CONFIRMED: PS3 to use "Nvidia-based Graphics processor&

[Sabastian]

Simply put its Sony's market to lose so unless the PS3 is a complete pile Sony will hold the lead in the console market.

Yes.... and Microsoft is a very powerful competitor. Sony is worried. I think their choice to go with NV is a direct result of the fact that they could not keep pace with ATi or NV in terms of graphics. Their in house solution may have been failing miserably. It was my impression that indeed Sony was to do the graphics on the PS3. Maybe that was the wrong impression I suppose but there were no indicators saying otherwise AFAIK.

NV and ATi are the graphics titans. Big .. and fast.

 

[chrisrt2]

A *ing shock, yet I was expecting something like this!

 

[wco81]

And I submit that a big part of the Xbox marketing was superior HW/graphics. Especially at launch because how else were they going to justify people buying their box over the PS2 or the GC, which both came with established game franchises?

Remember, MS could have launched in 2000 but they would not have had HW parity with the PS2 and Gates was quoted as saying he wanted 2 or 3 times the performance of the PS2.

Other than Halo, KOTOR and a handful of other titles, the superior HW/graphics remains the main value proposition for the Xbox. XBL to a certain extent too but only a small percentage of Xbox gamers have signed up for XBL.

 

[DopeyFish]

Don't forget that Sony is probably putting in their old PSX/PS2 chips into PS3. This means more $$$ to dish out. And if EE/VU was any indication... CELL will be very expensive. So once that's all said and done, Microsoft probably gearing to lose about as much at launch as they did with Xbox (this time without a hard drive)...

Remember, if PS3 is around as expensive as PS2 was, Sony might bankrupt themselves.

And I submit that a big part of the Xbox marketing was superior HW/graphics. Especially at launch because how else were they going to justify people buying their box over the PS2 or the GC, which both came with established game franchises?

Remember, MS could have launched in 2000 but they would not have had HW parity with the PS2 and Gates was quoted as saying he wanted 2 or 3 times the performance of the PS2.

Other than Halo, KOTOR and a handful of other titles, the superior HW/graphics remains the main value proposition for the Xbox. XBL to a certain extent too but only a small percentage of Xbox gamers have signed up for XBL.

It was the selling point initially. Now Microsoft has kick-ass games and you have bad taste in games.

 

[SegaR&D]

WOW...

Sony is REALLY desperate

 

[Sabastian]

In fact it might have been to save face considering Microsoft rejected them for their next console.

Rejected? I don't follow NVIDIA that close, but I seem to remember public statements from them pretty much ruling out any interest in working with MS again.

Sure. But with Microsofts next console stamped with an ATi logo .. It says to the consumer "we have a new winner here". These behind the scenes legalities don't mean a damned thing to the everyday consumer. It is a matter of marketing perceptions. NV was more then unwilling to drop its pricing for Microsoft to be cost worthy in the face of a pricing change. Maybe to save their stock pricing or they figured that Microsoft has deep pockets and can afford it while saving their bottom line and stock price. Also it is possible that they had this deal with Sony behind the scenes and were willing to forgo the difficulties of loosing the xbox next in favor of PS3 royalties. For some reason though my gut tells me that this deal is more spur of the moment.

Ether low pricing on royalties from NV or failure on Sony's GPU development .. it comes off as a late announcement but it might not be and this would explain NV's hard nosed stance with MS WRT pricing and not being worried about the next xbox project. The whole affair smells fishy, maybe that's because we are talking about nvidia though.

 

[chrisrt2]

Sony isn't planning on passing this cost onto the consumers are they? I mean what happens when M$ strategically drops to $200 and Sony is stuck spewing out $500+ to produce a console. They can drop it along with M$ and go bankrupt or keep it high priced and loose MANY units sold...

Is this a setup for failure on Sony’s part?

 

[SegaR&D]

Sony isn't planning on passing this cost onto the consumers are they? I mean what happens when M$ strategically drops to $200 and Sony is stuck spewing out $500+ to produce a console. They can drop it along with M$ and go bankrupt or keep it high priced and loose MANY units sold...

Is this a setup for failure on Sony’s part?

Thats exactly what I'm wondering.

This may be the beginning of the end for Sony.

 

[Tuttle]

CELL will be very expensive.

I don't think we have any indication of the cost to produce Cell chips. There is the tremendous amount of money the three parties are investing in the new architeture, but since Cell chips are supposed to be able to power all ranges of consumer electronic equipment, one has to assume that the chips can't possilby be that expensive to produce. Unless S/I/T are all smoking one gigantic crack pipe.

 

[Farid]

Virtually nothing then. All we have is a bunch of generic terms. For all we know Sony could have gone with Nvidia for their software rather than their hardware. My point is that this announcement tells us nothing about how the PS3 will compare to what the competition is working or that Sony is better off for having gone with Nvidia.

cybamerc, let me ask you that; what are you complaining about?
Are you complaining about people speculating about future and hypothetical performances based on paper thin bits of info, on thoses very B3D boards? People over B3D, speculating on PS3 hardware?
Come on cybamerc, you know the board, that's the name of the game.

 

[nAo]

Faf..don't worry..nvidia has this since 1999:
Clip-less rasterization using line equation-based traversal

And I want to say to that guy who is writing here that just a small portion of the scene needs to be clipped....well...the problem is how to find that small portion without slowing your engine too much. After that..clipping in homogeneous coordinates is easy 8)

ciao,
Marco

 

[Red1234]

This gotta be the most interesting news so far to come out in a while...competition is good..lol

I thought PS2 was going to be remained as most hyped machine ever...now Sony and Nvidia are joining forces..my god..

 

[Sabastian]

CELL will be very expensive.

I don't think we have any indication of the cost to produce Cell chips. There is the tremendous amount of money the three parties are investing in the new architeture, but since Cell chips are supposed to be able to power all ranges of consumer electronic equipment, one has to assume that the chips can't possilby be that expensive to produce. Unless S/I/T are all smoking one gigantic crack pipe.

Sony has its own fab. If anyone can produce the chips needed cost effectively, it is sony over MS who has to out source its chipset production. In a funny way TSMC and Sony will be more direct competitors in the next gen consoles then they are now. That is mainly because as of yet NV still buys the xbox chipsets from TSMC and then resells them to MS for the xbox IIRC. If TSMC can beat Sony in terms of production costs and then pass that on to MS and still profit then Sony will face major pricing issues. Otherwise Sony will loose money to stay competitive in market share on a per console basis in favor of licensing royalties from developers.. which is where the real money is.

 

[Sonic]

CELL might be expensive to produce but must realize that the cost of manufacturing will decrease by large amounts as time goes on. When you have the economies of scale working for you and in a few years you can produce the machine and still make quite a nice profit then all will be good. What many may not realize is that Sony hasn't had a huge profit from PS2 yet, but that doesn't mean PSTwo won't be a cash cow.

I would agree with a few people who are saying that Sony's internal GPU aren't up to snuff and that is one reason they are working with Nvidia.
That still doesn't change the implications this has for the next generation. I see no reason why Sony won't market the PS3 as the only console to provide a Geforce graphics chip inside. It just adds fuel and reasoning for casual gamers or Nividia fans to pick up a PS3.

This definitely won't be the end of Sony especially if CELL is giong to be introduced in most of its electronic products as well as appliances. There will be gargantuan savings from having a specific architecture powering all those.



I think for the first time Microsoft really out to fear PS3 in the next generation. Not only is Sony and its console pretty much guaranteed to be #1 but with this announcement it goes along way to starting the hype machine and also giving reasons why Sony will be successful.

What will happen if the Xenon GPU pales in comparison with what Nvidia will supply Sony?

 

[function]

In fact it might have been to save face considering Microsoft rejected them for their next console.

Rejected? I don't follow NVIDIA that close, but I seem to remember public statements from them pretty much ruling out any interest in working with MS again.

I seemed to remember that Nvidia had still been after the Xbox 2 contract, but had lost out. A quick Google search for Nvidia's comments at the time brought up this:

Still, Nvidia said it was disappointed to have lost a chance to support the Xbox 2, which is expected to be released in 2005 or 2006. "As far as our own business and desires are concerned, we don't like losing design wins," said a spokesman, who noted that Nvidia will continue to supply the original Xbox and work with Microsoft to develop drivers, the DirectX API, and the Microsoft Media Center PC platform.

http://www.my-esm.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=13100350

 

[Megadrive1988]

SegaR&D:

WOW...

Sony is REALLY desperate

*bites*

okay perhaps they are. more so than
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/rec.games.video.sega/msg/bc1fe929bf7e8971?dmode=source
then.

 

[Vince]

The people talking about cost-cutting as if Microsoft is now going to undercut Sony and win is borderline funny. First of all, I believe STI will outpace Microsoft and their founderies by a reasonable margin just as they have historically done (45nm in 2006). Secondly, PS2 has already been undercut by XBox/Cube in Europe and Japan and it's still outsold them by something like 2:1.

For some reason though my gut tells me that this deal is more spur of the moment.

Highly unlikely, several of us have been talking about this in random and sporadic PMs or AIM for over a year. I remember talking to Panajev about it around the same time word from IBM was that Cell was sampling at 90nm, so that's around summer of 2003 atleast.

I suppose it's possible, but in hindsight, there are too many sources, to much correlation for this to have been just noise that appears to have been a pattern.

The whole affair smells fishy, maybe that's because we are talking about nvidia though.

Ding! I'm not talking about you specifically, but this deal is going to be a lightning-rod for attack around here with the "enthusiast" mindset of nVidia.

 

[Sonic]

Megadrive, are you implying that SegaR&D is the long lost Nobody's Perfect?

 

[SegaR&D]

hey megadrive, whats a E&S TR5?

 

[TheMightyPuck]

I guess I'm repeating myself but I don't get this. Did everyone think the PS3 graphics tech was going to suck or something and now that they've announced an agreement with Nvidia it is going to rock?? Before this announcement, what exactly did you think SONY was going to use for PS3 graphics? Some outdated technology or the latest cutting edge technology? If you say latest cutting edge, then it's the actual tech that is exciting, not the particular partner who makes it.

I'll admit this was my belief:

V. Good CPU (Cell) + V. Average GPU/Rasterizer (Sony/Toshiba) + Pigheaded development environment.

After todays announcement:

V. Good CPU (Cell) + V. Good GPU (nVidia) + Developer-friendly dev environment. (Sony/nVidia/IBM)

If you were expecting a competitive, yet eccentric all Sony design then it only goes to follow that removing some of the weakest links (Sony/Toshiba's GFX ) and replace it with expertise from market leaders in the field, then obviously your expectations are going to have been raised some.

So this announcement is really about allaying the fear that Sony would stick to the PS2 approach? I guess I just always assumed Sony would (a)put a crazy ass over the top graphics chip in the box and (b) spend a lot of time and energy making sure content creation tools were attractive to developers. This generation is going to be all about content creation tools as it seems the time to market of each generation and the costs of development get bigger and bigger. Content time from conception to market is critical this time around (well I suppose it always is) I think because game execution and game development share a similarity: some processes are easier to parallelize than others (e.g. ten great writers can write ten great books but add them together and you don't necessarily get one great book in a tenth the time )