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."
His name is Tony Tamasi, not Tamsai... (Score:5, Informative)
Just sayin'...
Re:Allegedly (Score:4, Informative)
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:Console margins can't be good (Score:2, Informative)
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 (Score:4, Informative)
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.