Nvidia Walked Away From PS4 Hardware Negotiations

An anonymous reader writes "Tony Tamsai, Nvidia's senior vice president of content and technology, has said that providing hardware for use in the PlayStation 4 was on the table, but they walked away. Having provided chips for use in both the PS3 and the original Xbox, that decision doesn't come without experience. Nvidia didn't want to commit to producing hardware at the cost Sony was willing to pay. They also considered that by accepting a PS4 contract, they wouldn't have the resources to do something else in another sector. In other words, the PS4 is not a lucrative enough platform to consider when high-end graphics cards and the Tegra line of chips hold so much more revenue potential."

Comments

Wonder what they told MS

[Looker_Device]

You can bet MS has approached them on providing chips for Durango too. I wonder if they told *them* to piss off.

Re:Wonder what they told MS

[robthebloke]

I wonder if MS and sony simply decided that going to a single supplier for both the CPU and GPU was cheaper than using two suppliers for each component.

Re:Wonder what they told MS

[Anonymous Coward]

Rumors have it that Durango will make extensive use of C++ AMP which has far better support from the AMD Radeon crew than NVidia.

Re:Wonder what they told MS

[Pinky's Brain]

Messages are mixed, the rumour mill is convinced it's going to be AMD ... but there are few credible sources.

Re:Wonder what they told MS

[MBCook]

Can you? One of the reasons the original XBox was pulled off the market as soon as the 360 came out (and no slim was ever made) was because nVidia reportedly refused to do a die shrink or combine dies, etc. So MS was left with a big, hot, expensive chip while Sony was able to shrink theirs and lower their costs dramatically.

MS might still hold a grudge on that one.

Re:Wonder what they told MS

[rwise2112]

Can you? One of the reasons the original XBox was pulled off the market as soon as the 360 came out (and no slim was ever made) was because nVidia reportedly refused to do a die shrink or combine dies, etc. So MS was left with a big, hot, expensive chip while Sony was able to shrink theirs and lower their costs dramatically.

MS might still hold a grudge on that one.

No sane business holds grudges like that. If MS wants it, it'll be written into the next contract and either nVidia will agree or not get the contract.

Re:Wonder what they told MS

[Anonymous Coward]

No sane business holds grudges like that.

The electronics industry isn't sane, then.

Re:Wonder what they told MS

[BlackSnake112]

No sane business holds grudges like that. If MS wants it, it'll be written into the next contract and either nVidia will agree or not get the contract.

Apple anyone? Rumor was Apple was going with Nvidia. Nvidia announced that had a deal with Apple and then Apple (well Jobs) killed the deal. Why? Apple has to announces things on Apple's schedule i.e. at some hyped Apple event.

Many businesses are run by what many would consider to be not sane people. Sometimes that helps the business and others it hurts the business.

Re:Wonder what they told MS

[Anonymous Coward]

The single chip solution would also offer better margins for the provider and better long term cost reduction possibilities for the console manufacturer. Two supplier model would have forced the console manufacturers to use at least one additional large chip.

Re:Wonder what they told MS

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you got that the wrong way round.
Continuing to choose a supplier that doesn't treat you well is something no sane business should do.
Whether you're a business or a person, if you don't do your best to keep away from someone who would use any mistake (e.g. in writing the contact) against you, you're an idiot. There is no such thing as a watertight contract that envisions every possible future.

Re:Wonder what they told MS

[Anonymous Coward]

Rumor was Apple was going with Nvidia.

You need to learn the difference be a rumor and fact.

Re:Wonder what they told MS

[Nyder]

Can you? One of the reasons the original XBox was pulled off the market as soon as the 360 came out (and no slim was ever made) was because nVidia reportedly refused to do a die shrink or combine dies, etc. So MS was left with a big, hot, expensive chip while Sony was able to shrink theirs and lower their costs dramatically.

MS might still hold a grudge on that one.

The Xbox was pulled because MS wanted everyone to buy a Xbox 360. Why? Because they stand to make more money off new releases, which would be for the Xbox 360 then they would for any Original Xbox games being bought. Granted they still made money off of Xbox Live with the original Xbox's, but not enough I imagine to keep producing them.

I think Sony was the only company still making machines for the previous generation while games were still being made for it. Think it was a year or so after the PS3 was out that new PS2 games finally stopped coming.

Re:Wonder what they told MS

[Mike Frett]

Exactly, I think everyone forgets how Microsoft works. Another fine example is when they end support for an OS, they remove everything from their website that would be of any manual help to you. It's Microsoft's policy to Hook you and force you to upgrade by removing even the most basic self-help. You guys should know that by now, really.

As for the article, it simply makes sense that AMD offers a fully integrated solution with a low price. And it's a good deal for AMD also.

Re:Wonder what they told MS

[RaceProUK]

Think it was a year or so after the PS3 was out that new PS2 games finally stopped coming

Much, much longer than that - new PS2 games were still coming as recently as Q4 2012!

Re:Wonder what they told MS

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, you're the one who needs to learn the difference. Just because something starts off as a rumor, doesn't make it false. And in this instance, it wasn't.

Nvidia announced that had a deal with Apple

Re:Wonder what they told MS

[am 2k]

Apple anyone? Rumor was Apple was going with Nvidia. Nvidia announced that had a deal with Apple and then Apple (well Jobs) killed the deal.

Major breach of an NDA is a pretty good reason to go with another supplier, not only for Apple.

Re:Wonder what they told MS

[G0m3r619]

You clearly never ran a business. the is no room for personal feelings in business. It's all about what they can do for each other. That's is it. Why do you suppose Samsung and Apple are still big business partners even after Apple tried to keep them out of the smartphone market?

Re:Wonder what they told MS

[PRMan]

New PS2 games were made for about 5-6 years after the PS3 came out.

Six years after the PS3s release, there is still an occasional game being released for the PS2, such as the Final Fantasy XI expansion Seekers of Adoulin, which will release March 27 of next year.

http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/144342-13-years-after-the-playstation-2-changed-the-industry-sony-finally-halts-production

Re:Wonder what they told MS

[Rotag_FU]

Similar to the claim the parent made, my understanding is also that the Xbox was pulled so quickly and replaced by the 360 because of the infeasibility of doing a die shrink to make a higher margin (or more accurately some margin rather than significant loss) design with the original Xbox.

My understanding is that Microsoft did not procure the rights to the implementations of the CPU nor the graphics chip used in the original Xbox. This was presumably because the Xbox was rushed and/or MS was not familiar with the standard terms used in the console game. This is not all that surprising on the CPU side since it was an Intel Pentium 3 based processor and I'd be surprised if Intel would have given MS any significant IP rights. The problem is that when it came time to try to make a cheaper version of the Xbox, MS had no leverage or ability to port the IP to a smaller process geometry or create a single chip implementation without costly relicensing of the designs. Supposedly MS was so pissed about that (especially with respect to Nvidia) that they switched to AMD for the GPU of the 360 and supposedly are continuing that trend with the 720 (aka Durango, aka Infinity).

AMD is appearing to circle the drain (e.g., the recent short term stop gap measure of selling their offices to another party so that they can lease them back and pocket a quick buck at the cost of increased long term expense). I am very curious what all of the consoles are going to do if AMD ceases to be. Maybe AMD will continue to be viable as a much smaller company that primarily makes chips for consoles.

Re:Wonder what they told MS

[Anonymous Coward]

The single chip solution would also offer better margins for the provider and better long term cost reduction possibilities for the console manufacturer. Two supplier model would have forced the console manufacturers to use at least one additional large chip.

But the single chip heat issue will come into play when it has to bust its ass to keep up with the rest of the console.

Re:Wonder what they told MS

[NJRoadfan]

I seem to have no problem finding knowledge base articles for old versions of Windows buried on their site. Heck, I even found a few for OS/2 1.x!

Re:Wonder what they told MS

[Anonymous Coward]

Nvidia announced that had a deal with Apple

The announcement of a deal is fact. The existence of that actual deal is not.

So the statement,

Nvidia announced that had a deal with Apple and then Apple (well Jobs) killed the deal

is not a fact.

Re:Wonder what they told MS

[Anonymous Coward]

Kinda difficult to kill what doesn't exist. But hey, whatever helps you sleep at night.

Re:Wonder what they told MS

[sexconker]

Nvidia announced that had a deal with Apple

The announcement of a deal is fact. The existence of that actual deal is not.

So the statement,

Nvidia announced that had a deal with Apple and then Apple (well Jobs) killed the deal

is not a fact.

All of those things are facts.
Whether or not they're true is another matter. (And it was true - there was a deal, Nvidia announced it, Jobs threw a hissy fit.)

Re:Wonder what they told MS

[gregchang]

Are you thinking ATI? Or did the same thing happen to both of them? http://www.zdnet.com/ati-suffers-wrath-of-jobs-3002080337/

Re:Wonder what they told MS

[Anonymous Coward]

I've seen plenty of insane businesses then.

Re:Wonder what they told MS

[halltk1983]

APUs have shown to be remarkably heat-efficient.

Re:Wonder what they told MS

[UnknowingFool]

I don't know if "refused" is necessarily how simple the situation may have been. As soon as the Xbox 360 was launched, the Xbox was not going to sell as well. It costs money to die-shrink and re-engineer. So if you are nVidia, do you put in money into a shrink die for a product you know is not going to sell very well and has been obsoleted? Did MS give them any incentive like partial funding, etc? Or was nVidia approached and gave MS an estimate of cost and MS didn't feel like spending the money? I don't know the situation so I can't say.

Re:Wonder what they told MS

[shutdown -p now]

Another fine example is when they end support for an OS, they remove everything from their website that would be of any manual help to you. It's Microsoft's policy to Hook you and force you to upgrade by removing even the most basic self-help. You guys should know that by now, really.

Really?

Re:Wonder what they told MS

[UnknowingFool]

From what I remember it wasn't that nVidia announced they had a deal; they also announced hardware specifics. They did so the day before Apple was set to announce it at a major show (and nVidia knew they were going to announce it). You could call it petty for Apple to get pissy about it, but you can also say that Apple was wary of a vendor that couldn't keep their mouths shut for 24 hours.

Re:Wonder what they told MS

[Jthon]

Or you can completely wrong, it was ATI that did this: http://www.zdnet.com/ati-suffers-wrath-of-jobs-3002080337/

Re:Wonder what they told MS

[UnknowingFool]

So instead of nVidia it was ATI. Instead of 24 hours, it was 48 hours. The basic framework was the same. Apple was going to announce the deal and specifics. ATI released a press release two days before Jobs was going to announce the same thing at keynote address. ATI knew that Jobs was going to announce it. Who was actually at fault is indeterminate. Would you think Ballmer would be upset if IBM announced before MS did that the Xbox 360 was going to use a PowerPC processor? Unfortunately replacing the CPU is not as hard as replacing a card.

Re:Wonder what they told MS

[Hadlock]

That doesn't make sense. The PS2 is still sold in South America with huge profit margins on stable, well vetted hardware. South America has been one generation behind North America with consoles since the Sega Master System. The SMS was sold in Brazil until fairly recently (2012). You don't just discontinue a console unless someone forces you to, there's too much money to be made selling it cheaply in poorer markets.
 
Your argument stands true for North America and Europe, but doesn't hold water in South America, Central America, Asia (excluding JP) and Africa. Most of the world lives outside of NA and EU.

Re: Wonder what they told MS

[Xeranar]

A cheap fan assembly with decent ventilation will solve failure rates. So one fan vs two is a no brainer.

Re:Wonder what they told MS

[Wesley Felter]

Not really; they're just slow enough that power isn't a problem.

Re:Wonder what they told MS

[DKlineburg]

Wow, Double Space. I have hazy memories now.

Re:Wonder what they told MS

[Anonymous Coward]

Lolz. This is just Nvidia spin. MS and Sony were both screwed by Nvidia at one point. MS was screwed over the original XBox, where Nvidia held the chipset hostage, and Sony got screwed on the PS3, when Nvidia underdelivered. This is just Nvidia trying to pretend like they're the ones who walked away from the table.

Console margins can't be good

[h4rr4r]

You have to provide lots of parts at low cost and they will surely write in a lower price for each continued year of the console. That means you are tying up fab time on something is on an outdated process a few years down the road.

On the other hand AMD had to do this, they need the money so any margin is likely acceptable.

Re:Console margins can't be good

[Anonymous Coward]

Money, yes but possibly also market share. People currently often write and test games only on nvidia hardware and then if it does not beak totally on AMD cards consider it done. With the differences between the cards this will give nvida a performance advantage in all games written this way, although I have no idea how much. AMD just turned the tables for all games written originally for the PS4, quite a win for PC ports of console games too I expect.

Re:Console margins can't be good

[Luthair]

This isn't really true, both the Xbox 360 and the Wii run AMD (well ATI) GPUs

Re:Console margins can't be good

[DarthVain]

If nVidia was this small minded, they deserve whatever they get.

Having all games (and thus their ports) on million and millions of xbox and PS consoles designed and optimized for your specific hardware for the next 10 years is worth money. Any profit they actually get is just icing.

Re:Console margins can't be good

[The Raven]

Developers develop on NVIDIA because their drivers are better. Flat out better. More compliant, reliable, etc. This has been true for a long time... id Software's Carmack wrote about this years ago, and the situation has not improved since then.

Re:Console margins can't be good

[Osgeld]

yea but that optimization only lasts a few months before its totally outdated, usually before the console hits the stores. The embedded solutions on the other hand have a much higher rate of product rotation meaning you can get the latest n greatest out to customers without holding up fab on a 10 year old design for systems that usually only have high sales within the first couple of years.

Re:Console margins can't be good

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet AMD decent deal considering there were no other competitors in play.

Re:Console margins can't be good

[Attila Dimedici]

AMD has another advantage in this sort of business. Since they no longer own their own fabrication plants, they can simply contract this out to another fabrication plant if it becomes a constraint on their first choice fabrication vendor.

Re:Console margins can't be good

[wonkey_monkey]

Having all games (and thus their ports) on million and millions of xbox and PS consoles designed and optimized for your specific hardware for the next 10 years is worth money. Any profit they actually get is just icing.

Quick, better call Nvidia and tell them this before they make a terrible, terrible mistake! Just say you're calling from Slashdot - they'll put you straight through to the CEO.

Re:Console margins can't be good

[citizenr]

AMD not only turned the tables on Nvidia optimized games. They also turned the tables for single thread optimized games favoring Intel. Just imagine - in 6-8 months EVERY single new game will be written with heavy multi threading in mind from the grounds up. Times of overpaying $300 for K series i5-i7 just to be able to OC >4.5GHz so retarded single threaded games run fast will be over.

Re:Console margins can't be good

[citizenr]

Please tell me more about optimizing games to be properly multithreaded will only last few months and then be outdated.

Re:Console margins can't be good

[Nerdfest]

You're making the assumption that they thought about this. The people involved in the decision probably numbered in the dozens tops, with most of them marketing and finance people. With the way companies seem to be run to realize maximum profits in the short term these days, it's even possible they realized this but turned down the long term gain anyway.

Re:Console margins can't be good

[h4rr4r]

And still I will not buy an AMD card.

Their video drivers suck. Their linux drivers are a total joke. So here I will play using my AMD CPU and NVIDIA card.

Re:Console margins can't be good

[0123456]

AMD has another advantage in this sort of business. Since they no longer own their own fabrication plants, they can simply contract this out to another fabrication plant if it becomes a constraint on their first choice fabrication vendor.

Uh, they could always have done that. No-one forced them to use thei rown fabs for all their chips.

While flexibility is an advantage, being totally reliant on third-party suppliers is not.

Re:Console margins can't be good

[del_diablo]

| Having all games (and thus their ports) on million and millions of xbox and PS consoles designed and optimized for your specific hardware for the next 10 years is worth money.
The problem is that AMD changed graphic card architecture on the HD 3xxx series, meaning that free console optmization only exists on the 1xxx and 2xxx series.

Re:Console margins can't be good

[Anonymous Coward]

Developers develop on NVIDIA because their drivers are more tolerant of stupid programming mistakes.

Fixed.

Re:Console margins can't be good

[DarthVain]

Yet, do you disagree?

Very likely the "mistake" is out of their hands and nothing a CEO can do about it other than build a time machine, go back in time, either A) prevent AMD from buying ATI, or B) Buy ATI, or C) Somehow convince Intel to buy nVidia, then go forward in time, and place a competitive bid on something they couldn't have without the advent of time travel.

Re:Console margins can't be good

[CanHasDIY]

... the Wii run[s] AMD (well ATI) GPUs

Being rather generous, aren't we?

If anything, I'd say the Wii 'casually strolls' the GPU. 'Run' is taking it a bit far.

Re:Console margins can't be good

[CanHasDIY]

I've never had problems with the ATI drivers I download direct from the source... perhaps you're thinking of the Windows Update variant, that does inevitably break, well, everything?

My 6500HD seems to work fine on Linux, although I admit I just installed Steam on that box the other day and haven't had a chance to test it.

Re:Console margins can't be good

[TeXMaster]

I absolutely agree that the software support AMD has for their card is inferior to that of NVIDIA. And this definitely pisses me off, considering their hardware is _consistently_ better than the competitor, in terms of raw performance _and_ in terms of performance/price. OTOH, I get the impression that their software support is slowly getting better. At the very least, I haven't had any significant issues recently (at least using Debian unstable with their packaged drivers).

Re:Console margins can't be good

[dnahelicase]

You're making the assumption that they thought about this. The people involved in the decision probably numbered in the dozens tops, with most of them marketing and finance people. With the way companies seem to be run to realize maximum profits in the short term these days, it's even possible they realized this but turned down the long term gain anyway.

Given the fact that we're talking about AMD and Nvidia, my guess is that it was a thoughtful decision.

The fact that they have walked away before, that AMD is in previous consoles, and that everyone is continuously crying (from the tech world and wall street alike) that AMD is near it's end (even though it's not), it sounds like they might have made a good decision.

AMD is going to spend a lot of time making a low margin product that is going to be outdated next year but one that they have to keep spending resources and time on for years. Nvidia is going to be spending their time on supercomputer applications, drivers, and pushing their image as a higher end card.

Sometimes you walk away from a business deal because you want your competitor to win it.

Re:Console margins can't be good

[Anonymous Coward]

>they can simply contract this out to another fabrication plant
That is assuming that the new fab has IDENTICAL physical library with the same size/shape/electrical performance as the one AMD designed for. In the chip design world as they have their secret source/tweaked process making features on chips for bleeding edge process size, that is not necessarily the case and sometimes require recompile, debug and tweak cycles.

Sony *could* have contracted the design work/support to AMD, exclusively license the SoC design and negotiate directly with the contract manufacturer.themselves. They won't need the middle man as much once the CM is churning chip correctly in a production run.

Re:Console margins can't be good

[0100010001010011]

AMD discontinued my motherboard's integrated Radeon chip a year after I bought it.

Meanwhile my GT220 from 5(?) years ago still runs the latest nVidia software and is powering my HTPC.

Re:Console margins can't be good

[wonkey_monkey]

You're making the assumption that they thought about this.

More specifically, I'm making the assumption that Nvidia, the multi-billion dollar company, have thought about this deal harder and for longer than the kind of Slashdotter who likes to chip in on these stories a few more minutes after reading about it.

Re:Console margins can't be good

[Anonymous Coward]

AMD not only turned the tables on Nvidia optimized games. They also turned the tables for single thread optimized games favoring Intel.

AMD still doesn't have a multi-thread supported DX11 drivers, but nVidia has had this feature working for years now.

Re:Console margins can't be good

[Anonymous Coward]

You have to provide lots of parts at low cost and they will surely write in a lower price for each continued year of the console. That means you are tying up fab time on something is on an outdated process a few years down the road.

On the other hand AMD had to do this, they need the money so any margin is likely acceptable.

And you base this off of what? Do you work for a console manufacturer? Are you the CFO for a gpu manufacturer? A console engineer? Or anything that gives you personal insight into the industry from an actual standpoint? Or are you merely speculating and making guesses based off of having no real knowledge or insight at all?

No one said it has be low margins, they might be very nice margins. But as NVidia said, they have other projects going on right now that they stand to make more money off. Why would Nvidia sacrifice current projects for ones that make them less money?

And how do you know that AMD has to do this? Are you their financial consultant? Why wouldn't they is the question, especially considering they have a long history of making gpus for consoles, they are the go to guys for that.

Re:Console margins can't be good

[Anonymous Coward]

And I've had nothing but problems. Downloaded their Catalyst crap about a year ago, and updated it as the software requested.

Went to mine bitcoins for fun, didn't work, no OpenCL installed. Downgraded to 12.10 because that's what's supposed to work best for this purpose. kbdsync.exe started to blow up. Upgraded back to 13.1. Didn't fix that problem. Used AMD's removal tool. Now my Logitech G35 drivers started to blow up. Installed 13.1, now it won't open the catalyst control panel because .net isn't installed (Huh? Why did you remove that?) Installed .net 4.0. Still -- catalyst control panel blowing up and the logitech drivers are blowing up, but kbdsync.exe stopped complaining. Installed .net 3.5. Catalyst control now panel works. Removed logitech drivers with the intent to install them tomorrow when I'm a *little* less pissed off.

That is shitty software, my friend. I know windows is to blame for some of it, but so is AMD.

Re:Console margins can't be good

[BlackSnake112]

Which is why I usually stay one generation behind on video cards when I am looking for a new one. For what I play I do not need the latest card. I have the specs on what I need. A range of cards meet that spec. Also drivers usually have worked out the bugs by then.

Then again I left the epenis waving contest a long time ago. I have found that stability goes a long way to good gaming. I also no longer play fps games. Maybe today's fps games need the latest card to run well. My newest card is a AMD 6950 2GB model not the latest card. Runs everything great and runs cool (38 C idle 50 C under game load. It drops back to 38 C in a minute or two). I play with people that say I need to have a Nvidia card n order to play. Yet I have no issues with all the eye candy turned to the highest settings. They still crash from time to time. They blame the game. I blame their setup. You don't overclock unless you have enough cooling for it. More then just the CPU and GPU coolers are involved in the cooling setup. having one case fan doesn't cut it. Using that small cramped desktop case will make things run hotter as well. At the very least you should replace the stock GPU cooler thermal compound with a better one. They don't and over clock the GPU. Their GPU runs around 70 C. Which is too high in my book. Then again their CPU is around 65 C. That is also too high in my book. Mine hits 40 C under game load and idles around 28 C. My mid tower case has room in it. It uses three 120 MM intake fans (one blows right at the video card), 120 MM and 140 MM exhaust fans. Add in the 120 MM fan on the CPU and 120 in the power supply. The loudest fan is the GPU fan which is set at 100%. If I set the GPU fan at 70% I head the hard drive over the fans.

Re:Console margins can't be good

[tlhIngan]

You're making the assumption that they thought about this. The people involved in the decision probably numbered in the dozens tops, with most of them marketing and finance people. With the way companies seem to be run to realize maximum profits in the short term these days, it's even possible they realized this but turned down the long term gain anyway.

Or they DID think about this.

Of the last gen consoles, two went ATi/AMD - Xbox360 and Wii. One went nVidia - PS3 (the RSX). nvidia was involved in the generation before that as well - the original Xbox used nVidia.

Perhaps they were speaking from experience already - they have been consistently screwed over on two generations of consoles, why should they suffer a third? On the original Xbox, they were forced to scrap a ton of chips when Microsoft revved the hardware. On the PS3, perhaps they didn't like how much support they were providing for the PS3 versus how much they were getting paid per PS3.

It's entirely possible nVidia ran the calculations and saw that for whatever long term benefit there was in having the PS4 around, it didn't give the required ROI and tied up developmental resources in supporting the PS3 that could've been better spent making whatever next gen hardware they are thinking of.

AMD, though, is desperate for any sort of cash - being chosen by the Wii-U and the PS4 gives them long term cash they could use to survive.

As for the Xbox Next, who knows? Rumor has it they're using AMD chips for the CPU. They could use an nVidia chip there as well if Microsoft felt they spent more time and effort on fighting the AMD GPU.

Re:Console margins can't be good

[Anonymous Coward]

Embeded systems, like consoles, are more like mini-computers and have almost identical processing problems to desktops. Well designed game engines will benefit both platforms, the only difference is the scale. The console may have 4GB of memory and the desktop may have 8GB-16GB, the console may have 6 threads, the desktop may have 12 threads.

They're both going to have similar issues.

The upcoming PS4 is supposed to have an 8 thread x86-64 with an integrated 69XX GPU with 2TF of pixel crunching power. With PC game engines lasting 5-7 years, don't tell me optimizing for the console won't help the desktop. Thread that crap.

Re:Console margins can't be good

[unixisc]

Not if the margin is negative. Once it goes into the red, then selling more just makes the losses greater.

Re:Console margins can't be good

[Anonymous Coward]

cool story bro.

Re:Console margins can't be good

[Nerdfest]

That's most likely in this case, but I still don't think it's guaranteed. Companies make bad, short sighted decisions all the time.

Re:Console margins can't be good

[Guspaz]

Except nVidia has never had their own fabs, so that's not an advantage for AMD.

Re:Console margins can't be good

[travisco_nabisco]

How old was the Radeon chip when you bought your motherboard?
Did you buy a cheap motherboard with an ancient GPU on it to start with?

I am not saying that AMD didn't screw you over, it just seems that without the full back story your statement doesn't hold a lot of credence.

Re:Console margins can't be good

[Hatta]

The AMD GPU is like a corgi. You might take it out for a walk, but it has to run to keep up.

Re:Console margins can't be good

[Anonymous Coward]

Yet xbox 360 turned out to have the superior GPU for gaming even though it came out a year earlier than the ps3 and used a ATI/AMD gpu instead of nvidia.

The superior gpu in the 360 is the only reason why it managed to compete against the ps3 for so long.

Re:Console margins can't be good

[Mike Frett]

That hasn't been my experience. I've simply had better reliability from AMDs offering (On Linux) than Nvidia. But everyone is entitled to their opinion. And by the way, Carmack also said that Linux wasn't viable as a gaming platform, so...Gabe disagrees.

Re:Console margins can't be good

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, let's continue spouting myths. Never mind the fact that the Wii's GPU was easily one of the most powerful fixed-function chips that ever hit the market, and it was pure laziness on behalf of the developers that Wii games weren't flashier than they are. I've been doing renderer programming on Wii games for the past five years and I'm consistently surprised at what you can actually pull off with it. Too bad other devs don't have the same fortitude.

Re:Console margins can't be good

[djdanlib]

You're dead accurate with the stability sermon there. Let me tack onto it.

Factor in all of the components that cause instability. Cheap RAM (fewer layers on the PCBs than the good stuff) and power supplies (meaningless 80+ labels and poor performance under spiky loads/bad power) and rebranded video cards (same PCB issue) are huge culprits for system instability, and they do in fact market these cheap parts in the gamer segment with fancy packaging and promotional deals like free games.

I have a tip for the DIY crowd. You probably would agree, having been there too. When you sort by price and pick the lowest cost parts, you're buying instability. A lot of the cool yo yo extreme 8ghz overclock gg noob pro tuner kids do this so they can blow a larger slice of the project budget on fancy UV water cooling and lights. These are the same people who drop big money on a new system every year, to try and stay that much further ahead of the other cool tuner kids' FPS in Age of Dutycraft 3 or whatever else $fadgame is at the moment. Well, here's the thing. Chintzy components that don't reject as much interference are going to pick up the increase when you really start slamming the system. Then it'll get unpredictably (or perhaps predictably, if I can guarantee it will happen?) crashy under load. Cheap is cheap, there's no way around it, and masking it with expensive cooling systems will not make cheap parts less cheap.

I have a feeling a lot of the "drivers suck!" crowd is still going off their experience seven years ago, when that was the unquestionable truth of the matter. Yes, they sucked. Past tense, sucked. Right now? Works just fine for me and the local gamer cafes, thank you. I crank up my settings as well with an AMD card. I could crank them up just as high with an nVidia card. It really makes no difference, they both work very well.

Re:Console margins can't be good

[triffid_98]

Times of overpaying $300 for K series i5-i7 just to be able to OC >4.5GHz so retarded single threaded games run fast will be over.

I salute anyone going all out on multi-threading support, it's not easy. CPUs aren't really getting (much) faster so that's all you can do once you've offloaded everything you can to the GPU.

Re:Console margins can't be good

[PRMan]

NVidia's CEO has repeatedly shown himself to be a shrewd man that knows where he wants the company to go. They have stayed in business a long time while others have come and gone. If he doesn't want this business (at the probably ridiculous bargain basement prices that Sony wanted to pay), then he's probably right.

Re:Console margins can't be good

[stms]

Besides from that some companies choose to optimize for AMD and Nvidia is left to catch up. Two fairly recent games come to mind Watchdogs and Tomb Raider.

Re:Console margins can't be good

[Anonymous Coward]

It's also safe to assume you didn't assume AMD did any thinking about this deal.

Long term production of stable, mature tech, which will only give better and better yields, giving a steady multi-year income, volume production and an increased market share. Yeah. Nvidia walking away from such a deal sure makes a lot more sense than this peice of "news" just being sour grapes. Right.

Re:Console margins can't be good

[stms]

Sorry I meant Sleeping Dogs Watchdogs isn't out yet.

Re:Console margins can't be good

[P-niiice]

I had no idea there was so much class warfare in PC gaming. Facinating.

Re:Console margins can't be good

[Anonymous Coward]

You're very proud of yourself, aren't you.

Re:Console margins can't be good

[Anonymous Coward]

hehehe: "Just say you're calling from Slashdot - they'll put you straight through to the CEO." that line just made into my personnel collection of favorite quotes :-)

Re:Console margins can't be good

[citylivin]

Unless you are a console developer, I would say [citation needed]. I switched to AMD cards a few years ago as all the nvidia cards I was buying crapped out after a year or less and i was sick of it. My ATI/amd cards on the other hand have been rock solid for the last few years. I think the last decent NVIDIA card I owned was an 8800, and even then the fan eventually died and the manufacturer didnt honour the double lifetime warranty as they went out of business (BFG).

Sure 10 years ago, ati drivers sucked, but don't let your biases carry forward 10 years. Catalyst control centre has gotten a lot better, and I have had zero issues with my 6750 in the two years ive owned it. Not to mention lots of other cheaper cards purchased for work. I only buy ATI now, after being brand loyal to nvidia since the geforce 256.

Plus they had all those horrible problems with solder reflow, where you have to bake your card to fix it. Then there was the horrible mess that they made of chipsets like the 780i, with similar problems. The moral of all that was that nvidia cant even get their solder forumla right! which ended up forcing them to exit the chipset business (thank god).

Re:Console margins can't be good

[Pubstar]

My 7970 runs at about 75-80c when under full load (which is rarely). It's factory overclocked, and XFX says that is normal, and 85can is when I should start to worry.

Re:Console margins can't be good

[Anonymous Coward]

He's making the assumption that those involved in the decision making process had significantly more context than random-7-digit-/.-poster. That's a fairly safe assumption. Random-7-digit-/.-poster doesn't know a) the CEO's high-level strategy and goals, b) the parameters of the deal that Sony was seeking, c) the realities of fulfilling Sony's requirements (i.e. opportunity costs from devoting development and fabrication resources to a low margin product) and any other factors that go into making a truly though-out decision.

Could the decision be wrong and random-7-digit-/.-poster be right? Sure. Is that likely? Absolutely not. Chances are the people with the most context into the parameters of the decision are more likely to make the right decision.

Re:Console margins can't be good

[CanHasDIY]

... Except corgis are cute and endearing.

Re:Console margins can't be good

[cnettel]

Please tell me more about optimizing games to be properly multithreaded will only last few months and then be outdated.

The point made by the GP to your post was that the supplier of console chips would have an advantage in other markets. That advantage won't last long, since architectures evolve. Something heavily optimized for a 2005-era ATI chip will be peanuts for any chip to handle today, and general developer awareness of architecture detail is almost as useless. Both AMD and Nvidia have switched overall design philosophies over that timespan and made semi-radical changes several times beyond that.

Re:Console margins can't be good

[citizenr]

People concentrate on GPU too much. AMD in next gens will pull AMDs CPU division out of discount/fanboy bin into mainstream 'best for gaming' market. Desktop CPUs have been stuck at ~3GHz for over 10 years now, only way forward is multi threading, but dev houses are still reluctant because its cheaper to just throw something out there and count on people shelling out for >$300 CPUs. Intel dominates IPC, that lets them sell 2 core CPUs for the price of AMD 4 cores. This deal will change that.

Re:Console margins can't be good

[0100010001010011]

nVidia GT220. Released Oct 2009. (Based on what I can find on Google).

HD 4250. Released May 2010. Purchased Dec 2010. Support dropped Early 2012.

Re:Console margins can't be good

[Stormy Dragon]

My experience has been that nVidia does better drivers, but ATI does more reliable hardware.

I always buy ATI boards, because you can patch drivers.

Re:Console margins can't be good

[Tailhook]

NVidia's CEO has repeatedly shown himself to be a shrewd man

NVIDIA wants Steambox. They are betting that platform is a winner and they're probably right. NVIDIA can demand a good deal because their GPU isn't fungible; only NVIDIA has decent Linux drivers.

So yeah, walking away from a commodity deal is the right choice. The NVIDIA plan is teaming up with Valve to eat Sony and Microsoft's lunch, not flail away making also-ran GPUs for pennies on the dollar.

A few years from now your Windows PC will be surrounded by Linux set-tops, phones, tablets and consoles. Then you'll get a Chromebook.

Re:Console margins can't be good

[Osgeld]

optimizing games for a 10 year old architecture is what we have now, and gee golly its out of date and wasteful of modern hardware. By not locking themselves in a long term 1 product only contract they have the ability to continually advance while software lags in terms of months not decades, like what we have today.

Re:Console margins can't be good

[robthebloke]

Someone mod this anon to 11. He's so right. The drivers fail to report GL errors correctly (unlike ATI/intel), hell, you can even link shaders without having compiled them (just setting the source is good enough). Nvidia drivers are the bain of my life.

Re:Console margins can't be good

[robthebloke]

AMD drivers implement specs to the letter. NVidia drivers accept any old crap (which is annoying when you're trying to find out which GL call is causing the failure)

Re:Console margins can't be good

[Anonymous Coward]

That is shitty software, my friend. I know windows XP is to blame for some of it, but so is my inability to maintain a computer properly.

FTFY

Re:Console margins can't be good

[Osgeld]

and in 7 years the entire market would have moved on, meanwhile consoles are still frozen in time, when I say embedded I mean things like android that will just about run on a toaster if you wanted it to, then tomorrow run it on a quad core with a brand new nvidia chipset

let me repeat, CONSOLES ARE FROZEN IN TIME, no other computer product does that, you still may have a motorola razor, but its not the same motorola razor you had in 2005, your PS3 is.

Re:Console margins can't be good

[robthebloke]

I didn't read his comment as class warfare, I read it as the difference between being a student, and being an adult.

A couple of years ago, we had an intern join us at work. Towards the end of the internship (computer animation), she asked me what home build PC I'd recommend for about £700. I wrote a spec that was something along the lines of:
- a decent 24" monitor
- a £35 case + soundproofing
- a mid-range modular PSU (supported SLI if she needed it)
- 120mm heatsink + fan
- a pair of HDD's (for RAID0 - SSD's were too small, and too expensive at the time)
- 8Gb DDR3 1600 Mhz (I'd have gone for 1866, but it was too expensive)
- An asus motherboard
- AMD Althon X4
- A graphics card for about £100.
She posted the spec on facebook, and suddenly a small army of 20 year old students responded with: ZOMG! That CPU is SHIT! You're wasting your moeny! Get an i7! You don't need to buy a heatsink, you get one with the CPU! Why are you spending *that* much on a case and PSU, you can get both of them here for £25!! You can buy cheaper RAM than that! You can get a cheap 24" monitor for £100, what are you thinking!!! etc, etc.

She asked other people at work for their opinions (all people in their 30's), and they all pretty much said the same thing as me. Invest money in the stuff you're going to live with for years (monitor, case, psu, etc), and skimp on the stuff that is easy to replace (CPU/GPU). I think she kinda trusted our opinion a bit more than her class mates, so eventually she went with that system.

A couple of weeks later, I went to help her build it, and that was absolutely hilarious. The same students who'd been suggesting that she was wasting her money, all came out with things like "That computer is so quiet! My computer sounds like an airplane taking off!", or "Jesus! That thing boots so much faster than my i7!". Last time I spoke to her, she'd just upgraded it to an 8 core AMD chip for a little over £80.

Cheap components are a good thing, but PC builds that compromise on quality are not.

Re:Console margins can't be good

[robthebloke]

The fact that the CPU wasn't a complete mind-fuck to work with also helped, as did the exceptional quality of the dev-tools.

Re:Console margins can't be good

[robthebloke]

You're making the assumption that Nvidia actually walked away, and that this isn't some bunk they're putting out as a way of saving face.

Re:Console margins can't be good

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, heads of major companies aren't this dumb about business. Finance and marketer types understand exactly how to turn client relationships into money.

Re:Console margins can't be good

[DKlineburg]

This may be true, but what does Intel have to do with nvidia?

Re:Console margins can't be good

[citizenr]

Thats the thing - people concentrate on Nvidia and GPU in next gens, but overlook the bigger picture. AMD can laverage (I cant believe I just wrote that, I feel dirty) its strong cheap GPU (they might even be selling them at cost for nextgens) to prop their CPU division.

I really love how it all fits into place. AMD gets to supply GPUs. That in itself is ok, gives them a bigger market share and needed optimization. It even might of been a bad deal in its own like Nvidia claims (single digit percentage margins). If that was all it could be questionable.
  Now add CPU into the mix. CPU that is great on the servers, very strong in multimedia, but lacking in IPC (Instructions per cycle) compared to Intel. CPU that struggles in games because Dev houses just dont bother optimizing for the hardware, they optimize for development cost. All of a sudden you get this free optimization out of next gen deal. This will force Intel to rethink OC locked 2 core CPUs, it will also make AMD CPUs mainstream again.

Re:Console margins can't be good

[servognome]

The people making the decisions probably have much more data on industry forecasts, know what resources they have available, and what other projects they have in the pipeline. Supporting a console comes at the opportunity cost of tying up engineers, development lines, and capital that could be used towards projects with a greater long-term prospect like supercomputing, tablet, phone, etc.

Re:Console margins can't be good

[DKlineburg]

Ok, so this makes this deal great for AMD. This also makes it sound like Nvidia made the right deal. They only deal with GPU's. They don't need to leverage or care which CPU there GPU is shipped with. This deal might effect Intel as mentioned as well i guess, but again it sounds like Nvidia doesn't gain or loose by this.

Re:Console margins can't be good

[citizenr]

Nvidia loses either way. They chose to lose market share over stretching manufacturing for marginal profits, this might turn out to be a shortsighted decision in few years.

Re:Console margins can't be good

[Anonymous Coward]

HD 4000 series is older than the nvidia gt 200 series.

Re:Console margins can't be good

[mjwx]

If nVidia was this small minded, they deserve whatever they get.

Small minded?

Nvidia didn't want to continue because it was a losing proposition for them. They'd have to sell each unit for a loss for years, does it make business sense to produce 100 million units if you only make a profit on the last 20 million?

Quite the contrary, Nvidia have seen the writing on the wall for the next playstation and are concentrating on other things... Sony is asking them to make the chips for an unacceptable margin, Sony refused to negotiate so Nvidia walked away. Nvidia have plenty of other buyers, even if they sell fewer units, Nvidia will make more money because they aren't selling at a loss.

Re:Console margins can't be good

[AlphaWolf_HK]

My last nvidia card (I think around the age of the gt220, though I don't remember the model) didn't work with the latest unified driver, rather I had to download a separate driver that carried GPU's from x generation to y generation (the old driver was still updated for newer windows though.) They have a different driver for different generations of cards.

AMD basically does the same thing as far as I'm aware, though for some OEM parts you can't use the stock drivers. I'm not sure why this is, but I think it has to do with the OEM wanting to change some parts of the GPU that go outside of AMD's normal driver spec, so you'll be forced to install OEM supplied drivers. If you use a discreet graphics card you shouldn't ever run into this issue, and I think AMD fusion APU's shouldn't have this issue either but I could be mistaken.

Re:Console margins can't be good

[Anonymous Coward]

'casually strolls' the GPU

Is that what the kids are calling it these days?

Re:Console margins can't be good

[Anonymous Coward]

Neither AMD nor nVIDIA own fabs. The only extra costs they need to incur for producing outdated designs are if they need to switch fab companies.

Good Move.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds to me like they made a pretty good move there. My friend asked me a while ago why NVIDIA wasn't inside the PS4. I told him its probably because they didn't want to get locked into a contract with anyone, they wanted to stay independent.

Re:Good Move.

[Thanshin]

I recently read a comment in slashdot that had a bizarre structure. The author gave his opinion by telling a story about how he gave that same opinion to a friend of his.

Re:Good Move.

[MightyYar]

This one time, at band camp, I stuffed a Slashdot comment up my flute.

Re:Good Move.

[Enderandrew]

Samsung has a similar contract to make all the processors for every iPhone, iPad, etc.

Man, that contract must suck. It provides 9% of all Samsung revenue.

Re:Good Move.

[h4rr4r]

It might, if the alternative was to shift that market to GS4 and make more margin on less parts.

Re:Good Move.

[Enderandrew]

Even though these companies compete with finished products, I believe it is a good deal for both companies for Samsung to produce chips for Apple, which is precisely why the deal persists despite their legal wrangling.

It would hurt Samsung to suddenly drop 9% of their revenue. And because they're competing fiercely, they can't suddenly make a higher margin on less parts in a tight market.

Apple has shopped and can't find a better supplier, which is why they still use a company they hate. They get a part they need at the right price.

Re:Good Move.

[h4rr4r]

The more margin comes from selling their own devices. Those they get markup on at the retail level, not wholesale.

Re:Good Move.

[Enderandrew]

I understand, but again they're in a tight market with Apple on the finished phones.

I don't believe they'd sell more phones to see a 9% increase in overall company revenue simply by not making processors for Apple.

Apple has a decent profit margin per product and tons of cash. If Apple had to pay slightly more per proc through another supplier, they'd likely have to eat the difference.

You're suggesting Samsung drop 9% of their total revenue to slightly screw over Apple. But it wouldn't really benefit Samsung. Samsung acting like a dick won't make Samsung suddenly sell tons more phones.

Re:Good Move.

[Anonymous Coward]

The contract likely has little to do with it. This reminds me of PowerVR dedicating all the new chips to the Sega Dreamcast, then being unable to ship any chips for the desktop market for a good long time. Ultimately, by the time they came back tot he PC market it was too late to really compete.

Re:Good Move.

[Anonymous Coward]

In Soviet Russia, flute stuffs Slashdot!

Re:Good Move.

[Enderandrew]

BTW, see today's news as a further example of why Apple is having difficult moving away from Samsung.

http://arstechnica.com/apple/2013/03/apple-hit-with-class-action-lawsuit-over-defective-retina-displays/

I expect the two to continue to partner for some time.

Re:Good Move.

[Anonymous Coward]

I always find these anecdotes lacking: What kind of acquaintance was he? For how long had they known each other? Do they regularly hang out, or are they just facebook-friends?

If they third person of the story is a wife or girlfriend, I definitely need pictures for proof. Otherwise, I'm inclined to think the whole comment was astroturfing or worse.

Now, what were we talking about again?

His name is Tony Tamasi, not Tamsai...

[GrosTuba]

Just sayin'...

Re:His name is Tony Tamasi, not Tamsai...

[steelfood]

And just like that, he goes from being Japanese to Western European.

Re:His name is Tony Tamasi, not Tamsai...

[Anonymous Coward]

Tamsai is not a japanese sounding name.

TaNsai could be one.
Tamasai, Tamusai, Tamisai, Tamesai, Tamosai too.
Even Tamashi.

But not Tamsai. That single "m" doesn't exist in japanese.

In other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm guessing there was a non-competitive clause in there which would have stopped nvidia from selling to Valve for the ValveBox.

Re:In other news...

[limaCAT76]

I'm guessing there was a non-competitive clause in there which would have stopped nvidia from selling to Valve for the ValveBox.

Then why didn't Sony put a non-competitive clause to AMD for stopping AMD from selling to Microsoft for Durango?

Re:In other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

Or how about a non-competitive clause that would have prevented them from being a direct competitor against Sony?

Re:In other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, because it would be a clear violation of the Sherman Act?

Re:In other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm guessing there was a non-competitive clause in there which would have stopped nvidia from selling to Valve for the ValveBox.

Then why didn't Sony put a non-competitive clause to AMD for stopping AMD from selling to Microsoft for Durango?

Uh, maybe because AMD would probably have said "Nope, see ya later" and not signed it? Just because you ignored the fine print in your employment contract doesn't mean multi-billion dollar companies pay no attention to such things. But to be blunt, the only way you'll ever know the real answer to your question is if you're privy to the contract negotiations the two companies held. It would not surprise me if they had discussed that very option at one point or another.

Re:In other news...

[UnknowingFool]

Probably the same reason why IBM probably makes chips for both Xbox 360 and Sony PS3. IBM sells chips to whoever will buy; they only thing Sony can do is tell IBM not to sell the chip that IBM designed for Sony to others. Otherwise, it is a free market. Apple buys chips from Samsung. In the beginning they used stock chips that Samsung could sell to anyone. Now Apple designs their own chips; Samsung probably can't sell these to anyone else.

dem Economics

[puddingebola]

The only thing I can take from this is that the potential growth in mobile platforms far outstrips the costs associated with developing hardware for another game console platform. Like a previous comment asked, I wonder if they told Microsoft to go away as well. If they did, what does this mean in the bigger picture? Is the future of gaming on tablets?

Re:dem Economics

[David_Hart]

The only thing I can take from this is that the potential growth in mobile platforms far outstrips the costs associated with developing hardware for another game console platform. Like a previous comment asked, I wonder if they told Microsoft to go away as well. If they did, what does this mean in the bigger picture? Is the future of gaming on tablets?

My thought is that tablets will allow us to extend games and make them portable. For example, I would have loved to have been able to play Skyrim on the PS3 and the Tablet: The PS3 at home and the Tablet when on the road. Saved games would be synched to the cloud, similar to what Steam does today, and downloaded to the tablet so that you could pick up where you left the game. The capabilities of tablets would have to improve quite a bit before this happens, but it is coming...

Re:dem Economics

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Without some very clever thinking(or a greater acceptance among tablet users of peripherals), that is going to be a brutal UI problem...

Even between PC and console, which are practically cousins in the 'lots of buttons and a pointing device' family of interface devices, you can smell a console port a mile away because of how wrong its interface feels. Some are salveagable(Thank you, thank you SkyUI!), some are basically game-breakers(Sorry GTA IV, I wanted to enjoy you...)

Tablets are a whole different kettle of fish. There are plenty of tablet games; but those tend to involve substantially different mechanics, or a frankly lousy feedbackless attempt an overlaying a touch-sensitive picture of a nintento control pad or something.

I could imagine some very interesting complementary UI arrangements that use a tablet as a second screen for various purposes; but building a control scheme that ports between a console or a PC and a tablet would be quite a feat.

Re:dem Economics

[dnahelicase]

My thought is that tablets will allow us to extend games and make them portable. For example, I would have loved to have been able to play Skyrim on the PS3 and the Tablet: The PS3 at home and the Tablet when on the road. Saved games would be synched to the cloud, similar to what Steam does today, and downloaded to the tablet so that you could pick up where you left the game. The capabilities of tablets would have to improve quite a bit before this happens, but it is coming...

I was thinking the same things as I was playing sim city the other day....man it would be nice if this game was synched to the cloud...

Re:dem Economics

[Dishevel]

Why would you not just hook up a PS3 controller via bluetooth to your tablet?

Re:dem Economics

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Why would you not just hook up a PS3 controller via bluetooth to your tablet?

"(or a greater acceptance among tablet users of peripherals)" Architecturally, there wouldn't be any significant barrier, and it would be the easiest thing to do. I've just never(in a nontrivial amount of observing heavy tablet-use areas) seen any peripheral use aside from keyboard/case quasi-laptop style arrangements, speaker docks(mostly for smaller devices), and video dongles for projector connections. There isn't anything specifically stopping people; but they just don't seem to.

Re:dem Economics

[Anonymous Coward]

My wife does it on certain games she plays on her Transformer Prime.
Works great.

Re:dem Economics

[mrchaotica]

If you think playing an Elder Scrolls game on a console (where you can't patch it using the Construction Set) is a good idea, we should all take your opinion as advice on what not to do!

Re:dem Economics

[ygtai]

Synced to the cloud doesn't mean there's no local copy of the save...

Re:dem Economics

[bfandreas]

I use my PS3 controller for playing games and controlling presentations on my tablet.
You can use stock peripherals on an Android tablet. It's quite trivial.
Just for kicks I tried using a 20 bucks wireless keyboard and mouse that came with a USB receiver. It wokred without fiddling with any system settings.
It's trivial. People simply haven't tried it yet.

Re: dem Economics

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure it is trivial, but most people simply don't care.

Re:dem Economics

[trdrstv]

Without some very clever thinking(or a greater acceptance among tablet users of peripherals), that is going to be a brutal UI problem...

Even between PC and console, which are practically cousins in the 'lots of buttons and a pointing device' family of interface devices, you can smell a console port a mile away because of how wrong its interface feels.... UI arrangements that use a tablet as a second screen for various purposes; but building a control scheme that ports between a console or a PC and a tablet would be quite a feat.

Or you can just make a fully functional/ independent Android version of the Wii U Tablet. If it ran Steam and cloud synced then it could really be awesome. It doesn't have to run high end games to be valuable either. If anything CAN run on a tablet / netbook and has a Steam version of it, this would be a very attractive device.

Hmm...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I wonder how much of the 'opportunity cost/things we could have been working on instead' factor has to do with the fact that AMD is simply in a tighter spot than Nvidia, and how much it has to do with the fact that AMD already makes CPU/GPU combination packages(and seems interested in making more), while Nvidia has nothing of that sort except their 'Tegra', which might be a snappy mobile part; but is fundamentally punching in a different weight class(if nothing else, Sony's plans for 8GBs of RAM get a lot uglier on a 32-bit architecture. Yes, ARM also has something PAE-like; but PAE is mostly a hack that makes running multiple independent programs on a 32 bit system with more than 4GB of RAM palatable, not something you'd want to design a game engine around.)

This isn't to say that Nvidia couldn't have done it(heck, what would buying VIA cost these days?); but Nvidia would need, essentially, an entire new flavor of product line for this job, while AMD, whether they call it this or not, is punching out a modestly customized APU, which almost certainly shares substantially with the ones that they sell for PCs.

Re:Hmm...

[teg]

...how much it has to do with the fact that AMD already makes CPU/GPU combination packages(and seems interested in making more), while Nvidia has nothing of that sort except their 'Tegra', which might be a snappy mobile part...

This is my guess. AMD can offer an integrated part with good performance. If the choice of a PC-like architecture had already been made (no "cell 2"), then there were two other options: An integrated Intel solution (not very good graphics), or a combination of CPU from Intel and GPU from Nvidia. This would mean more/larger assembly, and two solutions to pay for rather than one.

Re:Hmm...

[Guspaz]

All indications are that this AMD APU has way more graphics hardware onboard than anything you'd find in a consumer part, though. This also seems to be the first proper consumer 8-core chip that AMD has produced; they've never put anything out with that sort of core count before in the consumer market that didn't use the quasi-multicore design where every set of two cores were sharing a lot of the hardware (their answer to SMT). The point is that they're already scaling this thing way the heck up from what they've done before.

Could the same not be true for nVidia? Sure, as you point out, ARMv8 isn't ready yet, but the Cortex A15 supports 8-core chips in a 2x4 arrangement, and nVidia could have scaled their GeForce ULP way the heck up. I think the CPU performance would still have lagged way the heck behind, even if they had pushed the clockspeeds much higher than you'd find in a mobile device (Cortex A15 chips are shipping in smartphones at speeds like 1.2 GHz, while the architecture is rated for up to 2.5 GHz).

Because of the CPU limitations (even if CPU power is less important than GPU power in consoles), Intel might have been a more likely target. People don't realize quite how much Intel's GPU performance has improved over the past few years, and at this point they've got a pretty decent platform that they could likely have simply scaled up in execution unit count, if they were willing to do a completely custom part for Sony/Microsoft. On the other hand, while the CPU performance would be a clear and obvious win over an AMD solution, I'm not sure how Intel's existing GPU stuff would perform when scaled up a bunch, or if their architecture is even capable of supporting several times more execution units.

Re:Hmm...

[bill_mcgonigle]

Agreed, but it also sounds like nVidia has unquestionably reached the "big corporation" stage. A scrappy startup would have found a way to make the business happen - today's nVidia says, "nah, not a big enough margin" like IBM would. Some of the more interesting corps would have thrown a skunkworks or subsidiary at it if it was that thin of an effort.

The trouble is, large slow-moving corporations aren't known for innovation, which is essential in this product space. Ordinarily I'd say nVidia ought to watch out for its relevance, but the video card space is fairly tightly locked up with patents. So, perhaps we ought to watch out for an approaching market stagnation.

Re:Hmm...

[0123456]

One thing you're missing is: how many of these consoles are they actually going to sell? Casual gamers have a lot more options with tablets and smartphones than they did when the last generation of consoles came out with really only PCs and older consoles to compete against.

Re:Hmm...

[UnknownSoldier]

> Sony's plans for 8GBs of RAM get a lot uglier on a 32-bit architecture.

Ain't that the truth! Glad you got modded up already.

Sony screwed the up PS3 as well. They run a 64-bit OS when the darn thing only has 512 Megs total (256 RAM + 256 VRAM) !?! One game developer calculated there was about a 3% performance loss due to the compiler being forced to zero-sign-extend 32-bit pointers simple because the OS didn't map the 64-bit pointers back into a 32-bit address space.

I really don't understand WTF Sony is thinking by forcing 8 GB when 4 GB is pretty fine. The OS should not be hogging that much RAM to begin with.

Re:Hmm...

[bfandreas]

Yep, smart things are an actual growth market. Which consoles aren't. I would say Tegra devices outnumber consoles by a factor of 10. If not more. Which is a gut feeling...grain of salt etcetera...
Also cheap Android consoles are turning up left, right and center. Same goes for media devices. Those things are becoming quite common. SmartTVs are Androids, phones are Androids, consoles are Androids, tablets are Androids...

And nVidia has been hooking developers on their Tegra devices for quite some time. So they are VERY consistent when it comes to following their strategy. They made it very clear at CES that mobile/lightweight gaming is what they bet the farmon. And if they take a look on their earnings for the current-gen consoles and they say it wasn't worth it I would tend to trust them on it.

Or (AMD)

[Anonymous Coward]

Or they saw they were going to go x86, and most likely AMD because lol Intel, and weren't up to giving their main competitor any money at all.

I guess it will work out for both Sony and Microsoft in the end. They will be the test-bed for their new processor ideas, which sound very interesting.

Public Relations....

[Luthair]

Why are people running a blatent self-serving PR story?

We lost but... we didn't really want to win it anyway!

Re:Public Relations....

[Kjella]

Why are people running a blatent self-serving PR story?

We lost but... we didn't really want to win it anyway!

Yeah, that was what I was thinking too, of course they say that. And if they'd won instead they'd say the exact opposite and we'd hear this drivel from AMD. It's not like Sony and Microsoft had a lot of other options, who should they have gone to? Intel? VIA? PowerVR? No, if both AMD and nVidia had told them to buzz off they'd come back with a better offer. I doubt AMD sold themselves that cheap, since they knew nVidia wouldn't do that either. Just cheap enough to win, keep their volume up and live to fight another day.

Re:Public Relations....

[evilRhino]

Running a PR story as news is low hanging fruit for the lazy reporter. The sponsor company probably wrote the whole piece themselves.

Re:Public Relations....

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to date a super model, but I had to dump her because she traveled to much.

Re:Public Relations....

[beerdragoon]

If you re-arrange the letters in 'Public Relations' you get 'Crap Built On Lies'.

...just saying.

Re:Public Relations....

[Anonymous Coward]

Much? Where is that? Is that a town?

Re:Public Relations....

[bfandreas]

They were awefully quick to present themselves as a potential console developer at CES. They had a working solution way before Sony cameout of the woodworks with their PS3. All they had to do is slap together some stock hardware, give it a snappy name(which we have subsequently forgotten) and they created quite some buzz with it.
Now imagine what they could do if they actually tried...

Allegedly

[Thanshin]

They, Allegedly, walked away.

Without video proof, we can't be sure they didn't strolled, strutted or even rambled away.

Re:Allegedly

[Narishma]

Not to mention, with phrases like "I'm sure there was a negotiation that went on," the guy just seems to be speculating about what happened, instead of, you know, being there during the negotiations.

Re:Allegedly

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps they moseyed.

Re:Allegedly

[gman003]

Observers from the Ministry of Silly Walks have confirmed (to their disappointment) that their walk was one of the most serious ever recorded, and that they did not amble, dawdle, gambol, hustle, limp, meander, mosey, march, ramble, sashay, saunter, scamper, scurry, sidle, skulk, slink, slog, skip, stroll, stomp, strut, swagger, tiptoe, traipse. They did not even do a forward aerial half turn every alternate step with the left leg, which itself is hardly a silly walk at all.

Re:Allegedly

[c]

They, Allegedly, walked away.

Without video proof, we can't be sure they didn't strolled, strutted or even rambled away.

And those are just the "legs" options. We have to consider wheelchairs and crutches (or even "limping away"), or rolling down the hall in a conference room chair shouting "weeeeee!" the whole way. If there was alcohol involved, crawling is certainly an option. If it was a crack team of negotiators, there may have been rappelling...

Yes, we need video.

Re:Allegedly

[mordjah]

+1 funny!

Re:Allegedly

[steelfood]

Maybe they ran. I'd run too if I saw two entities of pure evil gunning my way, even if they're trying to buy something from me.

Bullshit

[DarthVain]

Considering AMD are producing the CPU chips for both platforms, and the the GPU as well, it isn't surprising that nVidia "walked" away. This is the eventual benefit of AMD buying ATI, in that they can produce both now. I have no doubt that AMD either have special consideration or simply could offer a better bid than nVidia could.

Regardless of the profit, this would be a big feather in AMD's cap. AKA "We produce both the CPU and GPU of all modern game consoles, don't you want to buy our chips?". Also in the bigger scheme of things, if you get game developers in such numbers making games for YOUR video card on millions and millions of consoles for all games, which are ported to say PC, what do you think those games will be optimized for? AMD. Which will look better? AMD. This is something that is going to change things in a pretty large way over the next 10 years.

nVidia should have paid money to be a part of this if only to prevent their rival in AMD from doing so. Perhaps they didn't have the money. More likely they think they have something that will make a difference. I doubt it.

I'm not fired, I quit is the sentiment I feel about nVidia's statement...

Re:Bullshit

[Enderandrew]

This. I'm shocked no one else saw what was obvious here.

AMD is providing a unified CPU/GPU on a single die that shares the same memory and bandwidth. For Nvidia to provide a separate GPU to compete at the same performance and price would be really difficult, if not impossible.

Re:Bullshit

[citizenr]

if you get game developers in such numbers making games for YOUR video card on millions and millions of consoles for all games, which are ported to say PC, what do you think those games will be optimized for?

Forget GPU and think the end of Intel IPC ruling the CPU market. AMD just won CPU race in Gaming market sector. Games will be written for AMD 8 core arch from the grounds up, using every possible x86 extension AMD has to offer, and compiled with something other than Intel 'let me check if you run this on Genuine Intel so I can decide if Ill slow down the code" compiler.

Also think end of PhysX.

Re:Bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

Also think end of PhysX.

In order for PhysX to "end", it would have to have taken off in the first place, which never happened.

Re:Bullshit

[L4t3r4lu5]

Any idea on what GPU the "Steam Box" uses? AMD could end up powering gaming in the living room totally.

Re:Bullshit

[DarthVain]

Agree.

Though game, most games anyway, tend to be more limited by GPU not CPU, so I can see more optimization (specialization) there. That said, in the long run you are right, I think this will give AMD a bump in the market share outside of consoles eventually.

I know the CPU (and likely the GPU as well) will be a special product, so it will be interesting to see what the details actually become and what they throw in there. If they are strategic and implement some interesting things that is not supported by Intel...

I am by no means an AMD fanboy, in fact I am more of an Intel man myself, but I do long for the days of the Athlon 64 days when AMD was actually competitive. Made the market better for everyone. Hopefully this spurs some positive change for AMD.

Re:Bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

Huh? It's as simple as AMD is betting on consoles and NVidia is betting on mobiles/ARM.
The sad thing is, no one cares about the PC anymore.

Re:Bullshit

[DarthVain]

If I was a betting man, I would go with AMD also, simply for their integration which translates into low cost. Of course it remains to be seen how revolutionary the "Steam Box" is. Could be huge or a big flop, or even a non-starter.

Re:Bullshit

[Narishma]

Nobody knows what a Steam Box is, let alone what hardware it uses.

Re:Bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only that, but AMD have been making newer processors using SoC process (i.e. compiling design from HDLvs hand holding their layout). Remember people complain about AMD's latest CPU wasn't layout by hand here for that reason?

Their decision of doing design flow this way offers a lot more flexible as to where they make their chips or mixing/matching the various IP to make custom SoC. They might lose the battle on the desktop as their design won't be as tight and fast as Intel's, but they diversify themselves.

AMD probably gets a good deal in this. Not everyday, you get to experiment with new architectures and learn with other people's money.

Re:Bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think NVidia is only betting on a low-margin market. I am sure they also bet on supercomputers/workstations - anything that will use CUDA/OpenCL.
And I don't think they will forget about the PC, particularly since that has a lot of overlap with workstations etc.

Re:Bullshit

[Guspaz]

"We produce both the CPU and GPU of all modern game consoles, don't you want to buy our chips?"

The Wii U stuck to an IBM PowerPC processor, although it does have an AMD GPU.

IBM made the processors in all three of last generation's consoles (360/PS3/Wii), what impact did that have on IBM's processor sales?

Re:Bullshit

[default luser]

But the price of the AMD solution goes up because they have to use GDDR5 instead of DDR3 for that memory pool. Estimates I have seen are 2-3x the cost versus DDR3, so it adds an extra 30-50 bucks to the BOM.

You would spend the same amount of money buying 8GB DDR3 plus 2GB GDDR5 for your GPU, and you could choose whichever combination of CPU/GPU you want! It would also mean you could use cheaper 1Gbit GDDR5 chips.

I think that Sony is betting on the unified memory architecture giving them an advantage in GPU compute, and we shall see if this really happens. But it is FAR from a cost saving measure - GDDR5 has and will continue to be a low-volume, upmarket technology with a sizable cost premium. Supplying 4x more of it than most mid-range GPUs ship with is a dangerous bet for a system that will eventually have to come down in price!

Re:Bullshit

[Psyborgue]

Supposedly the SteamBox will run Linux. Why would Valve go with AMD when the drivers are shit. Plus. They have even worked with Nvidia on the drivers to get TF2 running better than on windows. I've heard of no similar doings with AMD which sure makes it seem like they're targeting Nvidia.

Re:Bullshit

[DarthVain]

Do they sell commercial versions of their CPU products?

You just answered your own question.

Re:Bullshit

[infinitelink]

I'm not fired, I quit is the sentiment I feel about nVidia's statement...

What's the problem with this? I've quit before even when I wasn't going to be fired: it involved any injury and its after-effects, and management screwing with me. Rather than fight the battle to engage again in the ridiculous workers' comp system, I spent three months working out to fix the muscles involved, then got a better job. What they're saying is, this deal would have a high opportunity cost for them, and they would like to pursue those other opportunities. I mean, who in their right minds wants to work with either Sony or Microsoft given those companies' histories?

Re:Bullshit

[DarthVain]

Didn't think of that. However at the same time perhaps AMD would put more effort into compatibility of they had an installed base of linux...

Re:Bullshit

[DarthVain]

Well if your business is making graphic cards to play video games, and MS, Sony, and Nintendo are the entire market, then you better learn how to work with them.

I guess what I am saying is nVidia sounds like some petulant child, "You can't fire me, I quit!" in that they are making it look like this was their choice, when really what likely happened is they bid and lost because they are not positioned as well as AMD for the business. So it looks like they are looking at "other opportunities", when really they just lost out on a big deal. What other opportunities is a video card manufacturing looking at when they basically lost production on all game consoles? PC market? Can't see how this "derision" is really going to benefit them either.

Re:Bullshit

[Que914]

AMD's 7000 series used DDR5 but everything before that used DDR3. AMD's architecture used a much larger number of stream processors than Nvidia's. So you essentially have AMD with a slower but much wider pipe vs Nvidia with a narrow, but faster pipe. AMD's architecture doesn't need DDR5 to be effective, which is why they're able CPU/GPU on the same die, perform well and still be cost effective.

Re:Bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

I doubt that's the big reason.

AMD's fusion chips are an advantage... but not the massive one you are portraying.

I suspect the big reason is that Sony went...

"Wahhh... if you work with the mighty Sony you'll have to cancel these other contracts (the various consoles etc that nvidia have in the pipeline)" - and the terms offered weren't enough to justify that.

AMD on the other hand... beggars can't be choosers at the moment.

Re:Bullshit

[Guspaz]

Define "commercial". Can I go out to the store and buy something with a PowerPC in it? Yes, there are lots of consumer devices with PowerPC chips. Can I call a distributor and purchase a "bare" PowerPC chip? Yes, they do make them in packages that can use ZIF sockets, for POWER servers if nothing else (also PowerPC processor upgrade kits).

The thing is PowerPC has never caught on for PC use, and isn't nearly as prevalent in the embedded space as MIPS or ARM, so I'd argue that having their processors in all the consoles didn't do much to help them in that regard. Consider that people were still buying desktop and laptop computers from Apple that used PowerPC chips when the XBox 360 came out in 2005 (Apple wasn't shipping any Intel macs when the 360 came out, and didn't finish their transition away from PowerPC until a year later).

Re:Bullshit

[Psyborgue]

I think that there is a sort of chicken and egg problem. Anybody who wants to do 3d anything in Linux will build an Nvidia box. I did. If AMD invested in drivers, perhaps they could gain a larger market share.

Re:Bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

Where's -1, wrong?
HD4870 was the first GDDR5-only card from ATI/AMD. Mid 2008.

Re:Bullshit

[infinitelink]

I don't know about that: PC Gamers are some of the most dedicated, high-spending enthusiasts around. Even as a niche, they're a big chunk of change, and I wouldn't want to get constrained by the consoles either. The Tegra stuff is also very interesting, and given that Smartphones and Tablets are expected to simply continue growing in computing marketshare--perhaps not altogether where PCS and laptops have been the traditional workhorse, but emerging markets where that expense can't be justified--it is not necessarily a bad way to go. Others here mentioned that this "big deal" could be a real ring around their kneck, so I don't know that this is petulance as much as "oh gee, everyone who has cared to keep an eye on trends in business history knows not to over-dedicate themselves to one or another project; we can also be assured of decreasing margins and of our fabs being locked-up in old technology, we'll pass."

Re:Bullshit

[default luser]

1. You have no clue what you are talking about

2. You have no fucking clue what you are talking about!

This is a discussion about the combined GPU + CPU design for the Playstation 4, not about any announced products on the shelf from AMD or Nvidia. This is a TRUE part to be released only by Sony, and it will have access to 8GB shared GDDR5 with a 256-bit bus to feed the GPU/CPU combination.

Re:Bullshit

[robthebloke]

PhysX did take off, and it's still in use all over the place today (It's a very nice SDK to work with). The ageia cards failed as a concept, not because the hardware was bad, but because people wanted better quality simulations, rather than a million boxes in simulation. Arguably, the failure of the ageia cards helped to drive the development of OpenCL & Cuda, and that in my opinion is a very good thing.

Re:Volume too low

[neokushan]

Or maybe it's because of the exact reason stated in the summary - Sony didn't want to pay them enough money.

the resources to do something else

[Anonymous Coward]

> "they wouldn't have the resources to do something else in another sector."

Implying that the resources for a PS4 would be radically different from their PC offerings.

Saving Face

[abigsmurf]

60million units doesn't have revenue potential?

Not only that, the tech they came up with could likely be used for new laptops and set top boxes.

I suspect it was more likely because they didn't have the level of tech needed. ATI had their APU systems lined up already and with tweaking, they're perfect for a console. I'm not sure that NVidia had anything approaching the power of these APUs drawn up (their focus has been on desktop graphics and tablet).

Rumours suggest that the 3DS was going to use NVidia tegra based tech but they couldn't keep the heat down so Nintendo went with the as-seen-in-every-bargain-bucket-chinese-tablet Mali+arm combination.

Re:Saving Face

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not just units, it's global exposure for 8+ years that they're the power behind the PS4.

NV have gambled on the mobile space, now that the PC market has reached a point where all but top end rig can handle true 1080p or better at 60fps.

Re:Saving Face

[DerekLyons]

60million units doesn't have revenue potential?

Certainly it has revenue potential - but that doesn't mean it has sufficient ROI compared to other uses of their capital to justify committing the resources. For example, I can spend today on a project that will make me $100 bucks or on one that will make me $120 bucks - and absent compelling reasons to choose the former, I'm going with the latter.

Re:Saving Face

[Microlith]

The 3DS GPU isn't Mali but something developed by a Japanese company, I don't believe it's been used in anything else at this point.

Re:Saving Face

[Anonymous Coward]

Digital Media Professionals PICA-200, and supposedly it's been used in a number of crappy Chinese mobile phones: http://www.dmprof.com/english/e_products/e_pica_200/

The great thing is, it doesn't even support pixel shaders, it has the same sort of chained texture combiner setup as the Wii, but with a few niceties added to support per-pixel lighting effects. Even a Tegra 1 would stomp the bejesus out of the damn thing, PICA is a really lousy architecture.

The real reason

[ArcadeMan]

Sony wanted to install rootkits on nVidia's computers.

Native multithreading, physics with DirectCompute.

[citizenr]

Forget about AMD GPU optimization. Specific shaders optimization accounts for maybe 10%.

Think about future games being natively written with 8 cores in mind. No more buy 2 Nvidia cards to see some PhysX sparks, all games will use Havoc, Bullet or some other physics library computing on AMD GPUs.

Nvidia doesn't like x86

[Anonymous Coward]

The plan to use x86 processors is almost definitely the reason, Nvidia would have to spend a lot of time and effort to create a new architecture to fit what Sony and MS are planning for these new consoles. AMD already has all the technology, rights, and knowledge to do it with minor tweaking.

The Man Who Said No To Sony

[Stavr0]

There seems to be a lot of similarities to the Snapper Lawnmower story.

"Jim Wier believed that Snapper's health -- indeed, its very long-term survival -- required that it not do business with Wal-Mart. "

Re:The Man Who Said No To Sony

[Anonymous Coward]

And how's that working out for them?

I've never seen a Snapper branded lawnmower (or, it seems even a Snapper branded snowblower) in my entire life, and I live 100 miles away from the US border where people typically would have one of each of those.

I took a look at their Dealer locator. Now I know why. Nobody carries them except stores I've never heard of (Two small engine *repair* places, and a CAR repair place). And I live in the 10th largest city in Canada.

I guess it's up to them, as long as they feel they make money also refusing to deal with Home Depot, Rona, Lowe's, Canadian Tire, and even the major "small business" local places that typically do retail sales of this type of equipment, I doubt I'll ever see even one of their products.

Just for fun, I checked the biggest city in Canada (Toronto) and it's the same story there. Places that fix engines and fix cars sell their products. Neither are places anyone would go to when they want to buy a brand new lawn mower or snow blower.

Maybe in the US every house owns one of their products. Then again, I know that's not true as I visit the states pretty often and I've yet to see even one Snapper branded product while I was there.

Hopefully Nvidia doesn't go down the Snapper path. I like their products and I would like to be able to continue to buy them.

Re:The Man Who Said No To Sony

[RocketRabbit]

We have a Snapper and a Toro and the Snapper is the biggest piece of shit mower I have ever used. Sure it's expensive but it's a piece of crap!

Re:The Man Who Said No To Sony

[Stavr0]

Another quote from that story...
I could go to my grave, and my tombstone could say, 'Here lies the dumbest CEO ever to live. He chose not to sell to Wal-Mart.'
I wasn't condoning nor condemning nVidia's move, just pointing out the similarities. ... or maybe a more accurate analogy would be 3dfx failing to get the SEGA Dreamcast chipset contract.

Re:The Man Who Said No To Sony

[NJRoadfan]

Snapper was acquired by Briggs and Stratton in 2004. Briggs was their primary motor supplier for many years, so its not surprising. I don';t know how they market Snapper branded products though as they have their own line of products.

Re:The Man Who Said No To Sony

[RocketRabbit]

No, I realize that, but the article about the Snapper guy repeatedly emphasized that his product was expensive because of its high quality. I think he's full of it!

Re:The Man Who Said No To Sony

[Anonymous Coward]

You know what's messed up? I work at walmart (yeah /kills self) and I was in the lawn and garden section a week ago and I saw a cardboard advertisement thing for snapper lawnmowers. So apparently they changed their mind. (I'm in central NY)

If Sony is being cheap about graphics cards

[felipou]

then maybe the PS4 won't be so expensive?

Re:If Sony is being cheap about graphics cards

[Anonymous Coward]

then maybe the PS4 won't be so expensive?

I do so very much hate the "forced laughter and claiming the parent post was a joke" response. It's pointlessly smug, annoying, and most importantly, bland and overplayed. It's right there in the McDonald's of generic internet responses.

So, in light of Sony's historic greed and lack of concern for their customers, I'll answer your post simply: Not likely.

I guess that's...

[davebo357]

I guess that's just not the way it's meant to be played.

It was a choice of business, thats all.

[Anonymous Coward]

As he said Nvidia has a lot going on and the decision to develop for the ps4 and next xbox were just to small of a margin in profits compared to what they are currently doing.

It makes sense really. If NVidia currently has their plate full with projects why would they take on a new project with less profits and sacrifice the ones they stand to make more money off of?

Besides ATI may suck at making desktop/laptop gpus, desktop/laptop cpus and such but they have a lot of experience with console gpus.

Re:Volume too low

[slackware 3.6]

It wasn't just sales that were dissappointing. The console was dissappointing. It sits in a box almost never used. I loved the PS2, the PS3 was the last straw.

Maybe... FRIEND...

[Anonymous Coward]

you should mention what OS version, what video card, etc you were running such that their... CRAP... blew up on you.

I've got a Radeon HD4770 and everything since 11.4 or so worked great (Until they dropped the 4000 series cards in 12.6 then added them back in I guess 12.8).

I have OpenCL 1.0 support, and mined bitcoins on that particular hardware for the whole of winter '12-'13 and had no problems. And that was on linux too. The windows drivers were a breeze to install and operate in comparison.

Profits are the whole point

[sjbe]

Having all games (and thus their ports) on million and millions of xbox and PS consoles designed and optimized for your specific hardware for the next 10 years is worth money. Any profit they actually get is just icing.

Profit is never "just icing". Profit is the entire purpose for a for-profit company. No (sane) business exists to just make revenue. They have to do more than break even on the job.

Re:Profits are the whole point

[DarthVain]

I guess what I am saying is that strategically this will allow them to make more profit on both their CPU and GPU lines into the future. The fact that they will turn a profit while at the same time positioning themselves for future profits is just a bonus.

Think of MS selling the xbox at a loss initially for future profit down the road.

Revenue is not the important bit

[sjbe]

60million units doesn't have revenue potential?

Wrong question. The correct question is whether it has profit potential. Revenue is just how much you sell. Profits are how much you keep. Profits = Revenue - Expenses. The revenue is not sufficiently larger than the costs then there is no point in being in that line of business.

Re:Revenue is not the important bit

[abigsmurf]

Seems to me like it could've funded their own alternative to AMD's APU line which seems to be something they'd like a lot given they're investing in CPU development.

Re:Revenue is not the important bit

[UnknowingFool]

And if they only made $0.50 per chip in profit, yes that's $30 million dollars but that if that ties up half of the engineers for a company that makes $4B in revenue and $500M in profit, it's not worth it is it? For a console or consumer, the chips (even the CPU) are on thin margins as it is.

Sony never really considered Nvidia seriously

[edxwelch]

I'd say Sony already decided to use AMD before talking to Nvidia. The Nvidia meeting was only a way to make AMD reduce their asking price.
Nvidia do not sell APUs, so they had no chance really. Combining the GPU and CPU on same silicon reduces the price, the power consumption and also both CPU and GPU share the same memory, giving better performance (http://vr-zone.com/articles/amd-afds-seattle-trinity-follow-on-kaveri-to-have-true-shared-memory/16258.html)

Re:Sony never really considered Nvidia seriously

[Anonymous Coward]

AFAIK, the original story was the Sony was all set to use Intel Larrabee. Of course that whole Larrabee thing imploded, so they needed to go out to bid again.

The choice was between AMD (a new vendor) and Nvidia(GPU)/IBM(CPU) which is the same as PS3. AMD came in with a low-ball bid as they already had a chip for Durango (Xbox720) which they could tweak for Sony. Nvidia and IBM couldn't agree on who was going to take less money to compete, so they walked away. There was no real negotiation as AMD effectively set the price with their bid and could afford to low-ball it since they were amortizing the engineering costs across 2 game consoles.

Complte lies and yellow journalism

[Anonymous Coward]

Go to the original interview. Read the key quote.

"I'm sure there was a negotiation that went on,"

Does ANYONE in a company that is aware of a thing phrase their knowledge like this? "I'm sure" means "I don't know, but assume a company like ours must have been in the running, so I'll talk as if that is fact."

Here's the truth, for Slashdot readers so out of the loop, they are completely clueless.

Nvidia does not make console/PC-class CPUs. It struggles badly to even produce the Tegra ARM SoC parts- parts that are currently 2 years and falling against the original roadmap Nvidia had at the start of the Tegra project.

Nvidia does not make console/PC-class 'chipsets' - the 'glue' that interconnects the major system components. Once upon a time it produced chipsets for the PC market, but was pushed out entirely, first by Intel, and then by AMD.

All Nvidia could have provided was a VERY non-integrated GPU. That is a completely useless technology for this round of consoles from Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft and Valve. Nvidia was never in the running because Nvidia never had the ability to provide the required chips. Neither did Intel, by the way.

PS things get even worse for Nvidia when you consider that AMD fabricates many of its own chips via 'Global Foundries' (the 'independence' of the two is an investing and accounting con-job).

Weak console cycle

[Anonymous Coward]

I think Nvidia realizes that this time around, consoles have a crapton more competition than they did 6-7 years ago. Phones and tablets are going to prevent a bunch of people from even thinking about buying a console. Likely the whole cycle sells less than half of the PS3/360 one.

$60 controller for $3 game

[tepples]

Because the Dual Shock 3 doesn't speak the special "Made for iPad" protocol. Even on Android, I don't see a lot of people buying a $59.99 Dual Shock 3 for a $2.99 game, especially when Android system updates (such as 4.1 to 4.2) tend to change the Bluetooth stack to break the driver applications that these controllers use. It's like using a PC with a TV and multiple gamepads: possible, but in practice never done outside hardcore geekdom.

Tablets and gamepads

[tepples]

Casual gamers have a lot more options with tablets and smartphones than they did when the last generation of consoles came out with really only PCs and older consoles to compete against.

But do they actually make use of those options? For example, are tablet and smartphone users pairing Bluetooth gamepads to their devices? I'd love to see statistics saying so. But until then, consoles will dominate game genres that traditionally work better with the physical buttons of a gamepad than with a flat, feedbackless sheet of glass. The other option is to come up with some reliable control scheme for playing a platformer like Mega Man series on a tablet.

X7A specs

[tepples]

The first Steam box is the Xi3 Piston, which appears to be a rebadge of the X7A Modular computer.

Re:X7A specs

[Narishma]

If that's a Steambox, then any PC that can run Steam and be connected to a TV is also a Steambox.

Re:X7A specs

[Anonymous Coward]

If that's a Steambox, then any PC that can run Steam and be connected to a TV is also a Steambox.

Wrong way around. The SteamBox is a Steam-running PC that can be connected to a TV.

The important point is that it was designed from the ground up to connect to a TV, as opposed to having to get HDMI/DisplayPort outputs on a desktop (and fighting it out with whatever configuration bullshit has to be done for THAT).

Re:X7A specs

[UnknownSoldier]

From those specs specifically mention "APU" it looks like to be an AMD CPU.

* 3.2GHz quad-core x86-based APU
* Radeon 7000 series GPU w/384 programmable cores

At least game developers care

[tepples]

The sad thing is, no one cares about the PC anymore.

"No one" is a strong phrase. What do you think developers are using to make mobile games other than a PC (or a Mac, which Apple builds from essentially PC parts)?

In 10 years these games will be primitive.

[elucido]

CPU technology will be in the quantum computer era within those 10 years as the nano scale limit is breached. It's basically a dead end for consoles. The consoles will have initial success and then ultimately fail within 4-5 years. They will not have a 10 year life span, 4-5 years is now the lifespan of consoles.

Futurist?

[DarthVain]

Quantum Computers? Really? I wouldn't hold your breath.

My money is we will have workable fusion power plants before we have a usable quantum computer that is able to play video games.

Re:Futurist?

[elucido]

Quantum Computers? Really? I wouldn't hold your breath.

My money is we will have workable fusion power plants before we have a usable quantum computer that is able to play video games.

All the pieces are falling into place for Quantum Computers within the next 10 years. Price and manufacturing is the issue as that hasn't been solved yet but I wont be surprised if that is solved in the next 5 years.

Re:Futurist?

[DarthVain]

To my understanding, current problems include, scaling, miniaturization, testable reliable results, and programming. None of which has been addressed.

Scaling. They have only been able to make "computers" with dozens of gates. I traditional computer has on the order of millions.

Miniaturization. We are not talking about the difference of micro architectures. It is not even micro but a huge (relatively speaking) setup for those 30 gates or whatever.

Testable results. There is a degree of error intrinsically involved that makes successful testing, problematic.

Programming. Using non binary architecture means that you need to develop everything new, including the programming which hasn't been done.

So while it isn't simply the realm of science fiction books anymore, unless something remarkable in a breakthrough occurs, the speed in which current advances are taking place, a "workable" quantum computer, if MUCH farther away than 10 years.

no brain decision

[onyxruby]

Low profit plus opportunity cost equals a bad decision. Nvidia made the right business choice. That capacity can now be used for more profitable products.

Re:no brain decision

[Anonymous Coward]

Right now, maybe. But in a few years? This might cost them dearly. How many millions of units can they push in a PC market that's dwindling? When all the major consoles run AMD tech, and all the tablets run ARM or Intel tech, what future does nVidia have? By comparison, AMD now has their products everywhere they can, including up to half of the PC market that remains.

Nice PR Spin by Nvidia

[tyrione]

It's a crock of crap that the market isn't lucrative enough. They got beat out and when people started asking them how come not them, this is their answer.

Almost, but not quite...

[slew]

No sane business holds grudges like that. If MS wants it, it'll be written into the next contract and either nVidia will agree or not get the contract.

Apple anyone? Rumor was Apple was going with Nvidia. Nvidia announced that had a deal with Apple and then Apple (well Jobs) killed the deal. Why? Apple has to announces things on Apple's schedule i.e. at some hyped Apple event.

Many businesses are run by what many would consider to be not sane people. Sometimes that helps the business and others it hurts the business.

I think you mangledthe rumor a little bit. I believe the alleged event you were alluding to was that Apple punishing ATI (not Nvidia) for a pre-announcement faux pax... Of course it probably actually didn't happen that way IRL, but it still makes a funny internet fable...

Re:Native multithreading, physics with DirectCompu

[UnknowingFool]

That's assuming that the games can be constructed to pass off the physics computing to another core in parallel to current processing. Some problems can't be solved by throwing another core onto it. It's like the old saying, just because it takes 9months for one woman to have a baby, you can't make a baby in a month with 9 women. If games don't change tremendously to be highly parallel then there isn't a major advantage.

Can be connected vs. designed to be connected

[tepples]

any PC that can run Steam and be connected to a TV

It's not whether it can be connected to a TV. Effectively all PCs for the past two and a half decades have a VGA or HDMI output or both, which works with an HDTV. It's whether it's marketed as being TV-ready, whether the case is designed not to look out of place next to a TV, and whether the software shipped on it is TV-ready with the option of USB gamepad control for everything. That might be enough to get over the traditional hurdles that hinder HTPC adoption by those who aren't hardcore geeks.

NVIDIA's Own Console

[ygtai]

Does anyone remember NVIDIA's own console announced a couple months ago? There may be reasons NVIDIA didn't want to spend resources on PS4...

Re:Native multithreading, physics with DirectCompu

[citizenr]

There is no IF here, they will have to adapt to 8 parallel threads at 1.6GHz. You cant write modern game running on one 1.6GHz core.

Low end ATI/AMD are buggy,

[rsilvergun]

at least the 4600 line was. I wanted one really bad. Great performance and great visual quality. I just couldn't get the darn thing stable. I miss my 1600 (a slightly faster and cooler running 9800) but it can't keep up with Street Fighter 4 or Sonic Generations.

I've heard if you step up to the $300-$400 amd range the problems go away, but I don't want that much card. My GT 240 with DDR was $90 bucks....

Re:Low end ATI/AMD are buggy,

[Anonymous Coward]

heck man, I don't even think the x1600 has proper support for most current games. I'd suggest at least a mainstream card a 7770 can be had for 100 dollars from a RETAIL store like microcenter. It's a proper card and a good step up from your gt 240 when you bought THAT card. It's even competent enough to run all modern games and I've had no compatibility problems.

Re:Native multithreading, physics with DirectCompu

[robthebloke]

Think about future games being natively written with 8 cores in mind.

Because game devs haven't spent the last 7 years writing games natively for 6 cores?

Re:Native multithreading, physics with DirectCompu

[UnknowingFool]

Again, some problems cannot be solved by throwing more cores on the problem. Using another core to handle the physics computation might be okay if the process can be done that way. If the game/physics process is interwoven it doesnt't gain any performance by using another core. If that isn't clear look at graphics cards. You can cross link them for better performance but that only gets you so much. Graphics cards from 5 or 6 years ago will not be able to handles the new Crysis at max settings no matter how many of them you throw at the problem. To play the new Crysis you are going to have to buy the newest and fastest graphics cards.

Re:Native multithreading, physics with DirectCompu

[citizenr]

Of course you can break almost every problem into smaller subproblems. Of course there are things you cant do (markov chains?), but games arent one of them, 90% of game code can run in parallel (including physics, how else do you think GPU would compute physics? GPU is a MASSIVE array of small CPUs).

Re:Native multithreading, physics with DirectCompu

[UnknowingFool]

Parallel computing relies on the assumption that the tasks can be executed concurrently. If the tasks are interdependent, parallelization fails to gain any advantage. Not all computing can be broken down in such a way. From Wikipedia:

"When a task cannot be partitioned because of sequential constraints, the application of more effort has no effect on the schedule. The bearing of a child takes nine months, no matter how many women are assigned."

In this particular case, throwing another core to run a physics engine may not provide enough benefit. By your logic, the only difference between the newest GPUs and older ones is that there are more cores in the new ones? Or did the manufacturers work on making the cores faster and changing the architecture?