for it, but by November 2001, the drivers were still in beta for it, so I gave up. Not to mention that even in 98 SE with their "polished" drivers, every time I would try to capture a TV feed from cable, the damn thing would crash on me. And it wasn't just the program that would die, the whole machine would die, and the best part was that even when the machine was rebooting, you could still HEAR the TV feed through my PC speakers behind a deafing screeching sound that started when the software crashed. Turning off the PC didn't even kill it, I had to unplug the damn thing to stop it before my next reboot. As a result, I have no confidence in ATI what-so-ever, and that's why to this day I won't purchase a gamecube.
No, I think the parent to your post got right. MS was able to get a much better deal ($) from ATI. And they could exert much greater control in formulating the deal. Sticking it to nVidia is probably viewed as a bonus.
Nothing from the MS PR machine is what it seems at face value (that's why it's PR). That's why I don't think this has anything to do with technical criteria. This is cost combined with "good enough" capability to improve Microsoft's prospects for profit in XBox2.
I imagine the "troubled partnership" between Micros~1 and NVidia is largely based on the fact that NVidia made damn sure they had a good contract in place.
NVidia and Microsoft cut their deal when NVidia was the undisputed leader in graphics chips, and Microsoft was the undisputed leader in anti-trust crimes. NVidia, being founded in part by ex-Sun employees, knew full well that dealing with Microsoft was a sure-fire way to get screwed. So no small amount of time was spent making absolutely certain the contract between them left no room for "creative misinterpretation" on either side.
I imagine NVidia wants/wanted to exercise the same care in the Xbox2 deal, but Microsoft would rather have someone they can walk over. Hence the "troubled partnership."
This is, of course, all pure speculation.
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This is all simply observation from where I stand, and may or may not indeed be accurate, but I've got a strong feeling that nVidia's getting slapped by the trout of irony in the short term, that Microsoft is having fun with their spot on the totem pole of cash, and ATI and nVidia may in fact switch places again with this move.....
What we saw with X-Box one looked like this: nVidia makes waves with graphics cards. nVidia scores humongous x-box deal. nVidia wisely focuses on development of their x-box product, while losing some focus on their core audience, home PC gamers. R&D mishaps, and one bad mini-product-line later, and now ATI's got a clear lead in the game.
Honestly, I bet that if Microsoft makes ATI contort and wrap themselves around all sorts of bad practices and ideas just to make the perfect X-Box 2 chip, ATI may just lose ground back to nVidia... Remember, ATI thinks they are the ones with nothing to lose now, while nVidia learned the hard way that a dustbuster makes for a sloppy cooling fan, and are resolved to quit making mistakes.... especially since they probably aren't happy with the net results of their first Microsoft outing.
nVidia's strong point has always been their continued driver development (yes, I know the Linux driver is not open. Yes, I know about the 3Dmark controversy), and since updating drivers on a console is not something people would be used to doing, or even allowed to do, ATI's raw speed bonus seems logical.
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Yeah indeed. Not only that but the performance from the ATI line seems better. Especially when you consider size and cooling. The XBox is a big and noisy enough beast as it is without needing the kindo of turbo cooling that is on thye NVidia FX lineup.
Also (IMHO as a XBox developer) Microsoft were not too pleased with nVidia's insistance that they weren't going to allow the developers the specs to the bottom end of the hardware -i.e. most of the pushbuffer stuff for the XBox is undocumented as nVidia won't allow it out. So in effect you have to reverse engineer the XDK's to find out what D3D puts into the pushbuffers with different calls.
It seems wierd to say that Microsoft were prevented from helping the developer and releasing specs from a third party but then the XBox division tends to be pretty savvy. What they want is for developers to like and want to deveop on XBox and do so by providing great samples, tools, libraries, documentation, white-papers and environments to work with from from the off. If only Sony would take heed and do the same!
Maybe ATI will be far happier letting some of this information out the developers allowing us to hit the metal a bit harder, faster and more easily.
What is more interesting is if XBox 2 or XBox2004/5 or whatever they decide to call it will be backwards compatible with Xbox games - I gues not, especially as I guess nVidia won't be supplying the sound hardware either.
Why? Because the X-Box business was designed to be a high volume, low-profit enterprise, and with X-Box mired way back behind the PS2, it just wasn't high volume enough to make up for the thin margins.
Moreover, because they were so concerned with X-Box, NVidia took their eye off the ball and let ATI catch up and even pull slightly ahead. I would not be at all surprised if the same thing happened to ATI this time around. There's only so much graphic card technical talent available to throw at a problem, and with so many of them working on X-Box2, I wouldn't be at all surprised to find that 6 month product rev cycle shipping to nine months or a year.
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Wonder if MS would push them to not make Linux drivers anymore.. They've done things similar in the past. Though the driver quality is dominated by Nvidia I'd like my 9700PRo to work in Linux.