PSP Launching Price : Japan 48,000 Yen, UK : ~250 Pounds

[Teasy]

PCX1, PCX2, M3d (PCX2 by Matrox). There might be others I'm not aware of (I don't follow ImgTec like you). And the DC was not a success in the videogame market.

I didn't follow IMGTEC until late in the Neon 250's life either. So I admit I don't know that much about the PCX1 and PCX2. But weren't they decent competitors to Voodoo1? Someone else will have to enlighten us there.

You can say that DC as a console failed yeah, but we're not talking about Sega's failures. From IMGTEC's perspective the graphics chip they provided to NEC/Sega was a massive success. They sold 13+ million in DC alone and the same chip dominated the arcade market in Naomi 1 and 2 and is still doing well to this day. PowerVR DC was anything but a failure. Kyro and Kyro II weren't failures either. We've certainly seen IMGTEC fail in the past, and to be clear I'm not saying Sony made a mistake by not using them for PS2 or anything like that. I'm just saying that to say they've failed time and time again is way over the top. IMGTEC, or more specifically PowerVR wouldn't be here today if they'd failed time and time again.

 

[Panajev2001a]

Sony a while ago stated IIRC that they started sampling 65 nm devices for their own Nagasaki #2 plant and they made the example of a device with 32 Mbits of e-DRAM: the EE+GS is a guess, but an educated one IMHO.

Oh, I’m sure they will, but I think there’s a leap of faith in terms of timings. Whenever I read something about a new process from TSMC or UMC I see them quoting production samples of fairly small devices at one point and then typically I’ll see a new generation of graphics chips (who are generally most aggressive fables semicons with very large logic devices) utilising that process about 12-18 months after the initial devices. Granted, EE+GS probably won’t be pushing the 65nm process and they have a fair amount of prior knowledge with it, but that doesn’t means its going to be a piece of cake to implement (especially as its not an optical shrink from 90nm to 65nm and it would seem that they have only have the EE+GS integrated at 90nm).

Do you know exactly what this e-DRAM device is? Or, do you know if/when they trailed similar things at 90nm?

Sony has always been aggressive with die shrinks in their PlayStation line, look at this ( bottom slide in page 2 of the presentation ):

Honestly, to me that doesn’t look like particularly aggressive even for fables semicons prior to 130nm. 130nm and beyond looks aggressive though.

It does not look aggressive ? The GS stgarted as a fricking 279 mm^2 chip and in their last 130 nm refresh ( before they completed with Toshiba the CMOS4 manufacturing process with trench capacitor structure ) they were down to 73 mm^2.

They made plenty of refreshes for both EE and GS.

Dave, the EE+GS takes 86 mm^2 and uses 8 Watts of power at 90 nm: at 65 nm that would probably turn out to be a ~44 mm^2 chip with low power consumption.

This is exactly what I would classify a "fairly small device" to be.

Knowing the huge problems they carried till their CMOS4 ( 90 nm ) manufacturing process due to the stacked capacitor e-DRAM structure ( which they previously co-developed with Fujiitsu ) and that did induce lots of problems with GS's manufacturing especially early on and the growth of their investment in advanced Semiconductors started farily recently ( when they started working on the 180 nm node and the Nagasaki #1 and Oita #1 fabs ) I would say that they moved pretty well.

 

[Deadmeat]

...

Pana

all we know is that Sony internally NEVER talked about more than a $299 MSRP and that they do not intend to incur losses on PSP at its launch.

$299 MSRP? Says who? You? The only publicly mentioned prices are ~250 pounds and 48,000 Yen.

EE+GS is moving to 65 nm already ( 32 Mbits SoC sampled by Sony at 65 nm ), why should the PSP's SoC lag behind ?

Because PSX2OAC@65nm was merely a test fabrication to test the 65 nm process, nothing more, nothing less. So Intel has 65 nm SRAMs working right now. Does that mean Intel is going to sell them on the market? Hell no.

F.U.D. and yet more F.U.D.

I believe you were already warned by mods not to insult others.

Dave

Do you have anything specific that states the EE+GS is moving to 65nm already?

No he doesn't. He is simply going by a press release that states SCEI test-fabbed some device with 4 MB eDRAM on its new 65 nm process. It was obviously the PSX2OAC and not CELL(Won't have any eDRAM, at least not the CPU version), but that doesn't imply this 65 nm PSX2OAC would hit the market soon.

 

[Dave Baumann]

When I say "small" I mean in terms of logic, not in terms of die size. Memory and similar things are always trailed first becuase they are just chunks of easily repeatable circuits.

Again, do you have any ideas of what this e-DRAM device actually is, or when they started trialing similar things with 90nm?

 

[Panajev2001a]

Re: ...

Pana

all we know is that Sony internally NEVER talked about more than a $299 MSRP and that they do not intend to incur losses on PSP at its launch.

$299 MSRP? Says who? You? The only publicly mentioned prices are ~250 pounds and 48,000 Yen.

First, if they were selling it at 250 pounds in England I would really surprised to see SCE selling it at more than $299 as they usually keep the 1 Pound = $1 rule with all their PlayStation products ( I said 250 pounds for the U.K. and $299 for the North American market to allow some wiggle room ).

Good luck also calculating PlayStation 2 original North American launch price by directly converting its originalprice in Japan

Second, people have hears...

EE+GS is moving to 65 nm already ( 32 Mbits SoC sampled by Sony at 65 nm ), why should the PSP's SoC lag behind ?

Because PSX2OAC@65nm was merely a test fabrication to test the 65 nm process, nothing more, nothing less. So Intel has 65 nm SRAMs working right now. Does that mean Intel is going to sell them on the market? Hell no.

F.U.D. and yet more F.U.D.

I believe you were already warned by mods not to insult others.

And you were banned several times by severla mods on several forums for starting flame-wars whenever you could and spreading Fear, Uncertainty and Despair with not very factual evidence.

Do you have anything specific that states the EE+GS is moving to 65nm already?

No he doesn't. He is simply going by a press release that states SCEI test-fabbed some device with 4 MB eDRAM on its new 65 nm process. It was obviously the PSX2OAC and not CELL(Won't have any eDRAM, at least not the CPU version), but that doesn't imply this 65 nm PSX2OAC would hit the market soon.

I already "came clean" on what I knew to Dave and mine being an educated guess ( nice touch of bringing in CELL, as point-less as usual ): sorry if I spoiled your "unmasking" of me

 

[Natoma]

Hmmm.. Even that price is hard to stomach when I can get a Gameboy Advance or SP for $70 and immediately have a 14 year library at my disposal.

Man..... I hope they get it to $199. Then I'd begin to strongly consider purchasing one. But $299? I'd rather buy 7 GBA games or 15 DVDs.

I already have a GBA, Game Gear, SNES, Saturn, Amiga 2000 with 4 MB RAM Expansion and a C64 ( my family has both machines in working conditions plus emulators for each ).

I have bought already most of the GREAT 2D glories and some arrived for free in Bonus CDs like Nintendo's Zelda Collection disc.

GBA SP is still $99 and even if it goes to $79 by the time PSP comes out I would find the price justified ( I will not take into account the rumored e-DRAM expansion for the PSP ).

GBA:

16.67 MHz ARM7tdmi with no FP co-processor.

32 KB of Internal Work RAM.

96 KB of VRAM.

HW support for 128 sprites and 4 BGs.

No Sound chip.

ROM sizes varying from 4-to-8 MB in size with Matrix 3DROM upping that to 64-128 MB: even higher, but already after 64 MB I doubt that it would be very cheap for developers to use those ROMs.

Slow link cable.

Front-lit screen with 240x160 of resolution.



PSP:

333 MHz R4000i with FPU and VFPU: 2.6 GFLOPS peak.

8 MB of e-DRAM ( ~2.6 GB/s ) as main RAM.

2 MB of VRAM ( ~5.3 GB/s ).

2 MB of Sound RAM + I/O RAM ( ~2.6 GB/s ).

VME Re-configurable DSP as Sound Processor: Surround Sound audio, MP3, AAC, ATRAC3 ( and possibly ATRAC3+ IIRC ), etc... with no real hit on the 2D/3D processing performance.

GPU with HW Support for HOS Tessellation, T&L ( peak of 33 MVertices/s ), Morphing, Skinning, etc... and fill-rate of 664 MPixels/s.

1.8 GB UMD disc ( optical disc ).

USB 2.0 and WiFi 802.11 support built-in.

Memory Stick support.

Back-lit 4.5'' screen with 480x272 resolution.

Etc...

I would say that the money is worth it...

Panajev2001a,

You have to understand. I'm not really interested in the specs of a portable. I just want to know how much it is, and how well it plays games. All of those nice features means bubkis to me because $450 is just too much. The "average gamer" isn't going to really care about all the doodads. They're going to care whether their parents or their wives/husbands/girlfriends/boyfriends let them spend that much money for a tiny little thing who's main and sole purpose is to emulate a far cheaper Game Boy.

Do you see where I'm coming from?

 

[Natoma]

PSP for $450 USD? Hell no. There's no way in hell the average gamer will shell out that much for a "multimedia" handheld. I hope Sony dumps some of the features and cuts the price at least by half. I was hoping to be able to "afford" one, but there's no way I'm going to spend $450 USD on a handheld gaming machine. I'd be hardpressed to spend that much on a console, and I consider myself an "average gamer."

I buy about 5-10 games a year between my Gamecube and Computer. Who exactly is Sony targetting with a price like that?

Come on man - look at those PC specs, you can afford this.

Seriously, I have no fucking clue what they're doing. It seemed as if Sony was sailing towards cementing it's console dominance by fatally wounding Nintendo in the one area it still controls. Now they're just going to have yet another expensive dud on their hands in the fine tradition of Betamax, Hi8, and Memory Stick (ironically enough a successful PSP could have given the Memory Stick format a good second chance at dominance). Never underestimate the ability of Sony to pull defeat from the jaws of victory at the last minute.

I doubt pulling features would reduce the cost of the unit; most multimedia functionality seems to leverage the main chipset. The blame for the pricetag lies in Sony's arrogance. Crap - until this week the line was "similiar in price to GBASP."

EDIT: removed some pointless bitterness.

Yea that's why I put "afford" in quotes.

I could afford to buy the PSP. I just think $450 is way too much for a gaming handheld. Even a console frankly. And I honestly believe I am part of the "average gamer" crowd. Actually maybe I'm not. I can afford this machine, maybe unlike the "average gamer". I just don't want to spend that much money on it.

 

[Panajev2001a]

When I say "small" I mean in terms of logic, not in terms of die size. Memory and similar things are always trailed first becuase they are just chunks of easily repeatable circuits.

Again, do you have any ideas of what this e-DRAM device actually is, or when they started trialing similar things with 90nm?

I do not know how soon after their CMOS4 process was ready they started to sample EE+GS@90 nm or tested some early version of it...

I do know that Sony already tried to make that chip with their 130 nm process, but decided to move the SoC idea to the CMOS4 process ( e-DRAM was giving them more headaches with the older stacked capacitor structure which they carried with themselves till the 130 nm node ).

 

[Panajev2001a]

Hmmm.. Even that price is hard to stomach when I can get a Gameboy Advance or SP for $70 and immediately have a 14 year library at my disposal.

Man..... I hope they get it to $199. Then I'd begin to strongly consider purchasing one. But $299? I'd rather buy 7 GBA games or 15 DVDs.

I already have a GBA, Game Gear, SNES, Saturn, Amiga 2000 with 4 MB RAM Expansion and a C64 ( my family has both machines in working conditions plus emulators for each ).

I have bought already most of the GREAT 2D glories and some arrived for free in Bonus CDs like Nintendo's Zelda Collection disc.

GBA SP is still $99 and even if it goes to $79 by the time PSP comes out I would find the price justified ( I will not take into account the rumored e-DRAM expansion for the PSP ).

GBA:

16.67 MHz ARM7tdmi with no FP co-processor.

32 KB of Internal Work RAM.

96 KB of VRAM.

HW support for 128 sprites and 4 BGs.

No Sound chip.

ROM sizes varying from 4-to-8 MB in size with Matrix 3DROM upping that to 64-128 MB: even higher, but already after 64 MB I doubt that it would be very cheap for developers to use those ROMs.

Slow link cable.

Front-lit screen with 240x160 of resolution.



PSP:

333 MHz R4000i with FPU and VFPU: 2.6 GFLOPS peak.

8 MB of e-DRAM ( ~2.6 GB/s ) as main RAM.

2 MB of VRAM ( ~5.3 GB/s ).

2 MB of Sound RAM + I/O RAM ( ~2.6 GB/s ).

VME Re-configurable DSP as Sound Processor: Surround Sound audio, MP3, AAC, ATRAC3 ( and possibly ATRAC3+ IIRC ), etc... with no real hit on the 2D/3D processing performance.

GPU with HW Support for HOS Tessellation, T&L ( peak of 33 MVertices/s ), Morphing, Skinning, etc... and fill-rate of 664 MPixels/s.

1.8 GB UMD disc ( optical disc ).

USB 2.0 and WiFi 802.11 support built-in.

Memory Stick support.

Back-lit 4.5'' screen with 480x272 resolution.

Etc...

I would say that the money is worth it...

Panajev2001a,

You have to understand. I'm not really interested in the specs of a portable. I just want to know how much it is, and how well it plays games. All of those nice features means bubkis to me because $450 is just too much. The "average gamer" isn't going to really care about all the doodads. They're going to care whether their parents or their wives/husbands/girlfriends/boyfriends let them spend that much money for a tiny little thing who's main and sole purpose is to emulate a far cheaper Game Boy.

Do you see where I'm coming from?

I think the price should not be any higher than $299 which is a nice step down from $450.

Also, pretty much all of the features I listed are directly tied to how well it plays games and how good the game experience is.

For example, a nice screen + fast processors are key to display great looking 3D graphics and a nice Sound DSP is key to allow for great Sound FX and Music in your games.

 

[Deadmeat]

.

I think the price should not be any higher than $299 which is a nice step down from $450.

What you think has no effect on PSP pricing decision. Everybody is worried about the est. $450 price tag while you alone preach $199, saying SCEI will eat a loss while SCEI executives are dreaming of making a profit off the hardware.

 

[notAFanB]

That's the problem, Pana... At that price, the demand will be very low. In the end,
-it does not target the PDA market,
-it does not target the gaming handheld market, being too Elite for 99% of us out here who'd rather spend that money on games and DVD
-it does not target the cell phone market

Bingo on all points. only gadet enthusiast (whom pick up just about anything anyway) and some whom already has the top of the line gear on everthing already would even consider this.

 

[Panajev2001a]

Re: .

I think the price should not be any higher than $299 which is a nice step down from $450.

What you think has no effect on PSP pricing decision. Everybody is worried about the est. $450 price tag while you alone preach $199, saying SCEI will eat a loss while SCEI executives are dreaming of making a profit off the hardware.

Yes people are worried of the $450 price-tag YOU preach, which is why I said you were spreading F.U.D.... mission accomplished.

Last I thought neither of us can influence business decisions with the power of his/her ( I think you are a he, but you have kept yourself hidden enough that nobody can know for certain unless they meet you ) immagination

If I think that an apple will fall down if I drop it and that happens when I drop the apple, well did my thinking it would fall influence the physical event ? Of course not, but that still does not say anything about the comment I made being true or not.

Do you think that I alone preach $299 for MSRP ? PSP is not going to be cheap, but it is not going to be costing a fortune to manufacture.

The yelds on the PSP SoC will not be that low ( their 90 nm process seems quite solid ) and they are making all the rest in-house including the screen which they are probably producing with their Samsung joint-venture.



Let's see something back...

U.K. £299

U.S. of $299

Japan of 39,800 Yen

I am sure that £299 is higher than $299 and so is 39,800 Yen...

 

[marconelly!]

I believe you were already warned by mods not to insult others.I believe you were already warned by mods not to insult others.

First of all, I don't see how that was an insult (saying that someone is FUD-ding means that he's spreading Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt). Second, Panajev has never been warned, from what I can remember, and has never openly insulted anyone. Third, and the most obvious, I think you're the last person to be preaching.

 

[Deadmeat]

...

Yes people are worried of the $450 price-tag YOU preach

Actually, it's Chris Deering who preaches 250 pound price tag fear, not me.

Do you think that I alone preach $299 for MSRP ?

You used to preach $199 MSRP. I used to agree to that assuming SCEI would lose $100~150 on the first couple million units. We were both wrong.

PSP is not going to be cheap, but it is not going to be costing a fortune to manufacture.

Sure it does, if you have the pricing idea of individual components. None of PSP components are industry-standard and can be obtained cheaply.

The yelds on the PSP SoC will not be that low ( their 90 nm process seems quite solid)

Semiconductor yield takes a nose dive past the die size of 100 mm2. And what die size are we looking at here, 200 mm2???

and they are making all the rest in-house including the screen which they are probably producing with their Samsung joint-venture.

Samsung LCD fab plant which Sony is investing in exchange for a guaranteed output share is optimized for 40" HDTV screens. It doesn't do anything below 30".

PSP LCD is non-standard in size/resolution and has to be custom fabricated, which means higher price. I don't understand why SCEI didn't take advantage of cheap 320x240 PDA/TV 4" panels flooding the market.

Panajev has never been warned, from what I can remember

Panajev gets warned for insulting DM

 

[Ty]

You can say that DC as a console failed yeah, but we're not talking about Sega's failures. From IMGTEC's perspective the graphics chip they provided to NEC/Sega was a massive success.

I essentially said, "failed in the marketplace" DC failed in the market.

Kyro and Kyro II weren't failures either.

Oh yea, I forgot about those (and the Kyro II SE). Those were big failures too afaik. Enough so that their licensee withdrew and canned future products.

 

[notAFanB]

Yes people are worried of the $450 price-tag YOU preach

Actually, it's Chris Deering who preaches 250 pound price tag fear, not me.

unless you have been living in a vacumm for the past decade or so,you'd relaise that IF this tranlates directly to $450 (pending what the rates are at the time). It'll be one on the Miniscule times that UK gamers HAVE NOT got it in the shorts in terms of US-->UK Pricing.

yes it's frikken expensive, but $450 dollars? in the US? jebus!

Oh yea, I forgot about those. Those were big failures too afaik.

Kyo series cannot really be deemed failures since they Never tried to capture anything even remotely close to high end. Strictly midrange with adequate performence cards.

 

[Vince]

Or when they started trialing similar things with 90nm?

Toshiba started sampling a 90nm, Low-K, 11 layer SoC in the first half of 2003. 90nm EEGS "volume" production was said to begin in the Summer of 2003 with introduction that Fall in the PS2 and in December for PSX.

Oh, I’m sure they will, but I think there’s a leap of faith in terms of timings. Whenever I read something about a new process from TSMC or UMC I see them quoting production samples of fairly small devices at one point and then typically I’ll see a new generation of graphics chips (who are generally most aggressive fables semicons with very large logic devices) utilising that process about 12-18 months after the initial devices.

It's also not a leap of faith when the same thing was done on the 90nm node; they clearly stated they sampled a 64MBit SoC on 65nm. TSMC and UMC just can't feasibly compete with the likes of an Intel, IBM or OTSS. This has been stated time and time again and is why we've had all those arguments over lithography. Time will demonstrate.

 

[Dio]

at 65 nm that would probably turn out to be a ~44 mm^2 chip with low power consumption.

I'm not sure about this specific chip, but it is rare for highly complex chips to be able to be that small because they become pad limited.

 

[Megadrive1988]

You can say that DC as a console failed yeah, but we're not talking about Sega's failures. From IMGTEC's perspective the graphics chip they provided to NEC/Sega was a massive success.

right, because Videologic's first entry, the Series 1 (PCX1 and PCX2)
did not do very well. it was almost an obscurity compared to the competition.

Series 2 was a massive sucess in comparasion to Series 1. since it got into into Dreamcast, NAOMI (which took a huge portion of the arcade market) Neon250, NAOMI 2, as well as other lesser design wins.

 

[jvd]

So, summarizing: The reason PS2 is selling so well has nothing to do with a better game library and add-ons like Eyetoy. The reason it sells well is hype. For some reason, Xbox couldn't attain the same hype as PS2, so Microsoft decided to stop spending the money that they started off spending [on hype, that is], and that's why it isn't selling as well as Xbox. Because hype is what's needed to sell almost anything.

Is the a correct description of what you think? If not, please tell me what is wrong.

I don't know. I didn't understand half of what you wrote.

Ps2 does not have a better library than the gc or xbox . It may have a bigger library which is diffrent than a better library although not everyone allways understands that .

I feel having a bigger library than the master system helped the nes stomp it. Just with the ps2. But not because the nes or ps2 had better games .




As for those claiming it will be 300 bucks well then sony is just going to be fighting itself . What would you rather own. A cutting edge home system or a cutting edge portable with both being the same price .


Or how about a cutting edge home system and then 75$ on a gba advance with a 12 year game library for 400 vs just a psp for 300$

I would pick the home system and the gba any day of the week .