How Intel Lost the Sony PlayStation Business (reuters.com)
- Reference: 0175007697
- News link: https://games.slashdot.org/story/24/09/16/174231/how-intel-lost-the-sony-playstation-business
- Source link: https://www.reuters.com/technology/how-intel-lost-sony-playstation-business-2024-09-16/
Discussions between the companies spanned months and involved top executives. Intel's loss has hampered CEO Pat Gelsinger's turnaround strategy, which hinges on expanding the company's foundry operations. The PlayStation deal would have provided steady business for Intel's struggling manufacturing arm, which reported $7 billion in operating losses last quarter. Sony's need for backwards compatibility with older PlayStation models complicated Intel's bid, as AMD designed chips for previous console generations, the report adds.
Further reading :
[2]Intel Foundry Achieves Major Milestones ;
[3]Intel Weighs Options Including Foundry Split To Stem Losses :
[4]Intel's Money Woes Throw Biden Team's Chip Strategy Into Turmoil .
[1] https://www.reuters.com/technology/how-intel-lost-sony-playstation-business-2024-09-16/
[2] https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/08/06/182213/intel-foundry-achieves-major-milestones
[3] https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/08/30/197203/intel-weighs-options-including-foundry-split-to-stem-losses
[4] https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/09/04/1430239/intels-money-woes-throw-biden-teams-chip-strategy-into-turmoil
And (Score:1, Flamebait)
The PS6 will be just as much an expensive, shitty paperweight as the PS5 with zero actually good, and not over-hyped, exclusives.
Re: (Score:1)
Bitter much? I do have a gaming PC (with high end nvidia), and yet I many times prefer my PS5 for some types of games. And no, not exclusives either.
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> Bitter much?
To be bitter, I'd have to purchase, or want to purchase, anything branded by Sony. I haven't purchased Sony hardware since the Discman, because that was the last decent product they made.
> for some types of games
Yeah, and for those games, I just plug in a controller. Tada. Same experience (or better) and I don't have to deal with Playstation's horrible UI and annoying sounds it makes. If they aren't exclusive to the console, the console provides absolutely no benefits.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
>> Bitter much?
> To be bitter, I'd have to purchase, or want to purchase, anything branded by Sony. I haven't purchased Sony hardware since the Discman, because that was the last decent product they made.
>> for some types of games
> Yeah, and for those games, I just plug in a controller. Tada. Same experience (or better) and I don't have to deal with Playstation's horrible UI and annoying sounds it makes. If they aren't exclusive to the console, the console provides absolutely no benefits.
Ah, so you have no actual experience with anything recent.
If you think the controllers on Windows work as well as on the PS5, you're sorely mistaken. And I speak from experience, unlike you.
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>>> Bitter much?
>> To be bitter, I'd have to purchase, or want to purchase, anything branded by Sony. I haven't purchased Sony hardware since the Discman, because that was the last decent product they made.
>>> for some types of games
>> Yeah, and for those games, I just plug in a controller. Tada. Same experience (or better) and I don't have to deal with Playstation's horrible UI and annoying sounds it makes. If they aren't exclusive to the console, the console provides absolutely no benefits.
> Ah, so you have no actual experience with anything recent.
> If you think the controllers on Windows work as well as on the PS5, you're sorely mistaken. And I speak from experience, unlike you.
Imagine being THIS out of touch with the actual reality of PC gaming. The controllers on Windows work WAY BETTER and this is coming frrom somebody who owns both PS5 and Switch. My selection of controllers on PC is like 3x that of the selection of console-compatible ones and I can tune like 3-4x the amount of gamepad settings on PC. Even the Dualsense Edge tuning options arer a laughing stock in comparison.
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>>>> Bitter much?
>>> To be bitter, I'd have to purchase, or want to purchase, anything branded by Sony. I haven't purchased Sony hardware since the Discman, because that was the last decent product they made.
>>>> for some types of games
>>> Yeah, and for those games, I just plug in a controller. Tada. Same experience (or better) and I don't have to deal with Playstation's horrible UI and annoying sounds it makes. If they aren't exclusive to the console, the console provides absolutely no benefits.
>> Ah, so you have no actual experience with anything recent.
>> If you think the controllers on Windows work as well as on the PS5, you're sorely mistaken. And I speak from experience, unlike you.
> Imagine being THIS out of touch with the actual reality of PC gaming. The controllers on Windows work WAY BETTER and this is coming frrom somebody who owns both PS5 and Switch. My selection of controllers on PC is like 3x that of the selection of console-compatible ones and I can tune like 3-4x the amount of gamepad settings on PC. Even the Dualsense Edge tuning options arer a laughing stock in comparison.
Huh, so you have to tune your controllers to work well? That doesn't seem like an improvement. And why do you need 3x the controllers?
My point is that I've seen very few games on Steam that offer full support for DualSense, with haptic feedback. Just the controller, it works, with half the games showing Xbox-style hints (A/B/X/Y) instead of PS hints. On the PS5, it just works, out of the box.
So yes, for many games I prefer the PS5, and it "just works" - I don't have time to tinker - as opposed to the earlie
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> Huh, so you have to tune your controllers to work well? That doesn't seem like an improvement. And why do you need 3x the controllers?
> My point is that I've seen very few games on Steam that offer full support for DualSense, with haptic feedback. Just the controller, it works, with half the games showing Xbox-style hints (A/B/X/Y) instead of PS hints. On the PS5, it just works, out of the box.
> So yes, for many games I prefer the PS5, and it "just works" - I don't have time to tinker - as opposed to the earlier poster who thinks PS5 is just junk.
Huh, you imagined the default settings for deadzones, stick tension, acceleration curves, stick algorithms (rounds vs square), debounce, autocentering, etc etc of any given controller are all just magically a perfect fit for everybody? What on Earth gave you that idea? OF COURSE being able to tune everything precisely to your personal preference is a massive improvement.
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Controllers on windows work much better than on consoles, because current default Xinput is an exceedingly good system that is basically everything that console can do (as it was originally designed for xbox) and then has modifications to make it run on a much more capable machine enabling a lot of extra bells and whistles.
This is one of the things that windows does really, really well. I've no idea what your "experience" on the subject is, but it sounds like it's subjective experience of a fanboy. And I'm
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Tell me how many of the games support proper haptic feedback for DualSense controller (and not xbox-style controllers). Or, if all do, tell me why by default it doesn't work out of the box on Steam. I must be doing something wrong.
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Why would anyone support's Sony specific system that isn't used anywhere outside Sony's console world? You instead support the one that is properly documented and supported that does the exact same thing. That is present in pretty much every game engine out there, including ones that run almost all Platstation games.
You're like that brainlet in the other thread about Sony who was waxing poetical about purportedly superior Sony sound system in Playstation. Meanwhile basically everyone had the 3d audio engine
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> The PS6 will be just as much an expensive, shitty paperweight as the PS5 with zero actually good, and not over-hyped, exclusives.
Their exclusives come to PC anyways now.
It's not like PS3 where exclusives stayed there and never came to PC.
Once supercomputer parts, now fearful company (Score:2)
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
[2]https://www.wearethemighty.com... [wearethemighty.com]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_2#Hardware
[2] https://www.wearethemighty.com/popular/air-force-built-computer-playstations/
AMD crushes on these types of projects (Score:3)
From some things I have read is that AMDs team for customizing their chips for sorta-embedded applications is very mature compared to Intel and their integrated GPU has always been ahead of the pack.
There's good reason both Sony and Microsoft have used Zen for their last 2 or 3 generations of consoles as well as the Steam Deck. The fact Intel was in the running at all is surprising and for it to fall strictly on price is a bit of a downer, they have to know they are the higher risk option and should price accordingly. Can't be the odd-man-out for decades and expect to get a premium for the type of project you'd be doing for effectively the first time.
The fact they were being considered though may be a promising sign for the next generation Intel GPU's though.
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It's not just integration, it's the underlying tech on their mainstream technology as well. We can see this in steamdeck style portable gaming PCs that are becoming relatively popular now. They feature a SOC that includes a CPU and a GPU, and where GPU must be both powerful enough to run games and energy efficient enough to last a couple of hours on that small battery while running games on full tilt.
They're almost all variants on several different AMD SOCs. There was one major attempt at making intel based
Leader in market share (Score:1)
Sony is number one in every business metric, by far. Clickbait like this is just irresponsible.
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We are talking about Intel being the market leader and how it has been loosing it's dominance in the market
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...including screwing their consumers and artists. Sony bites the Big Chorizo.
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What? Nintendo Switch - 143.42 million, PS5 - 61.7 million, Xbox Series X/S - 21 million. Learn to google
I don't think they wanted it (Score:1)
it wasn't seen as long term profitable. IBM didn't make all that much on the Power PC line in the 360 or manufacturing the PS3 chips.
I don't think anyone expected consoles to stay up in price like this. A PS4 or XBone was going for $300-$400 USD right at the PS5 launch and a PS5 is *still* $600. That gives AMD a lot of room to negotiate more profit for them. But if market forces still existed like they did in the PS 1/2/3 era the consoles would be selling for about $150-$200 now an AMD would get squeeze
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Still $600? The PlayStation 5 looks to be $500 ($499 USD), while the PlayStation 5 Pro has been announced for $700 ($699 USD), unless you want a stand and optical drive then it goes up to ~$800.
My observation is that it is not so much "market forces" but physics. The writing looks to be on the wall regarding the plateau of technological progression. Without technological progression to drive market forces, those "market forces" won't do much. Likely this is the impetuous behind the A.I. marketing "blitz"
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There isn't anything comparable to the APU which is being used on the current consoles. Traditional APU's on desktops are CPU first with a traditional 2-channel 64bit DDR4/5 memory bus whereas the APUs on sony and MS consoles are a GPU first with more channels of GDDR6 memory connected to the GPU portion.
AFAIK Intel has never tried connecting a processor to memory though the GPU although AMD was doing it on separate chips going back to 2013 and IBM/AMD did mostly the same with the xb360.
The architecture an
Complete nonsense (Score:2)
Intel doesn't have a decent APU. AMD does.
Second, Intel node is inferior to TSMC.
In 2022 and before, AMD's commitment to Sony was hurting them since they had to create PS5 APU at razor thin margins instead of server CPUs at huge huge margins.
Intel would have to make a CPU design for TSMC. Their GPU is already made at TSMC.
Sony probably got Intel involved just to scare AMD and get a good price out of them. AMD surely must have cited a massive price for their APU since they lost so much making PS5 chips rathe
Short sighted (Score:2)
If Sony would realize that simply mandating keyboard / mouse compatibility with every game created for their consoles, they would eviscerate the gaming PC market. Gamers could then connect either a keyboard / mouse or a controller ( user preference ) to play said game. Hell, would you even need to port games over to the PC market at all ?
Yeah, I know. Some folks aren't satisfied unless they can run 840hz screens on a 15k monitor in full blown HDR with 7.1 Atmos Audio and smell-o-vision.
( You won't win ov
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I don't see where mandating keyboard / mouse compatibility with every game would even budge the market.
The keyboard and mouse are primarily productivity devices, with game controller being a secondary function. Some games benefit from the abundance of buttons on a keyboard, and some games benefit from the accuracy of a mouse over a joystick, but in many instances the keyboard and mouse is inferior to some alternative control method. PCs have long relied on additional apparatus to supplement the keyboard
Everybody was laughing about Otellini (Score:2)
passin on manufacvturing the OG iPhone chip, including Pat
Well, here we are.
Unsurprising (Score:4, Informative)
Intel has never wanted the kind of margins they'd have to take to get console design wins. Their last console was the original Xbox. Plus they didn't even provide the graphics IP or hardware for that thing.
Ironically, Intel's best shot at getting 18a chips in PS6 would have been for them to fab an AMD at their foundry (instead of TSMC). It doesn't seem like many of Intel's current design IP would be appropriate for PS6. Especially not their graphics.
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Intel definitely wouldn't get the margins they want ; but I'd be curious to know what (at the time of negotiation) they expected the Sony contract to be displacing that would necessarily be more profitable.
If it were up to Intel it would be all enterprise customers shutting up and paying whatever Intel says they should for Xeons; along with some i7 and i9 parts in AMT-equipped thin and light laptops; but if they were chatting with Sony in 2022 Epyc Naples, Rome, and Milan would all have been launched alre