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NVidia Eyes Playstation 3?

Posted by simoniker on from the last-girl-in-the-bar-looks-promising dept.

Thanks to CNN for their article discussing nVidia's possible overtures to Sony regarding the PS3. The piece points out that "ATI beat out nVidia earlier this month for the right to provide the graphics chip for Microsoft's next game machine. That followed ATI's March announcement that it had struck a technology development deal with Nintendo." It then quotes analyst Erach Dasai as suggesting: "The reality is nVidia is not sitting in a vacuum. They are in discussions with Sony for the PS3", although elsewhere, the article cites "...cost concerns [for developing graphics chips out-of-house], combined with Sony's do-it-ourself history, that has some other analysts a bit more skeptical that nVidia will be able to win a PS3 contract."

4 of 30 comments (clear)

  1. Done deal, actually. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting
    It's a done deal. Unlike the Xbox arrangement however, Sony aren't licensing the entire core. They're interested in the rasterizing hardware, including the pixel shaders and the combiners. Geometry ("vertex shaders" and "T&L" in the higher level graphic world) for PS3 will still be done with proprietary Sony silicon. This lowers the procurement cost and allows for better integration with the cell architecture.

    Tell them a little birdy told you.

  2. Re:A few things. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Graphics technology is advanting at a scary rate; the R&D costs are HUGE. Any company would avoid taking on that burden (and risk!) if they could license the technology for a reasonable price.

    Microsoft is taking manufacturing in house for the majority of the Xbox 2 components however. For the more straightforward parts, all the commodity hardware markup has been eating them alive. Xbox has been a significant money loser to date.

  3. Re:A few things. by Babbster · · Score: 2, Interesting
    You're going to get burned as a heretic if you're not careful.

    Seriously, though, it's a common misconception that Microsoft wants to buy every company. The truth is that they mainly buy companies that they think they can get for a song and parlay into multi-thousand percent gains on their investment. ATI isn't such a company, particularly since they've not only just about owned the OEM video card market for years but in fact are in the lead (slim though it may be) in the technology race over Nvidia at the moment.

    Even more on-topic, I would question in a PR sense a Sony decision to partner with Nvidia at this stage. To the casual observer, it could be interpreted as scooping up Microsoft's scraps..."How good could Nvidia be if Microsoft threw them overboard?"

  4. So.. OpenGL by noselasd · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Might that imply we can use OpenGL for developing on PS3 ? ...drool..