[Beowulf] Microsofts trick - was AMD reveals potent parallel processing breakthrough

[atchley tds.net]

On Wed, May 8, 2013 at 5:38 AM, Vincent Diepeveen <diep at xs4all.nl> wrote:

>
> On May 6, 2013, at 3:17 AM, Christopher Samuel wrote:
>
> > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> > Hash: SHA1
> >
> > On 04/05/13 16:32, Eugen Leitl wrote:
> >
> >> Purportedly, there will be something resembling the PS4 architecture
> >> for the PC market. That would be an APU with 8 cores and stacked
> >> memory.
> >
> > Also interesting that Microsofts next XBox (720) will also be AMD,
> > with similar specs to the PS4.
> >
>
> I don't even need to read the article to know what's gonna happen.
>
> It seems Microsofts Xbox trick is to simply sit and wait for what
> Sony is doing, then take a similar chip,
> yet slightly less powerful and slightly cheaper and then sell the
> next Xbox cheaper than Sony's playstation.
>
> It's a strategy that works. Fact that they sold similar amounts of
> Xboxes like PS3 basically proves my opinion that Sony failed
> with ps3. The reasons why ps3 failed to outsell previous playstations
> would be very interesting to study as in itself market with
> potential customers is 4 times larger now or so. The factor 4 is a
> GUESS - it'll be way larger than that now that Asia opens up
> and we have a nouvelle rich in Africa with Africa moving quickly.
>

I thought MS' strategy all along was to sell the hardware below cost and to
make it up on licensing revenue, which has been the strategy for all
console makers, has it not? Given that and MS' large cash holdings, I do
not take it as a given that they will choose a cheaper version than Sony to
try to save on hardware costs.

Also, sales of all consoles are down. The new Wii has hardly made a blip in
the market. Some speculate that the era of consoles is past given how many
people game on their phones and tablets.

Scott
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