ATI and Microsoft Technology Agreement...

Eh? But that's irrelevant - both ATI and NVIDIA each have a console under their belt (GC and Xbox respectively). In terms of experience, they're both pretty much equal coming out of the gate for Xbox2 (NVIDIA in the lead if you want to count board layout, audio, i/o, mcp, etc).

 

Actually, NVidia has TWO consoles under its belt if you count the NV2.

 

It's three if you count TDFX and their arcade board business.

 

Both companies have lots of expereince in different areas, so what? At the end of the ATI offered what MS considered the best deal. If the XB2 turns out anything like XB1 it's gonna be little more than than a custom PC job anyway (So I'm not sure console design will count for much) and ATi already got the experience with dealing with Nintendo.

Out of curiosity just how old is the Nintendo deal by now anyway?

 

Doesn't this break backwards compatibility?

What if a game maker for the XB1 used NV** textures instead of DX1 ones?

i.e Splinter Cell on the PC has three different render paths:

Path 1 (GeForce3 and above): (pretty much == xbox)
shadow buffer dynamic lighting
uses vertex position modifiers
light beams stopped by depth texturing
pixel shader effects
reflection

Path 2 (ATI Radeon 8500 and above/Parhelia): ( below xbox )
Shadow projector for dynamic lighting
No vertex position modifiers
No light beams stopped by depth texturing
pixel shader
reflection

Path 3 (GeForce256/2MX/4MX/Radeon): (way below xbox)
Shadow projector for dynamic lighting and nothing else.

Unless Splinter Cell is modified to be more PC-like, then it can't run on the XB2.

 

Why do you think that backward compatibility is ATI problem? It is MS problem and noone for now knows if MS wants a such thing.

 

IIRC, NV2 never made it into any console. So if anything, that's a mark against nVidia. (They tried, and failed.)

Though that was so long ago that I wouldn't really consider it relevant.

 

It's irrelevant now, surely, but the point is that some were decrying ATi's "lack of experience" as far as knowing how to position its resources, etc., for xBox2, and I was making the point that they have more console experience now than nVidia had when it initially took the xBox contract, so that if they think nVidia did OK with xBox they can expect at least as much from ATi with xBox2.

Why on earth would you do that?.... There's a wee bit of difference between actually supplying for a shipping console and making plans/proposals for a console that never ships (nv2.) If you're going to use that criteria you can also say that 3dfx/GigaPixel had "console experience", too, since GP submitted plans to M$ for the original xBox graphics--which were rejected. The conversation makes little sense unless we mean that "experience" denotes actual experience.

Why not just dilute the entire concept of "console experience" and conclude that anybody, anywhere who has ever designed a board or a chip for any purpose has "console supply experience"...?...

I think we've beaten the "console experience" line to death, don't you?

 

It's possible MS put an IP useage clause in the original X-Box dev contract. If they have they could quite easily transfer use of that IP to the ATi contract.

Plus wot Dave said.

 

ATI had their HR folks at GDC this year (March, in San Jose) doing the hiring in anticipation of this contract. As they said, they already have a ton of engineers and with Matrox laying off their entire Orlando team, who knows if anyone good was snatched up.

 

Interesting...

 

what do you mean?

NV2 was going to be used in either A.) a new console to replace Saturn, or B.) an 3D accelerator upgrade for the existing Saturn. but NV2 was scapped because it didnt do what Sega wanted, and it didnt work right or both.

http://firingsquad.gamers.com/features/nvidiahistory/page3.asp

 

Nice couple of markets you mention there, from your examples I can only assume you agree that loss leading usually is a method to make the market less transparant

In the markets where it works it is because the initial product has no alternative use (and because we consumers are stupid enough to make it work). In the markets where it works poorly such as in consoles and mobiles it is up to the manufacturer/carrier/whatever to technologically lock down their products. We dont need laws to make this kind of doing business easier, in the end it only hurts consumers ... if they want to do it fine, but at their own risk.

If people refuse to buy cartridges but instead just keep buying new printers that is a problem for manufacturers ... it is not what they intend with their product? Well tough cookey.

 

What's transparency got to do with it? What consumers care about "market transparency"? The loss-leading price is to get you to buy the original base product. Sony/Nintendo/MS get this so that they can get their foot in the door and get you buying their games. You asked for the market to be allowed to decide for themselves, and loss-leading is what they have decided.

You get the base unit cheaply, and then you decide what consumables you buy, when and why.

Look at markets where the base unit and the consumables are disconnected, for instance DVD. DVD players can be had very cheaply, or very expensively. The market is more transparent (leaving aside that companies like Sony also own film studios). Other companies supply the DVD's and these are still very expensive for what they are, because you pay for the artistic expression on the DVD (rather than the physical materia), because this is what the market will stand.

If you make a console more expensive, this will not change the price of the games - all that will happen is that the likes of Sony will suffer lower sales as people buy less consoles and thus less games. That's why loss leading works - it gets your foot in the door.
For instance, do you think the mobile phone market would be as big as it is if the phones were sold at a realistic $300 instead of a subsidised $50 with a contract (that you need in one form or another anyway)?

Let me give you an extreme example. Suppose Sony gave away Playstations for free, and ate the whole cost of the loss. Which games would those people then buy? Would they go out and spend money on another console, or would they fill the Sony coffers? In this extreme example, loss leading works *if* you make enough sales from consumables to offset the loss on the hardware. The cheaper your hardware is, the more you can cut the price before you really hurt. That's why MS is at a disadvantage - they hurt a lot sooner than Sony because their hardware is a lot more expensive without delivering a substantially more attractive product (in terms of "playing fun games").

The fact that companies do make money off loss-leading proves that it does work when it's done right, but it's really more about marketing than anything else.

That's why printers still cost more than cartridges. You don't buy a new printer instead of new cartidges do you? The basic rule of loss-leading is that you don't give away more than you get back from sales. That's why it works.

 

I see your point, you are right I had not thought it through ... but I still say we dont need laws to reinforce this kind of business practice, it is possible to irrevocably lock phones and it is possible to make unlocking consoles for alternative uses impossible without live reverse engineering at the chip level.

BTW the case for consoles is a bit different because of cross console game releases and the console manufacturers margins ... but you are right.

 

But there arn't any laws to enforce it. The loss-leading model has developed purely from free market competition. Which is what you wanted.

The last thing manufacturers want is for the customer to know how much a product *actually" costs to make, and where all the profit margins go. Wouldn't you think you were getting screwed if you knew that a $20 CD cost 50c to manufacture, $1 to the artist, $10 to the record company and the rest to the retailer? Don't you think a lot of people would feel they were getting shafted if they found that most retail prices are a *minimum* 50-100 percent markup? The *last* thing manufacturers want it price transparency.

True, but simlocking happens to ensure the supplier of the phone/airtime contract deal doesn't get screwed by you taking the cheap subsidized phone and then using it on someone elses airtime. It also helps reduce churn, which is pretty expensive.

The market gets around sim-locking by allowing trade-in deals and other "honeypot" deals that encourage you to switch suppliers and stay with the new suppliers.

Yeah, it's a pretty standard marketing/business model that can be applied in many different markets. It's all about appealing to that very human emotion that we are getting a bargain. Sure, if you look down the line and could add up all the consumables, it might not look so cheap, but when the price of something gets below that magic "disposable income" level, it is much more attractive to consumers and impulse purchases.

 

I believe it was a hardware(or possibly software) issue; macrovision wouldn't work with progressive scan enabled and the MPAA requires it to work on all dvd players sold.

 

How would this allow any progressive DVD players to exist?

 

Agreed. Besides, isn't macro vision just there to b*gger up the output timing/signal/something for video recorders so that they can't cope?

Since a VCR would only accept interlaced signals anyway (AFAIK), you wouldn't need to have it on for progressive... or am I missing something?