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NVidia passed on providing console GPUs due to purchase price, opportunity cost

C

Canis lupus

Member
Nvidia passed on its hardware being used in the PlayStation 4 due to the "opportunity cost."

"I'm sure there was a negotiation that went on," Tony Tamasi, Senior VP of content and technology at Nvidia told GameSpot, "and we came to the conclusion that we didn't want to do the business at the price those guys were willing to pay."

"Having been through the original Xbox and PS3, we understand the economics of [console development] and the tradeoffs."

"We're building a whole bunch of stuff," continued Tamasi, "and we had to look at console business as an opportunity cost. If we say, did a console, what other piece of our business would we put on hold to chase after that?"

"In the end, you only have so many engineers and so much capability, and if you're going to go off and do chips for Sony or Microsoft, then that's probably a chip that you're not doing for some other portion of your business. And at least in the case of Sony and Nvidia, in terms of PS4, AMD has the business and Nvidia doesn't. We'll see how that plays out from a business perspective I guess. It's clearly not a technology thing."
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link
 
S

Shao Kahn Brewing a Stew

Banned
eXlhO98.gif
 
M

Miker

Member
Makes sense. Nvidia has Tegra, Shield, and other ambitions in the mobile market. AMD doesn't have anything like that (or anything relevant) in the mobile market. It's also nVidia talking about an AMD investment - not surprising they'd say that.
 
D

Delusibeta

Banned
I came in here expecting someone pissing on PS4's inevitably high price, and instead got someone throwing their hands up and saying "we got underbid".
 
Auto_aim1

Auto_aim1

MeisaMcCaffrey
In the end, you only have so many engineers and so much capability, and if you're going to go off and do chips for Sony or Microsoft, then that's probably a chip that you're not doing for some other portion of your business.
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I know Sony and MS will patent the design but the console market is gigantic. This statement really doesn't make much sense.

Crewnh said:
AMD: *laughs*
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They aren't in a position to do that.
 
A

ambientmystic

Member
AMD:- I'M IN ALL NEXT GEN CONSOLES MUTHAFUCKA, YOU GOT NUTHIN ON ME, NVIDIA!

NVIDIA:- *blah blah blah Opportunity Cost blah blah blah Project SHIELD*
 
G

GorillaJu

Member
Well he wouldn't be wrong, that's how all bidding goes. If it was worth it to them, from a business perspective, to take the price AMD were willing to take, then they would have done it.

It sounds like sour grapes and probably is, at least to an extent, but what he's talking about isn't a bold faced lie or anything. How else do you lose a bidding war except by deciding "okay, we're not willing to go that low, we're out."
 
LiquidMetal14

LiquidMetal14

hide your water-based mammals
After the GPU in PS3 was considered a weak link, I wouldn't be so easy to come back to nvidia as well. Got their GPU's on desktop but it seems like consoles are better with AMD parts. Or at least AMD seems to be doing some things right to secure contracts with all 3 console manufacturers.
 
B

Betrayer of hope

Banned
Looks like some folks are pissed off.

I dont blame sony. They got burned with the RSX. Which meant one of the greatest strengths of the cell was used to prop up a GPU instead of using valuable clock cycles for game processing and other things.
 
T

tokkun

Member
Flamebait article/thread title. What he is saying is that he believes AMD was selected because they underbid Nvidia, not because of a major advantage in processing power.
 
A

ambientmystic

Member
LiquidMetal14 said:
After the GPU in PS3 was considered a weak link, I wouldn't be so easy to come back to nvidia as well. Got their GPU's on desktop but it seems like consoles are better with AMD parts. Or at least AMD seems to be doing some things right to secure contracts with all 3 console manufacturers.
Click to expand...

SniperHunter said:
didn't Sony get ripped off nvidia? The final gpu wasn't anywhere close to the performance as promised.
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If they had stalled just a bit more, they could've got a variant of the monster G80 8800GTX as the PS3's graphics card. Instead what happened was they got served with a gimped variant of the G70/71 7800 card which was at a severe disadvantage compared to the 1900XTX 48 shader variant in the 360.

That'd would have totally changed the equation completely between the two consoles. PS3 would've been completely dominating from the start with 0 zero weak links in performance. Imagine the Cell paired with the 8800 GTX at the time.... 360's 48 unified shader Xenos wouldn't have stood a chance.
 
S

ShockingAlberto

Member
They're pretty clearly talking about opportunity cost and how, if they were working on the PS4's tech, they couldn't be doing something else they view as more profitable to them.

I mean, feel free to call them liars, but they're not saying "PS4 is garbage for babies!!"
 
P

patapuf

Member
Is it that unbelievable that producing console hardware has bad margins? esp. considering they sell their GPU's for a lot of money.
 
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