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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.
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.
How do you think this will affect the current relationship between ATI and gamecube?
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... 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.
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.
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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.
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.