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Sony Considers Outsourcing Cell Production
Gamasutra reports on comments from the Sony home office, where executives are considering plans to outsource production of the expensive/complicated Cell chips that power the PS3. Executive deputy president Yutaka Nakagawa is quoted in a Reuters report, saying that when the PS2 launched there just weren't other companies to turn to. With the chip market better-developed in 2007, there are third parties Sony is now considering to take on the task of advancing/producing the Cell. Outsourcing could also help financially with their beleaguered semiconductor division. The next move for the Cell is to 45 nanometer manufacturing, from the 90/65 the company is currently using. This scale change could not only help with profits, but may eventually make dropping the price on the PlayStation 3 an easier pill to swallow.
I have no PS3, but I would like a canoe and to take up white water rafting instead.
Acting stupid isn't much fun when there's someone around who knows better
Can someone explain the 90/65nm thing to me? I don't ever remember hearing about a chip that was manufactured on two scales on one chip. Does this refer to some chips are current fabbed at 90nm and some at 65nm, or are they really hybrid where some of the circuits are at 90nm and some are at 65nm on the same die?
The article doesn't contain much more than the summary, and does not explain this point.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
You don't want the same people who worked in the exploding laptop battery division to be working on the cell processor. A few blown floating-point calculations can ruin a game.
There's a serious shortage of these systems, dispite the price.
Dude, haven't you heard? There's no PS3 shortage.
Wouldn't it be funny if Sony became a direct competitor to Intel and AMD? Next gen PCs could run on cell processors!
I don't really care as long as something gets us out of the x86 rut.
Mod me up, mod me down, do your worst you modding clown.
This will help them with their profits and make the PS3 more saleable, provided of course that people realize the Wii is just a fad and the 360 is never ever going to be as good as the PS3, regardless of its spiffy games like Gears of War.
Just wait until next year!
BTW: I am being sarcastic!
The Wii isn't a fad. I don't understand how fun games and a new different way to paly them is a fad. Nintendo takes more risks then MS or Sony. MS thinks its a good idea to go out and ask people what they want in a(n) video game or oppertating system. Nintedo is smarter then that. If the most famous inventors asked people what they want nothing would have been invented. Many people thought that the phone,computer, plane and many other things were fads. I'm not saying that the Wii is in that class of inventions. Real Reply to a sarcastic one
" I think that freedom is Americas biggest export. Atleast untill China can stamp it out for 20 cents a unit."
Where the hell are you. I can walk into the WalMart, Best Buy and Target in my town and between the three of them there are on average between 5 and 9 PS3s that are sitting there waiting for someone to buy them.
Because that's what Sony does best, ehh??
But seriously though, I was just going to post an asinine comment about how the Sony Rootkit was outsourced to a 3rd party overseas, and how great their programming turned out to be.
But when googling for some 'sony outsourcing' links, it looks like this isn't news:
The Outsourcing Weblog: Sony Considers Outsourcing PSP Production
The Outsourcing Weblog: New Sony CEO Could Mean More Outsourcing
Sony Ericsson moving part of R&D program to India?
Sony outsources IT development to India
Sony Europe signs up with Indian outsourcer
Sony Will Outsource Some [Battery] Replacements
Sony to outsource notebooks to Taiwan
And that's literly just the first 3 pages.
Oh great, now when I turn on my PS3 it will print on screen "Hello, my name is Joe, how can I help you today?"
Damned outsourced chips, taking valuable processing away from hard-working American (Japanese?) chips!
I kid, I kid!
Company carries on with plans to cost reduce product components!
Shocking!
Console news on Slashdot has turned from bad to outright comical.
The only reason there's no PS3 shortage is because Sony is suing the shit out of anybody who tries to sell one outside Japan and North America.
The PS3 is going to change over revisions more so than the PS2 I'm willing to speculate. Those of us that wait for the PS3 to gain some success with better titles and more industry support and licensing will not only reap the benefits of a better price for the unit itself, but a better system design. Whether the cell processor is more efficient or newer, or better design to allow for airflow, or tweaks on the mobo or GPU, etc - you name it. It's worth waiting. Anyone that bought a first generation PS or PS2 can tell you that...it's been so long ago though that it might be hard to remember for many of us that have had faulty early 3000 units, which are pretty much junk compared to the newer revisions in my opinion. There's no way to avoid it, as time progresses the system revisions become more efficient with newer materials, technology and design. The nextgen consoles will see it even more progressive and earlier with significant changes in revisions IMO.
Gaming for over 25 years
Which country? As far as I can tell, only three major countries have PLAYSTATION 3. The rest have only lawsuits.
Looks like Sony is finally getting their heads out of their cracks.
Salvaging the system should be their first priority. When I say salvage I don't mean beacuse it's already a failure, but in the sense that the overall 'market buzz' of the console is overwhelmingly negative. Sony needs to really reshape its console in order for it to be successful and shake off the rediculous problems that the HR department (and initial design decisions) have been causing them.
Problems to solve, in order of priority for the company:
1) Get the COST of the console DOWN.
2) Fix the BluRay manufacturing woes.
3) Help their 3rd party developers to understand the CELL processor and sucessfully develop on the platform.
4) Match the XBOX LIVE online experience.
This is my opinion of course, but outsourcing the CELL processor will be a step in the right direction for #1. Without lowering the price of the console, the sales and demand for the console just aren't going to be there... Then again, #2 will prevent them from meeting the demand anyways, so you can probably interchange those top 2 in terms of importance.
Without a broad market exposure, the investment required to develop a high quality game on the platform isn't viable for most studios. I forget who it was, but in a 3rd party interview on the subject of PS3 development an estimate was given to the amount of 500$million per game of the complexity of the CELL processor.. (Im not looking up the interview but it was posted here on SlashDot I believe.)
So once Sony handles the price and production woes, keeping their developers happy so that they a) continue to develop on the platform and b) ensure a healthy and broad diversity of available games to play will go a long way in making the PS3 "successful."
#4 is more of hearsay, as I have been told (I do not own a PS3) that the online experience is a 'first hash' type of thing and falls short in many respects to XBOX Live service.
Anyways - even speculation of this sort is a good thing - instead of a typical "screw price, you are all sheep and will pay what we tell you to pay!"
Take it with a grain of salt, because that's what my opinion is worth on the internets! (or maybe less...)
Its Deluxe, son. Deluxe!
I thought IBM was already producing Cell processors? Why is Sony needing to outsource when they're not even doing the production work as it is?
What? You want a sig?
Wish there was an edit button.. I knew that number seemed off :)
- sell-500k-for-profit-218215.php
its not 500million (more like 8million$) to develop a PS3 game. Its 500,000 sales requied to turn a profit. My mistake, but it did make me go find the article.
http://kotaku.com/gaming/ps3/namco-ps3-games-must
Its Deluxe, son. Deluxe!
It's blu-ray, and every PS3 game comes on a blu-ray disc. Kind of hard to back that out now.
Besides, I think the PS3 as a game machine is secondary to their blu-ray agenda. The launch titles certainly say as much.
Two firms, both on the decline, pushing tin nobody wants.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Any country where the ps3 has been released. Right now PS3s are just sitting on shelves. They are expensive and offer very little atm over an xbox360.
I think Sonys cash cow is still the PS2. You have some big games coming out this year and it's priced at $130 now which I think which makes it very attractive to the average person wanting a game machine. Plus it has a huge back catalog.
Shouldn't they first focus on selling the PS3 containing existing cell chips, instead of them rotting on shelves, like 3DO's?
Dude, haven't you heard? There's no PS3 shortage [penny-arcade.com].
I like Penny Arcade and all too but that kind of bugged me. A couple systems on the shelf is not particularly abundant and then you clicked over to the comments section and there is a big ad for all their shit for sale on Xbox Live Marketplace.
Hmmm, something's fishy here.
Agreed. Normally I don't mind when they take shots at systems, and I'll agree that right now the 360 is definitely a good buy. But they seem to have written off the possibility of a PS3 altogether. This combined with their continuing XBox Live Marketplace ads, it kind of turns me off reading their commentary. I always used to read it for some sometimes insightful looks into hot topics of the game industry, but since I'll be getting a PS3 (mainly for MGS4, but I don't consider the system as colossal a failure as the internet rumor mill has determined either) suddenly it's not as entertaining a read.
I walked into a Target store this morning looking for a Wii and found four PS3s instead. I'd rather have a Wii than try to squeeze $4800 out of some wanker at Sony.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
'd say that NONE of those matter. There is one, and only one, thing that is making the PS3 sales so low - the games. The only must-have game out right now is Resistance, and not everyone likes FPS games. Once they start getting some more games out, the sales will follow, regardless of price, regardless of online experience (which isn't bad considering it's free), etc.
Online for Wii is free too. But, yes, the actual games do matter - when I actually see a review for more than three PS3 games that aren't rated 2 or 3 stars out of 5 on G4TV, then I'll pay attention to the PS3 - and multi-console games don't count.
But right now they're all like the Gundam title - long on promise, short on execution. You can have all the (potential) fancy graphics in the world, but if it doesn't have soul and playability it won't pack them in.
Heck, even Guitar Hero's next version is going on the Wii - at this point it's not stopping the bleeding, it's if they can stop the bleeding.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I like Penny Arcade and all too but that kind of bugged me. A couple systems on the shelf is not particularly abundant
That's irrelevant; they were responding to a Sony Exec's boast that PS3s simply are not sitting on any shelves, anywhere, period.
You don't need abundance to rebut that claim, just existence.
47000 yet for 20gig ver in Japan ($520AU)
$999 for 60gig in Australian.
As if sony doesnt have their own boats they cannot use? hell use those Whale Ships!
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
"A couple systems on the shelf is not particularly abundant"
I have 2 Best Buys, 2 Circuit Citys, 1 Toys R Us, and 3 Targets near my home/work. I tend to stop by at least of couple of those stores each week. When I do, I usually swing by the video game area to see what they have in stock. Picking a random store at a random time, I have about an 80-90% chance of finding a PS3 in stock. How many they have isn't really much of a concern. When they are that easy to find without even making an effort, I consider that to be abundant.
Somebody reads the comic, but not the newspost I see...
The Sony exec said the consoles couldn't be found on shelves anywhere... Which depending on where you live is quite possibly dramatically untrue. Even P-A didn't claim they were "sitting" on shelves, but that they were being replaced sufficiently quickly as to be easy to find.
You don't have to think it is. It is. Not only did it outsell the 360 and everything but the DS over the Christmas season... Even though it looks like it did so by a tiny margin, look at those software charts. Nine out of the top 20 for December and five out of the top ten for 2006. That's where the profit comes from.
Insidentally, look at the bestsellers for the 360 and for the DS. They each seem to have a hard time breaking out of their demographic niche, but the PS2 doesn't seem to have those barriers. If Sony can keep that up for the PS3, they'll be unstoppable again. If only their marketing department didn't keep getting in the way. They need to find out who all the marketing people they hired in the PSP timeframe are, and fire them.
Aren't you just agreeing with me? Meant to hit the parent's reply button, maybe?