Nvidia Walked Away From PS4 Hardware Negotiations 255
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."
Hmm... (Score:5, Interesting)
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:Wonder what they told MS (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Console margins can't be good (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Public Relations.... (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Bullshit (Score:5, Interesting)
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:dem Economics (Score:4, Interesting)
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:Wonder what they told MS (Score:5, Interesting)
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.