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No one appears to have mentioned the important meta game going on: Intel bidding as a credible alternative supplier. For Intel, by bidding they get to undercut

No one appears to have mentioned the important meta game going on: Intel bidding as a credible alternative supplier. For Intel, by bidding they get to undercut AMD's profits. For Sony, they get a credible alternative which they can pretend would be a viable choice. Thus forcing a slightly better deal from AMD. We saw similar articles related to the Switch 2. That time it was AMD acting as spoiler to Nvidia. Nvidia reportedly got the contract. That time too we got news articles lamenting this loss for AMD. As a gamedev I have a different perspective: Sony and Nintendo would be fools to give up backwards compatibility just for savings on chips. Switching vendors does not just invalidate old games compatibility, it also requires retooling for their internal libraries. Console games, outside small or open source engines, use proprietary graphics api. Those apis are tied to the hardware. With this coming generation from Nintendo, and the "current gen" from Sony and Xbox they've been able to mostly reuse much of their software investment. I'd case more but this is obviously nda, other devs should be able to confirm. Thus I don't think AMD for switch2 or Intel for ps6 was ever a credible path. Their bids existed to keep the existing vendor from getting overly greedy and ruining the parade for everyone. This is important, famously the original Xbox got hamstrung in the market by Nvidia's greed and refusal to lower prices as costs went down.

senkora 2y ago
+1. An important non-obvious detail for AMD is that they (at least in the past, I assume for this as well) have kept the instruction timings similar from generation to generation of consoles. Different x86 micro-architectures benefit from writing the machine code in slightly different ways. Games are highly optimized to the specific micro-architecture of the console, so keeping that stable helps game developers optimize for the console. If you suddenly changed the micro-architecture (if switching to Intel), then old games could suddenly become janky and slow even though both systems are x86. (This would only matter if you were pushing performance to the edge, which is why it rarely matters for general software development, but console game dev pushes to the edge) So it isn't just the graphics APIs that would change going from AMD to Intel, but the CPU performance as well.
- mikepavone 2y ago
  > An important non-obvious detail for AMD is that they (at least in the past, I assume for this as well) have kept the instruction timings similar from generation to generation of consoles. What? The Jaguar-based CPU in the PS4 has both a much lower clock and substantially lower IPC than the Zen 2 based one in the PS5. The timings are not remotely the same and the micro-architectures are quite different. Jaguar was an evolution of the Bobcat core which was AMD's answer to the Intel Atom at the time (i.e. low cost and low-power, though it was at least an out-of-order core unlike contemporary Atoms). Going from GCN to RDNA on the GPU side is also a pretty significant architectural change, though definitely much less than the going from AMD to Intel would be.
  - stonethrowaway 2y ago
    [flagged]
  - senkora 2y ago
    I did some more research and I was wrong. My source was an AMD tech talk from years ago where they mentioned keeping instruction timings the same for backwards compatibility reasons. I believe they were talking about this for the XBox One X: https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/microsoft/scorpio_engine#Overview https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/microsoft/scorpio_engine#Overvi... (and a similar chip for the PS4 Pro) So basically, they upgraded and lightly enhanced the Jaguar architecture, shrunk the process (28nm -> 16nm), but otherwise kept it the same. AMD Zen was released around this time and was far superior but they decided to stick with Jaguar in order to make sure that instruction timings were kept the same. I guess that they didn't want two hardware revisions of the same console generation running on different micro-architectures, but they were okay switching the micro-architecture for the next console generation.
- jheriko 2y ago
  you clearly haven't played a modern game :P cpu timings taken care around by developers is 10-15 years out of date. most of them these days dont even know what a dot product is, how to find the distance to a point or a straight line in-between two... and the people they rely on to do this for them make horrendous meals of it. but yeah, sure, cpu instruction timings matter.
neighbour 2y ago
This is all true. Xbox always threatens to leave their current vendors only to end up signing a renewal at the final hours of the contract. >As a gamedev I have a different perspective: Sony and Nintendo would be fools to give up backwards compatibility just for savings on chips. In your view, is this issue worse with modern consoles now that the Playstation (and possibly Nintendo) online store purchases persist across generations? Imagine a scenario where someone has a PS4 and PS5, they buy many games through the Playstation Store, then Sony selects a different chip supplier for the PS6. I'm guessing this would cause issues with games that were designed for the older consoles, breaking backwards compatibility. I'd imagine that if the console manufacturers cared about backwards compatibility, which I think they do, the likelihood of them switching chip providers would decrease with each generation.
- wmf 2y ago
  Microsoft maintained backwards compatibility across Intel+Nvidia, IBM+ATI, and AMD+AMD so it's possible. Sony hasn't invested as much in compatibility, instead just keeping the same architecture for PS4/5.
  - neighbour 2y ago
    True but if you're referring to the fact that you can play Xbox and Xbox 360 games on newer hardware, I believe Microsoft has a team that has to individually patch these games to work for newer hardware. Sony does something similar I believe with their new Classics Catalogue as part of their most premium PS Plus tier.
    - jamesfinlayson 2y ago
      Yeah I remember the Xbox 360 being hit and miss with backwards compatibility - their FAQs said that most of the time the people working on it had to just look at the raw assembly of games they were trying to get running to figure out what went wrong.
  - lxgr 2y ago
    Sony has historically invested a lot into backwards compatibility, going as far as shipping the previous gen's GPU and/or CPU with the PS2, initial PS3 models, and the PS Vita. PS3 compatibility on the PS4 was notably absent, though.
johnnyanmac 2y ago
Yeah, this was rigged from the start. If Sony did want to take up Intel next gen, they'd need to do a lot of work on backwards compatibility with the PS5 on the PS6. Whereas I imagine the PS6 being a "PS5 Pro Pro" at this rate. I suppose it can be seen as controlling rampant greed (especially for Nvidia), but it feels like the consoles dealt the cards here. There would have needed to either be some revolutionary tech or an outright schism to make a business steer an otherwise smooth ship that way. >As a gamedev I have a different perspective: Sony and Nintendo would be fools to give up backwards compatibility just for savings on chips. I agree that both are probably playing it safe this time. But as a devil's advocate: both Sony and Nintendo are not strangers to ditching the previous gen if they don't want to compromise their next gen. At this point Nintendo is skewed towards ditching (SNES/N64/Gamecube/Switch vs. Wii/WiiU). Sony tried and almost failed hard with the PS3 (kind of before with the whole SKU debacle, and then ditched after) but is otherwise usually consistent on BC. Well, that and the Vita. But I don't think anyone missed the UMD (it was still backwards compatible digitally, though).
- ac29 2y ago
  > Yeah, this was rigged from the start. If Sony did want to take up Intel next gen, they'd need to do a lot of work on backwards compatibility with the PS5 on the PS6. Whereas I imagine the PS6 being a "PS5 Pro Pro" at this rate. Why would they need to do a lot more work on compatibility if they'd picked Intel vs AMD? Either CPU is presumably going to be x86_64. The GPU is almost certainly going to be much different between AMD's PS5 GPU and AMD's PS6 GPU, so the graphics driver will need work either way.
  - yangff 2y ago
    They could have AMD provide a compatibility layer for the GPU (although this might be a bad idea), but implementing an AMD compatibility layer on Intel/NV clearly seems like an even worse idea. But at least you might be able to run the already compiled shaders in compatibility mode?
- philistine 2y ago
  > At this point Nintendo is skewed towards ditching (SNES/N64/Gamecube/Switch vs. Wii/WiiU). Ultimately, a company is its people. And the management class at Nintendo is famously new. Everybody is expecting them to focus on robust backwards compatibility as part of their new, exciting development.
jm4 2y ago
The whole article seems unfair to Intel. They didn’t lose the contract because they didn’t have it in the first place. I think your analysis is correct. They win a little if they don’t get the contract and they win a lot if they do. It was a no brainer to bid on it.
ksec 2y ago
Adding a bit more context. Nvidia got the bid for Switch when they were basically dumping those unwanted Tegra to Nintendo for an incredibly low price. Xbox and Playstation dont earn AMD much profits at all. AMD had this Custom Processor segment to barely keep them surviving, people may forget AMD was only worth ~$3B market cap in 2016. They are now at ~$250B. On the subject of software compatibility though, one thing I got it wrong was my prediction of having AAA titles on Xbox and PS would have helped AMD's market share on PC, given those titles are already optimised on Xbox and PS anyway. That didn't happen at all. And Nvidia continue to dominate.
- DaoVeles 2y ago
  A few of the Playstation titles that made their way to PC do seem to have a little home field advantage on AMD chips, but not enough to sway people over to them.
- elzbardico 2y ago
  Sometimes a low margin business is all you need and have to keep the lights on, don't hemorrhage too much people and stay afloat until you get better winds. Traditional MBA thinking sometimes is too short sighted. For example, PCs might not have been a Cash Cow for IBM, but the Thinkpad brand, the distributor relationships and the customer may had helped IBM more than the cash out selling this business to Lenovo. Maybe having a healthy bridge head with a popular brand of laptops could have helped IBM coming up with some innovative way of selling the overhyped Watson. The same with AMD and videogames, it paid the bills, paid salaries and left a little profit on the table to be invested. Probably it helped them bridge from their hell days to what they are today. There's a lot of intangibles and hidden symmetries, serendipitous opportunities that are frequently overlooked by our bean-counting master race overlords.
- sangnoir 2y ago
  > Xbox and Playstation dont earn AMD much profits at all It doesn't cost them much either. Lisa Su, in an interview that was posted to HN a few months ago, said it is a deliberate strategy to repackage IP AMD has already developed. They are willing to pull designs from the shelf and customize it to meet partners needs. Having a long tail of products adds up, and sets you up to get first dibs on higher margin partnerships in the future.
lxgr 2y ago
> Sony and Nintendo would be fools to give up backwards compatibility just for savings on chips. But would they really? Staying on x86-64 would take care of CPU compatibility (unless there's some exotic AMD-only instruction set extension heavily used by PS4/5 games), and a GPU emulation stack seems at least somewhat plausible. Sony has pulled this off multiple times before with seemingly completely incompatible architectures: The PS2 came with the PS1 CPU (repurposed as an IO controller, but fully available for previous-gen games) and emulated the GPU on its own. The PS3 did the reverse in its second iteration (i.e. it included the PS2's GPU and emulated the CPU). The PS Vita's SoC had the PSP MIPS CPU included on-die, which in turn is similar enough to the PS1's to allow running those games too.
- DSMan195276 2y ago
  For GPU emulation, I'm not super knowledgeable but I would think the shaders are a big issue, older systems don't have that problem. Console games come with precompiled shaders and you won't be able to reuse those between AMD vs. Nvidia. Certainly you can get around it, emulators for modern Console do just that, but it's not without it's issues which might be considered unacceptable. That's still fixable if you're willing to ship newly compiled shaders and such, but that's a lot more work if you're talking about needing some kind of per-game fix to be downloaded. This is how the XBox 360 "Backwards-compatibility" works, and this approach means it only works with a subset of XBox 360 games, not all of them. It's much better than nothing, but it's not a hardware-level fix that makes the original game binaries "just work". For packaging the old GPU with the new system, I think that's not really realistic anymore since prices for them simply don't drop enough and the system design would be a mess (the chips are huge and you'd need cooling for both chips. I guess if only one is running at a time then it's not as bad, but...). Separately, if you're swapping from Nvidia to AMD then you're talking about trying to convince one of them to make a batch of old chips for you while you use their competitor's chip as the the main one, they might not be willing to do it.
  - lxgr 2y ago
    Would it not be possible to recompile all shaders at startup (or "install", i.e. first launch) time and then cache them (if runtime recompilation is even too slow in the first place)?
aurareturn 2y ago
I’m pretty sure PS5 runs x86 and Vulcan. Both are standardized. That’s why PS5 games can be easily ported to PCs running Intel and Nvidia. So I’m not buying that going Intel would lose backwards compatibility.
- mastax 2y ago
  It’s not clear to me that the PS5 supports Vulkan at all (excluding third party translation layers). I would be happy to see any evidence. In any case I’m confident the large majority of PS5 games use its native api GNM. GNM could certainly be implemented for Intel GPUs, but it’s an additional cost to account for.
  - aurareturn 2y ago
    Yes, you are correct. I was wrong.
- pjmlp 2y ago
  I am quite sure PS5 doesn't do Vulkan at all, and you even don't need a NDA access for that, there are enough GDC talks and SCEE presentations on the what APIs Playstations do support.
smcl 2y ago
I'm not convinced, this feels like those "actually this is good for bitcoin" replies that are popular with cryptobros anytime some bad news hits. Intel have lost out on a big, high-profile contract - this cannot be something they are happy with and any explanation to the contrary is, as the kids say, "cope"
Meganet 2y ago
Those IPs are bought from expert companies right? I would assume if intel can make ARM and x86, it can do whatever sony needs. Or is AMDs architecture THAT special? My assumption is, that the ps3 streaming processor was so different, that it would have mattered but with ps4 and 5? You could also patch PS5 games if you need to. The ecosystem is closed.
zelon88 2y ago
> Switching vendors does not just invalidate old games compatibility, it also requires retooling for their internal libraries. This is a red herring. The hardware is x86-64, and all the game engines are made on x86-64, and all the games are compiled on, you guess it, x86-64. That's why they stopped using PowerPC, or Motorola, or other non-x86 architectures. To simplify backwards compatibility, and actually get comparable value to a decent performing system. So when they tell you there is a cost overhead associated with switching vendors, that is BS. However long it takes to port your desktop driver package is how long it would take to get all of this working on different hardware. Seriously, if someone in a basement in Arkansas can get Windows to run on a PowerPC PS3, Sony can figure out how to make x86-64 AMD games work on an x86-64 Intel chips. Anyone saying otherwise has incentive to not make it happen.

senkora 2y ago

+1. An important non-obvious detail for AMD is that they (at least in the past, I assume for this as well) have kept the instruction timings similar from generation to generation of consoles. Different x86 micro-architectures benefit from writing the machine code in slightly different ways. Games are highly optimized to the specific micro-architecture of the console, so keeping that stable helps game developers optimize for the console. If you suddenly changed the micro-architecture (if switching to Intel), then old games could suddenly become janky and slow even though both systems are x86. (This would only matter if you were pushing performance to the edge, which is why it rarely matters for general software development, but console game dev pushes to the edge) So it isn't just the graphics APIs that would change going from AMD to Intel, but the CPU performance as well.

mikepavone 2y ago
> An important non-obvious detail for AMD is that they (at least in the past, I assume for this as well) have kept the instruction timings similar from generation to generation of consoles. What? The Jaguar-based CPU in the PS4 has both a much lower clock and substantially lower IPC than the Zen 2 based one in the PS5. The timings are not remotely the same and the micro-architectures are quite different. Jaguar was an evolution of the Bobcat core which was AMD's answer to the Intel Atom at the time (i.e. low cost and low-power, though it was at least an out-of-order core unlike contemporary Atoms). Going from GCN to RDNA on the GPU side is also a pretty significant architectural change, though definitely much less than the going from AMD to Intel would be.
- stonethrowaway 2y ago
  [flagged]
- senkora 2y ago
  I did some more research and I was wrong. My source was an AMD tech talk from years ago where they mentioned keeping instruction timings the same for backwards compatibility reasons. I believe they were talking about this for the XBox One X: https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/microsoft/scorpio_engine#Overview https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/microsoft/scorpio_engine#Overvi... (and a similar chip for the PS4 Pro) So basically, they upgraded and lightly enhanced the Jaguar architecture, shrunk the process (28nm -> 16nm), but otherwise kept it the same. AMD Zen was released around this time and was far superior but they decided to stick with Jaguar in order to make sure that instruction timings were kept the same. I guess that they didn't want two hardware revisions of the same console generation running on different micro-architectures, but they were okay switching the micro-architecture for the next console generation.
jheriko 2y ago
you clearly haven't played a modern game :P cpu timings taken care around by developers is 10-15 years out of date. most of them these days dont even know what a dot product is, how to find the distance to a point or a straight line in-between two... and the people they rely on to do this for them make horrendous meals of it. but yeah, sure, cpu instruction timings matter.

neighbour 2y ago

This is all true. Xbox always threatens to leave their current vendors only to end up signing a renewal at the final hours of the contract. >As a gamedev I have a different perspective: Sony and Nintendo would be fools to give up backwards compatibility just for savings on chips. In your view, is this issue worse with modern consoles now that the Playstation (and possibly Nintendo) online store purchases persist across generations? Imagine a scenario where someone has a PS4 and PS5, they buy many games through the Playstation Store, then Sony selects a different chip supplier for the PS6. I'm guessing this would cause issues with games that were designed for the older consoles, breaking backwards compatibility. I'd imagine that if the console manufacturers cared about backwards compatibility, which I think they do, the likelihood of them switching chip providers would decrease with each generation.

wmf 2y ago
Microsoft maintained backwards compatibility across Intel+Nvidia, IBM+ATI, and AMD+AMD so it's possible. Sony hasn't invested as much in compatibility, instead just keeping the same architecture for PS4/5.
- neighbour 2y ago
  True but if you're referring to the fact that you can play Xbox and Xbox 360 games on newer hardware, I believe Microsoft has a team that has to individually patch these games to work for newer hardware. Sony does something similar I believe with their new Classics Catalogue as part of their most premium PS Plus tier.
  - jamesfinlayson 2y ago
    Yeah I remember the Xbox 360 being hit and miss with backwards compatibility - their FAQs said that most of the time the people working on it had to just look at the raw assembly of games they were trying to get running to figure out what went wrong.
- lxgr 2y ago
  Sony has historically invested a lot into backwards compatibility, going as far as shipping the previous gen's GPU and/or CPU with the PS2, initial PS3 models, and the PS Vita. PS3 compatibility on the PS4 was notably absent, though.

johnnyanmac 2y ago

Yeah, this was rigged from the start. If Sony did want to take up Intel next gen, they'd need to do a lot of work on backwards compatibility with the PS5 on the PS6. Whereas I imagine the PS6 being a "PS5 Pro Pro" at this rate. I suppose it can be seen as controlling rampant greed (especially for Nvidia), but it feels like the consoles dealt the cards here. There would have needed to either be some revolutionary tech or an outright schism to make a business steer an otherwise smooth ship that way. >As a gamedev I have a different perspective: Sony and Nintendo would be fools to give up backwards compatibility just for savings on chips. I agree that both are probably playing it safe this time. But as a devil's advocate: both Sony and Nintendo are not strangers to ditching the previous gen if they don't want to compromise their next gen. At this point Nintendo is skewed towards ditching (SNES/N64/Gamecube/Switch vs. Wii/WiiU). Sony tried and almost failed hard with the PS3 (kind of before with the whole SKU debacle, and then ditched after) but is otherwise usually consistent on BC. Well, that and the Vita. But I don't think anyone missed the UMD (it was still backwards compatible digitally, though).

ac29 2y ago
> Yeah, this was rigged from the start. If Sony did want to take up Intel next gen, they'd need to do a lot of work on backwards compatibility with the PS5 on the PS6. Whereas I imagine the PS6 being a "PS5 Pro Pro" at this rate. Why would they need to do a lot more work on compatibility if they'd picked Intel vs AMD? Either CPU is presumably going to be x86_64. The GPU is almost certainly going to be much different between AMD's PS5 GPU and AMD's PS6 GPU, so the graphics driver will need work either way.
- yangff 2y ago
  They could have AMD provide a compatibility layer for the GPU (although this might be a bad idea), but implementing an AMD compatibility layer on Intel/NV clearly seems like an even worse idea. But at least you might be able to run the already compiled shaders in compatibility mode?
philistine 2y ago
> At this point Nintendo is skewed towards ditching (SNES/N64/Gamecube/Switch vs. Wii/WiiU). Ultimately, a company is its people. And the management class at Nintendo is famously new. Everybody is expecting them to focus on robust backwards compatibility as part of their new, exciting development.

jm4 2y ago

The whole article seems unfair to Intel. They didn’t lose the contract because they didn’t have it in the first place. I think your analysis is correct. They win a little if they don’t get the contract and they win a lot if they do. It was a no brainer to bid on it.

ksec 2y ago

Adding a bit more context. Nvidia got the bid for Switch when they were basically dumping those unwanted Tegra to Nintendo for an incredibly low price. Xbox and Playstation dont earn AMD much profits at all. AMD had this Custom Processor segment to barely keep them surviving, people may forget AMD was only worth ~$3B market cap in 2016. They are now at ~$250B. On the subject of software compatibility though, one thing I got it wrong was my prediction of having AAA titles on Xbox and PS would have helped AMD's market share on PC, given those titles are already optimised on Xbox and PS anyway. That didn't happen at all. And Nvidia continue to dominate.

DaoVeles 2y ago
A few of the Playstation titles that made their way to PC do seem to have a little home field advantage on AMD chips, but not enough to sway people over to them.
elzbardico 2y ago
Sometimes a low margin business is all you need and have to keep the lights on, don't hemorrhage too much people and stay afloat until you get better winds. Traditional MBA thinking sometimes is too short sighted. For example, PCs might not have been a Cash Cow for IBM, but the Thinkpad brand, the distributor relationships and the customer may had helped IBM more than the cash out selling this business to Lenovo. Maybe having a healthy bridge head with a popular brand of laptops could have helped IBM coming up with some innovative way of selling the overhyped Watson. The same with AMD and videogames, it paid the bills, paid salaries and left a little profit on the table to be invested. Probably it helped them bridge from their hell days to what they are today. There's a lot of intangibles and hidden symmetries, serendipitous opportunities that are frequently overlooked by our bean-counting master race overlords.
sangnoir 2y ago
> Xbox and Playstation dont earn AMD much profits at all It doesn't cost them much either. Lisa Su, in an interview that was posted to HN a few months ago, said it is a deliberate strategy to repackage IP AMD has already developed. They are willing to pull designs from the shelf and customize it to meet partners needs. Having a long tail of products adds up, and sets you up to get first dibs on higher margin partnerships in the future.

lxgr 2y ago

> Sony and Nintendo would be fools to give up backwards compatibility just for savings on chips. But would they really? Staying on x86-64 would take care of CPU compatibility (unless there's some exotic AMD-only instruction set extension heavily used by PS4/5 games), and a GPU emulation stack seems at least somewhat plausible. Sony has pulled this off multiple times before with seemingly completely incompatible architectures: The PS2 came with the PS1 CPU (repurposed as an IO controller, but fully available for previous-gen games) and emulated the GPU on its own. The PS3 did the reverse in its second iteration (i.e. it included the PS2's GPU and emulated the CPU). The PS Vita's SoC had the PSP MIPS CPU included on-die, which in turn is similar enough to the PS1's to allow running those games too.

DSMan195276 2y ago
For GPU emulation, I'm not super knowledgeable but I would think the shaders are a big issue, older systems don't have that problem. Console games come with precompiled shaders and you won't be able to reuse those between AMD vs. Nvidia. Certainly you can get around it, emulators for modern Console do just that, but it's not without it's issues which might be considered unacceptable. That's still fixable if you're willing to ship newly compiled shaders and such, but that's a lot more work if you're talking about needing some kind of per-game fix to be downloaded. This is how the XBox 360 "Backwards-compatibility" works, and this approach means it only works with a subset of XBox 360 games, not all of them. It's much better than nothing, but it's not a hardware-level fix that makes the original game binaries "just work". For packaging the old GPU with the new system, I think that's not really realistic anymore since prices for them simply don't drop enough and the system design would be a mess (the chips are huge and you'd need cooling for both chips. I guess if only one is running at a time then it's not as bad, but...). Separately, if you're swapping from Nvidia to AMD then you're talking about trying to convince one of them to make a batch of old chips for you while you use their competitor's chip as the the main one, they might not be willing to do it.
- lxgr 2y ago
  Would it not be possible to recompile all shaders at startup (or "install", i.e. first launch) time and then cache them (if runtime recompilation is even too slow in the first place)?

aurareturn 2y ago

I’m pretty sure PS5 runs x86 and Vulcan. Both are standardized. That’s why PS5 games can be easily ported to PCs running Intel and Nvidia. So I’m not buying that going Intel would lose backwards compatibility.

mastax 2y ago
It’s not clear to me that the PS5 supports Vulkan at all (excluding third party translation layers). I would be happy to see any evidence. In any case I’m confident the large majority of PS5 games use its native api GNM. GNM could certainly be implemented for Intel GPUs, but it’s an additional cost to account for.
- aurareturn 2y ago
  Yes, you are correct. I was wrong.
pjmlp 2y ago
I am quite sure PS5 doesn't do Vulkan at all, and you even don't need a NDA access for that, there are enough GDC talks and SCEE presentations on the what APIs Playstations do support.

smcl 2y ago

I'm not convinced, this feels like those "actually this is good for bitcoin" replies that are popular with cryptobros anytime some bad news hits. Intel have lost out on a big, high-profile contract - this cannot be something they are happy with and any explanation to the contrary is, as the kids say, "cope"

Meganet 2y ago

Those IPs are bought from expert companies right? I would assume if intel can make ARM and x86, it can do whatever sony needs. Or is AMDs architecture THAT special? My assumption is, that the ps3 streaming processor was so different, that it would have mattered but with ps4 and 5? You could also patch PS5 games if you need to. The ecosystem is closed.

zelon88 2y ago

> Switching vendors does not just invalidate old games compatibility, it also requires retooling for their internal libraries. This is a red herring. The hardware is x86-64, and all the game engines are made on x86-64, and all the games are compiled on, you guess it, x86-64. That's why they stopped using PowerPC, or Motorola, or other non-x86 architectures. To simplify backwards compatibility, and actually get comparable value to a decent performing system. So when they tell you there is a cost overhead associated with switching vendors, that is BS. However long it takes to port your desktop driver package is how long it would take to get all of this working on different hardware. Seriously, if someone in a basement in Arkansas can get Windows to run on a PowerPC PS3, Sony can figure out how to make x86-64 AMD games work on an x86-64 Intel chips. Anyone saying otherwise has incentive to not make it happen.