Slashdot Mirror
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."
This roughly equates to: "We choose ATI because they begged more and offerred to do it for less. I don't want to burn any bridges with Nvidia, so let's just say something about vision, or strategy, or something. Besides, Nvidia wanted more money. Right, well, time to crush some little entertainment company now, recycle their goods, and call it innovation!" in normal, human language.
I'm thinking Microsoft made a mistake, with NVidia they could of renamed the game executables to 3DMark03.exe and gotten just that much more power!
Mike
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?
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
How do you think this will affect the current relationship between ATI and gamecube?
My Sig Beat up your Honor Roll Sig
I'm so confused...
SCO - Eternally bad
Microsoft - Very Bad
IBM - Good? Bad? They are the guys with the guns.
RedHat - Good
Nvidia - Bad, or good? I don't know this week.
ATI - Good or bad now they partner with MS?
Help!
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
6 days changes a lot in the graphics card business...... So much for Nvidia cashes in on Xbox chips
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.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
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)
"I turn away with fright and horror from the lamentable evil of functions which do not have derivatives."
"Made in Canada"
Maybe this will help us get over that Lumber/Mad Cow hump.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
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?
Unstable Apps: Our Android Apps Don't Suck
Now its gonna be a real pain in the ass to configure video drivers once I put Linux on my Xbox2.
ATI Technologies has signed a contract with Microsoft... ...which means ATI will be yanking all their open source and Linux support within the next 60 days.
It's Corel all over again.
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.
Be excellent to each other. And... PARTY ON, DUDES!
If you RTFA, you would see this link: http://news.com.com/2100-1006-983593.html?tag=nl
"Men lie."
"Yeah, about sleeping with other women, but never about bioluminescent plankton."
-Dan Brown
nVidia starts warming up to non-Microsoft OS's (see Mac OS X, the binary drivers for Linux, some discussions of opening up docs, etc) then Microsoft offers them a spot on the XBox. Suddenly, top-end support for getting their chipset used elsewhere seems to evaporate. By this time, nVidia is pretty much an also-ran on other platforms, support is horrid and people are fleeing to ATI.
Now, Microsoft buddy-buddies up to ATI, promices big contract. How long before ATI's non-M$ efforts start becoming lackluster, and support is dropped?
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
I don't understand why ATI is considered an "underdog" these days.
... people tend to forget that nVidia was not only supplying the video solution for the Xbox, but also the networking and audio components. So with nVidia out of the picture, who is going to do the audio and networking? Does ATI have any GOOD audio and network chipsets? I know they have some sort of motherboard chipset "a la nForce", but does it feature decent 5.1 audio and networking?
Microsoft also announced that this will be a Special Edition XBox, or SEXBox for short. So ATI will actually enter into and penetrate the SEXBox market.
Considering that ATI probably didn't make out well with the GameCube, and NVidia didn't fare much better with the XBox, shouldn't they be scrambling to provide hardware for the PS3 instead of fighting over the "scraps", since the PS2 has pretty much cleaned up the console market? Not trying to start a flame war, but 50/8/8 is pretty much a win. Does Sony produce their own GPUs?
If I were a GPU manufacturer, I'd rather have my widgets in 50-60 million PS2 units rather than 8 million GC or XBox units. Anyone know the story on this one?
Um, calling ATI an underdog is a gross misrepresentation. Not only do they have the best performing chips, but their marketshare is actually dominant in many areas.
http://www.beyond3d.com/#news7249
DX9 Marketshare:
ATI 40%
nVidia 60%
Integrated Marketshare:
ATI 21%
nVidia 27%
Laptop Marketshare:
ATI 68%
nVidia 32%
In most cases, nVidia's share in the last quarter fell, while ATI's was on the rise. Plus, ATI will be in all XBox sales and Playstation sales.
Underdog? That's one brawny underdog.
"Politicians find new names for institutions which under old names have become odious to the people."
It depends on how closely the games tied to the GPU. My games work equally well on an ATI or NVidia card in windows, no reason the same shouldn't apply on a console. Now, it could be that they have to do a little modification to make it run right, or that not all old games will be quite exactly same as X-box #1, but ah well.
That being said, I wonder how many people here would go for an X-box anyhow? The current game linup isn't great anyhow, much better stuff on other consoles, though perhaps this will change for X-2.
Might be a good slashdot poll:
Preferred console:
a) Gamecube
b) Playstation 2
c) X-box
d) X-box (but I run linux)
e) Atari 2500 rules!
Some have speculated that the reason ATI caught up with (and surpassed) nvidia in the overall speed category was because nvidia took time off from their R&D to do the xbox. I think even John Carmack may have referenced this in one of his .plan updates. At any rate, nvidia no doubt realized that they couldn't do xbox2 _and_ regain the speed crown. I predict that this move may benefit ATI in the short run but they will allow nvidia to catch up again and overall I think this benefits nvidia.
Seattle WA: Microsoft, with the ink barely dry on its chip deal with ATI, turned around and sued ATI in an attempt to get ATI to lower its chip prices.
A Microsoft spokesperson was quoted as saying, "We're losing about 100 dollars on each Xbox we sell. We feel that ATI should bear the burden of at least some of these tremendous loses. At least until we steal their technology and get our own chip plant up to speed."
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Unless, of course, the devil is Microsoft and you can get lots of money from said contract. :)
I dunno who it is
but it prolly is fhqwhgads.
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.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
These are some of the reasons I hate your idiot president, hope it's rational enough for you - although, to be frank, with a sig such as the one you're sporting I'm sincerely doubting whether I should have bothered.
Mother is the best bet and don't let Satan draw you too fast.
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.
"To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit." -Stephen Hawking
access the hardware directly? where would you get such an idea?
developers are using dx8 and at most are hand-coding vertex and shader routines; which if you hadn't noticed, may have been proprietary to nvidia 2 years ago, but are directx 9 canon now.
there is no reason to expect that xbox2 will not have backwards compatibility. there is every reason to assume that it will. heck, nintendo might even cave and have backwards compatibility.
if anyone has learned anything from the ps2 run - it's that backwards compatibility guarantees solid sales out of the gate. you can accuse microsoft of many things - but being bad businesspeople is not one of them. they know where the money goes.
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
Day of Week: M T W T F S Su
SCO E E E E E E E
Microsoft E E G E E E E
IBM G G E G G E G
RedHat G G G G G G G
NVidia G E G E G E G
ATI E G E G E G E
Hopefully MS will take advantage of ATI's other strength (swiss army knife video card) and expand the concept of a console into PVR, etc.
They are gonna get screwed, just like Nvidia.
Sooner or later the production price of the x-box has got to go down *again*, microsoft doesn`t want to have a cheap box now becouse they couldn`t get normal pc game developers over to the new x-box. The single reason the x-box has games for it is becouse the hardware/software is a plain direct-x windows box, meaning PC developers could just "hop over" to the console side without major engine rewrites. If the x-box 2 doesn`t have any power compared to pc`s there wont be games in time. But when the pc power to price ratio keeps going up (which it will in the 3d arena at least considering nvida wont let ATI walk away with all its customers just yet) then microsoft will want to make giving away xboxes at a loss cheaper again just like they tried with the nvidia based x-box. And then ATI cant say no to microsoft. ATI can only outperform nvidia in enough market segments as long as they keep supporting every single detail that the new direct-x standards come with. If microsoft doesn`t like them anymore, they will ahve a hard time keeping up in direct-x support and steering the direct-x direction toward their cards favourite arenas.
For nvidia the x-box was an opertunity to finance moving into the chipset market, afterall the xbox crush chipset is a plain nforce for the pentium III. With their past experience with microsofts xbox pricing tactics, I doubt nvidia would be willing to go very low in their price. Also this time with the amd hammer for the consumer market around the corner, nvidia`s has a new market where they have the advantage of already having a chip thats quite close to a hammer chipset. Afterall the nforce uses hypertransport between the north and southbridge which is also the bus protocoll for the "hammer". With the hammer having its own memory controler, the tasks of the northbridge evaporate quickly. So with the nforce southbridge as its basis nvidia only had to move the graphics part to the southbridge and they had a single chip hammer solution ready for the market.
This wont hurt nvidia, and they know it.
While I was mainly looking for internal citizens to reply, since its split down the US political middle, of sheer hatred from day one ( long before any of the 9/11 or Iraq issues came into play ) thanks for replying anyway.
Along my same point, there are many things he has done that have reduced my personal rights and freedoms, but I don't hate him at a personal level, I just dislike those polices.. thus what my confusion is based upon.
I cant really comment much on how others feel about the US defending itself since I'm on the inside, so ill leave that part alone. Other then that I can understand why outsiders that are on the wrong end of the stick could feel persecuted.. However that wont change my duty to defend myself and my family. ( Which overall is what we are doing, regardless of some of the questionable components. )
In closing I would like to comment about your apparent slam to my sig. ( or my open mindedness ) In my country its a recognized right. I only stand up to defend it ( along with the 10 others that part of my constitution. ). You may feel otherwise for yourself, but those feelings should not be allowed to effect my rights and liberties, only your choice not to exercise them. ( though I may have misinterpreted your intent ).
---- Booth was a patriot ----
"This agreement cements ATI's position as the prime graphics supplier for the future of the games industry," ATI CEO K. Y. Ho said in a statement.
I like this new graphics chip already.
They're buying the package. nVidia doesn't have a Pentium IV bus license. Their nForce 2 efforts have been with AMD. ATI's Pentium efforts will soon shine when the RS300 integrated dual-channel DDR solutions are released. ATI has long been ahead in the low-power and pda/settop box area. That is what Microsoft wants Xbox to become - the new media center. Microsoft is not going for ATI as much for technology (which kicks ass - my 9700 pro rules) as for the relationship ATI has Intel and the fact that ATI can better deliver on Intel processors.
XBOX will use Intel. ATI-Intel are cozy (Intel licenses graphics tech from ATI, ATI gets to use the Pentium IV bus. nVidia is not getting a license to use the Pentium bus for daring to help AMD. Microsoft would have to dump Intel to use nVidia. Prediction: The rumored nForce for Pentiums will never be seen.
Surely the sequal to the XBOX is the "Y-Box?" .
ATI's acquisition of ArtX had a much broader effect than you think. I highly suggest reading this article about it over at EETimes.
This post sponsored by Ninja Burger. "
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.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
MS picking ATI does not surprise me at all. It is a natural progression based on the direction XBOX is taking.
Remember that MS's big goal with XBOX (at least the current vision), is to make it become the home entertainment center for home. This means future XBOX will have to have (addition to gaming), Progressive DVD (current XBOX is not very good), TV/Cable tuner, and HDTV tuner.
ATI with its "Wonder" cards, is clearly the leader in integrating video with PC graphics. ATI cards are the graphics card of choice for Home Theater PC enthusists. MS's move just makes it crystal clear that they are serious about making XBOX the home entertainment center.
Sure, ATI probably offered better financial deal on top of everything, but ATI's strength is probably what put them over NVidia.
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.
It will be interesting to see how they are able to get Xbox1 games run on Xbox2. This is not HLSL, OGL SLang, or Cg, this is GPU specific machine language.
Sony has already shown the enormous value of generation to generation compatibility (both in games and controller button layout). If Xbox2 is not compatibily with Xbox1 then...