News & Rumours: Playstation 4/ Orbis *spin*

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upnorthsox said:
From that article:



So basicly they tried a JIT distribution at launch which failed badly. Luckily for them they were launching unapposed, a luxury neither will have this time.

A JIT distribution does work though, eventually, so what's needed is a bigger initial launch cache. IMO to feed a WW launch, there'd need to be double the 3 mil MS tried with the 360. With a production capacity of 1 million per month, to build up the requisite cache would be 6+1 months or a production start of May for a November launch. If you wanted to supply each of the 3 regions an additional 1 mil units in 30 days after launch, you'd need an additonal 2 months or a production start of March. That's next month!!
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Nah, 2 million for November-december would be enough to do a decent launch worldwide. Basically Wii U sellthrough

Sony first announced worldwide launch for PS3 but had to cancel it for some yield issue. Even Japan+Usa was still limited
 
upnorthsox said:
Alot of those first adoptors will be buying both but the second may only be "eventually" and thus their primary system will be determined. If their first choice is unavailable do to shortages then you've forced their hand so to speak.
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Sure, but the losses may well not make up for the added costs of a WW launch. Resign yourself to them buying the opposition and strategise accordingly.
 
babybumb said:
Nah, 2 million for November-december would be enough to do a decent launch worldwide. Basically Wii U sellthrough

Sony first announced worldwide launch for PS3 but had to cancel it for some yield issue. Even Japan+Usa was still limited
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So you're MS/Sony and you say "What we really want is a WiiU launch", whoa......
 
upnorthsox said:
The Japanese market situation for MS is exclusive for them and is thus not a baseline issue. Everyone adjusts their regional distribution to their own expectations for those regions. My point, and my opinion, was that MS initially undersupplied the market as a whole by about half and that in retrospect would be something to avoid doing again.
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Sony ended up becoming demand-limited in the US fairly early on, and the production that ended up keeping shelves stocked in the US could have been sold-through to consumers in the EU. The 360 in Japan was just an extreme and obvious example of mis-allocation of production.

upnorthsox said:
Not sure manufacturing problems were an issue per se, that article was from before launch and they mentioned no such issues.
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We know there were manufacturing issues. And at the time of the article, MS weren't going to be inclined to publicize them. That's why it took them 6 months (at least in the US) before retailers had good supply on hand. 360 sales weren't *that* good from launch.

Quoting from page 2 of Dean Takahashi's article for VentureBeat:

Still, the picture wasn’t pretty. The defect rate for the machines was an abysmal 68 percent at that point, according to several sources. That meant for every 100 machines that Microsoft’s contract manufacturers, Flextronics and Wistron, made at their factories in China, 68 didn’t work. At the recent dinner, Bach denied that there was a big concern about defects at that point in time.
At that point, it is likely true that the engineers weren’t raising enough red flags for the executives to pay attention. Early yields on electronic goods are almost always lousy. Those veteran engineers figured that they would be able to debug the problems and bring the yields up quickly. But the expected rapid improvement in quality just didn’t happen. The communication between upper management and the engineers wasn’t clear. Nor was the strategy aligned between marketing and customer support.
There were plenty of warning signs. Early reports on the problems were myriad. In an Aug. 30, 2005 memo, the team reported overheating graphics chip, cracking heat sinks, cosmetic issues with the hard disk drive and the front of the box, under-performing graphics memory chips from Infineon (now Qimonda), a problem with the DVD drive, and other things. At that point, the contract manufacturers were behind schedule and had only built hundreds of units. They were supposed to have been in high gear, making thousands every week.
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mrcorbo said:
Sony ended up becoming demand-limited in the US fairly early on, and the production that ended up keeping shelves stocked in the US could have been sold-through to consumers in the EU. The 360 in Japan was just an extreme and obvious example of mis-allocation of production.



We know there were manufacturing issues. And at the time of the article, MS weren't going to be inclined to publicize them. That's why it took them 6 months (at least in the US) before retailers had good supply on hand. 360 sales weren't *that* good from launch.

Quoting from page 2 of Dean Takahashi's article for VentureBeat:
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"Whereas others have shipped significant volumes for launch and then resupplied many weeks or months later, our process is to continually supply the channel on a regular basis," Liddell said. "We believe this is the better approach because it provides predictability to retailers and consumers around product availability."

That's straight from Peter Moore's lips before launch, not some down the road no blame analysis. But hey, if the MS takeaway from the 360 launch is that no additional product is needed at launch then go for it. I'll be eager to see if they're right.
 
upnorthsox said:
"Whereas others have shipped significant volumes for launch and then resupplied many weeks or months later, our process is to continually supply the channel on a regular basis," Liddell said. "We believe this is the better approach because it provides predictability to retailers and consumers around product availability."

That's straight from Peter Moore's lips before launch, not some down the road no blame analysis. But hey, if the MS takeaway from the 360 launch is that no additional product is needed at launch then go for it. I'll be eager to see if they're right.
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I don't think you understand the point I'm trying to make. Whatever they may have stated publicly at the time, given their production problems, I doubt that the number of consoles they were able to produce both pre and post-launch were anywhere near what they had planned for. Because of this, we really have no idea how well their JIT production plan may have worked minus those problems.
 
babybumb said:
Nah, 2 million for November-december would be enough to do a decent launch worldwide. Basically Wii U sellthrough
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Does anyone know what are manufacturing capabilities of TMSC/GF and other factories that can create "high powered" 28nm chips? Can they even support both MS and Sony and deliver 700k-1m of consoles per month to both of them?

Radeons and Gforces are selling good, but there is no way that they are being made in such quantities [minimum 1.5m fully working console chips per month]. Is there even some info about how much of GPU cards is sold per year?
 
Supposedly TSMC was aiming for 400k 28nm wafers per month by the end of 2012. Dunno where they actually got, but MS and Sony would only need a fraction of that.
 
I don't know that it's that high, by a factor of 2x. http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/other/...gher_Than_Demand_for_28nm_Chips_Nowadays.html

TSMC now produces its 28nm chips at Fab 15 phase 1 and 2. TSMC began equipment move-in for the phase 1 facility in June 2011 and started volume production of 28nm technology products for customers in October, 2011. The phase 2 of Fab 15 was completed in Q4 2012 and this was supposed to boost total 28nm capacity to reach about 50 thousand wafers per month. The Fab 15 phase 3 and phase 4 will manufacture chips using 20nm manufacturing process starting from the second half of 2013.
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The number Brit quotes is for one fab.



TSMC's fab 15, in the Central Taiwan Science Park, is said to be ending Q3 with 69,000 28nm wafer per month capacity and will expand that to 135,000 wpm in Q4.
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The way I read that quote, it makes it sound like they produce all their 28nm at that single fab and total capacity is 50K.

Though this other bit makes it sound differently (August 2012): http://news.cens.com/cens/html/en/news/news_inner_41054.html

The company's Fab 15 foundry module, which is TSMC's primary 28nm process tool located in the Central Taiwan Science Park, is estimated to end the third quarter with installation of 69,000 wafers of 28nm process capacity, which is likely to further increase to 135,000 wafers in the fourth quarter.
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And more up to date news (December 2012): http://cens.com/cens/html/en/news/news_inner_42228.html. So it seems they did not hit their projections.

Taipei, Dec. 3, 2012 (CENS)--Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) cranked out 52,000 300mm wafers processed using 28nm process technology at its Fab 15 factory in central Taiwan in November 2012, surpassing planned 50,000 wafers, and the output is likely to reach 75,000-80,000 wafers in December, more than planned 68,000 wafers.
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Ya I'm not sure. Projections don't always align with reality. Fabs 12, 14 and 15 are all 300mm. I don't know what they are all on at this point.

And if you need 1m chips a month and your die is 350mm2, you'd need 5000 wafers with near perfect yields. I think that math is right.
 
Production of main chips has certainly started by now, with final assembly likely waiting for an official announcement so that casing doesn't end up leaking before hand.
 
Cornsnake said:
Global economy is bad.

Europe is Sony's strongest market. They should not treat us like this.
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Just to add to this topic, launching PS4 few months later is least of the problems in Europe. SCEE treats every country differently.
Some still don't have PS Store, some content missing from country to country without obvious reasons (e.g. track DLC for WRC3), some content missing completly in whole Europe, price in local currency is always higher than GBP, EU PS Stores organization lacking in comparsion to US one, let alone US Store is running faster for me than EU one.

Not to mention infamous SingStar launcher pushed on our XMB's without option to delete it, while US have option to download from PS Store as any other game. I'm sick and tired of this attitude from SCEE.
 
I haven't even noticed that.

Not as annoying as that ticker though in the top corner for US accounts. ;)
 
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