Andre Yoskowitz
17 Mar 2013 1:18
Nvidia's Senior VP of content and technology Tony Tamasi has said this week that the company skipped involvement with the PlayStation 4 because it was not worth the cost.
The upcoming console has a custom APU built by Sony and AMD, and the Wii U has a similar chip as does the Microsoft Xbox 8.
"I'm sure there was a negotiation that went on, and we came to the conclusion that we didn't want to do the business at the price those guys were willing to pay," Tamasi added. "Having been through the original Xbox and PS3, we understand the economics of [console development] and the tradeoffs."
With the original Xbox, Nvidia built the 233 MHz "NV2A" application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) and the company also co-developed PlayStation 3's RSX "Reality Synthesizer" GPU (550 MHz).
"We're building a whole bunch of stuff, and we had to look at console business as an opportunity cost," he said. "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."