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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."
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?
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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."
Now its gonna be a real pain in the ass to configure video drivers once I put Linux on my Xbox2.
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
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.
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."
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.
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
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.
"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.
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/
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.