Intel lost bid for the PS6 (Reuters)

[Entropi]

Apparently, margins blocked the deal. I’m surprised Sony even entertained Intel, with the company being so ass lately, but that's how bids work, of course.

“A dispute over how much profit Intel stood to take from each chip sold to the Japanese electronics giant blocked Intel from settling on the price with Sony, according to two of the sources. Instead, rival AMD landed the contract through a competitive bidding process that eliminated others such as Broadcom (AVGO.O), opens new tab, until only Intel and AMD remained.”

https://www.reuters.com/technology/how-intel-lost-sony-playstation-business-2024-09-16/

 

[mibu no ookami]

Apparently, margins blocked the deal. I’m surprised Sony even considered Intel, with the company being so ass lately, but that's how bids work of course.

“A dispute over how much profit Intel stood to take from each chip sold to the Japanese electronics giant blocked Intel from settling on the price with Sony, according to two of the sources. Instead, rival AMD landed the contract through a competitive bidding process that eliminated others such as Broadcom (AVGO.O), opens new tab, until only Intel and AMD remained.”

https://www.reuters.com/technology/how-intel-lost-sony-playstation-business-2024-09-16/

In business, you have to consider everyone, especially as a publicly traded company. You have a fiduciary responsibility to shareholders to create an open bidding process.

It's one of the most expensive components on your biggest product, they have to listen to bids, even if they knew from the start who they were going to go with.

 

[Entropi]

I’m more intrigued by what a PS6 with a Broadcom Qualcomm chip might have been like. Backward compatibility would have been an engineering nightmare and expensive, I suppose.

 

[Yurinka]

In business, you have to consider everyone, especially as a publicly traded company. You have a fiduciary responsibility to shareholders to create an open bidding process.

It's one of the most expensive components on your biggest process, they have to listen to bids, even if they knew from the start who they were going to go with.

Yes, being public you are mandated to consider all the possible offers / candidates in order to justify to the investors why the decision taken is the best one.

Same apply when they don't want to sell their company and someone tries to buy it. Even if they know there are 0% chances of selling the company, they must listen and analyze the offer to reject it justifying it, to make sure investors know it wasn't the best option to sell the company.

In this case, pretty likely they'll go with AMD to ensure full BC with PS4 and PS5 while having enough next gen horsepower.

 

[Etifilio]

the next Xbox is gonna be Intel based

 

[ToTTenTranz]

It's a bit weird that Intel managed to lose to AMD in price considering they would own both the chip design and the fab, whereas AMD depends on TSMC's whims.

I’m more intrigued by what a PS6 with a Broadcom chip might have been like. Backward compatibility would have been an engineering nightmare and expensive, I suppose.

Yes, the real news here is that Broadcom was somehow in that race. What would be their plan for the GPU? Just put a super scaled-up VideoCore (PS360-era tech) from the Raspberry Pi chip? How were they going to do with all the APIs and vertical integration?

I could see ARM and Qualcomm in that race, but definitely not Broadcom. What a strange presence.

 

[Petekilla]

Yes, being public you are mandated to consider all the possible offers / candidates in order to justify to the investors why the decision taken is the best one.

Same apply when they don't want to sell their company and someone tries to buy it. Even if they know there are 0% chances of selling the company, they must listen and analyze the offer to reject it justifying it, to make sure investors know it wasn't the best option to sell the company.

In this case, pretty likely they'll go with AMD to ensure full BC with PS4 and PS5 while having enough next gen horsepower.

Yeah, and in this day and age BC is important. Because people have built up their digital libraries, and Sony doesn’t want to break that up. Phil Spencer said. One of the reasons Xbox can’t beat PS, is because people have now built up their digital libraries and they’re not going to move.

 

[Entropi]

the next Xbox is gonna be Intel based

If MS wants to maintain its hot streak of making bad decisions, it will probably hire Intel.

Broadcom Qualcomm would be a much better choice, though.

 

[Airbus]

AMD still the better options man

 

[Entropi]

It's a bit weird that Intel managed to lose to AMD in price considering they would own both the chip design and the fab, whereas AMD depends on TSMC's whims.






Yes, the real news here is that Broadcom was somehow in that race. What would be their plan for the GPU? Just put a super scaled-up VideoCore (PS360-era tech) from the Raspberry Pi chip? How were they going to do with all the APIs and vertical integration?

I could see ARM and Qualcomm in that race, but definitely not Broadcom. What a strange presence.

You know what, my brain tricked me into thinking Broadcom was Qualcomm. Screw Broadcom for making me reconfigure all my lab stuff by acquiring vmware.

Back on topic. A Qualcomm ARM CPU with a killer PowerVR chip designed for revenge and blood on the industry for the way they were mistreated! Dreamcast 2.0 baby.

 

[Evilms]

 

[ethomaz]

Man I should love to have an ARM focused PS6.
Paired with some strong GPU it should be a monster.

 

[Gediminas]

Good for price, good for continuation.

 

[ToTTenTranz]

Back on topic. A Qualcomm ARM CPU with a killer PowerVR chip designed for revenge and blood on the industry for the way they were mistreated! Dreamcast 2.0 baby.

Qualcomm would never go with a PowerVR GPU. Their proprietary Adreno GPU architecture is a lot more popular and has a lot more engineering resources poured over.


I think the only chances of us ever seeing a PowerVR GPU in a console again is if Imagination got a console design win using a RISC-V CPU. Which is only ever going to happen if Nintendo cuts ties with Nvidia because the latter got too expensive or if Sega comes back to the console business (assuming they're not acquired by Microsoft this wednesday).

 

[SSfox]

Hopefully Hermen will be fired by then by new Japanese dude

 

[Gediminas]

Hopefully Hermen will be fired by then by new Japanese dude

hard to accomplish, when he is never at the office

 

[Entropi]

Qualcomm would never go with a PowerVR GPU. Their proprietary Adreno GPU architecture is a lot more popular and has a lot more engineering resources poured over.


I think the only chances of us ever seeing a PowerVR GPU in a console again is if Imagination got a console design win using a RISC-V CPU. Which is only ever going to happen if Nintendo cuts ties with Nvidia because the latter got too expensive or if Sega comes back to the console business (assuming they're not acquired by Microsoft this wednesday).

Let me dream man (you are correct, of course)

 

[KvallyX]

the next Xbox is gonna be Intel based

They will choose whichever is better for their backward compatibility.

 

[Bo_Hazem]

I’m more intrigued by what a PS6 with a Broadcom Qualcomm chip might have been like. Backward compatibility would have been an engineering nightmare and expensive, I suppose.

AMD is making ARM as well.

64-bit ARM®- based AMD Opteron processors meet demanding performance requirements, provide energy efficient solutions and enable cost savings for scale-out cloud datacenter, storage and networking infrastructure.

https://www.amd.com/system/files/documents/hierofalcon-product-brief.pdf

 

[ToTTenTranz]

They will choose whichever is better for their backward compatibility.

Xbox would be a bit more elastic on that front, given the fact that everything runs under a virtual machine.