PS2 chipsets

bugs

Read this over the weekend, about sony's plans to sell the ps2 chipset to third parties hardware developers.
Initially i thought it was a fairly stupid move ( along with sacking half their employees ) but it seems this could make them a near monopoly.
They're intending to sell the internal chipset to other companies , obviously spawning a host of clone ps2's. Whether they'll be letting them mess with them i dont know , probably unlikely. But rumours are going about that they'll be asking for sales percentages from any company willing to become part of the ps2 sales force. Meaning that supply of the machines would go thru the roof, competition would make the price more than likely undercut anything nintendo or microsoft are capable of getting down to.

Mass sales would mean more games sales, more money for developers, which means more developers for sony.
This obviously could blow up in their faces quite badly, me smells many law suits and copyright infringements from companies editing DVD region laws and the whole instant mod chip action
But it could be the smartest idea in consoles, if it really took off , the ps2 could basically own the scene.

Hopefully this screws over the Xbox , i dont mind nintendo , but i hope bill gets a nice big sh1tburger when he tries to sell his piece 'o toss

Shinji

It'd be very shrewd if they did - on some levels. Prices would go down, and the loss leader that Sony makes on hardware would be spread over some more companies. But, even the slightest difference in build can affect top-end console games that are designed to squeeze every trick out of the hardware. What happens when Metal Gear Solid 3 doesn't work on little Timmy's Panasonic Playstation-2 because their ram cycles 0.02% slower than on the Fujitsu Playstation-2?

I still don't get why everyone wants X-Box to die, aside from "generic Microsoft hating". Its a damn good looking spec for a console, and it'll be a doddle to develop for, letting games makers concentrate more on gameplay because the ability to do l33t graphics is easier. And, it'll be cheap, as its made from off-the-shelf hardware. Whats so wrong about that?

Ja,
Rob

bugs

I cant see it being all that cheap , a 1Ghz processor with a ( now either voodoo or nvidia ) gfx card, and a hard drive.
Point being that they are microsoft , they are *******s , theres no debating that.
They have no care for how ****ed a product they release and the whole point of consoles is plug and play , microsoft will almost definetly *******ise this.

I would put money that they make it upgradeable, start spec'ing games and basically have a PC that less than fortunate console gamers are duped into buying. Its a bigger market and bill wants his bit , he also wants to annoy as many ppl as possible in the process, that is why i hope it dies , and you too bill.

Noel Brady

Sony have a very clever plan. This will actually end up with them making plenty more money as in recent years companies like themselves, Nintendo and Sega have had to make their consoles at a loss. They would then make this loss back along with a profit from the games purchased.

However, by licensing the PS2 chipset out, they are eliminating this cost for themselves and handing it onto other companies.

Noel Brady www.game-ireland.com

Shiminay

I just wrote my thoughts about this in the thread Adversary started and I don't wanna type it again.
The general gist of it:
It's a good idea to release the chipsets for 3rd parties to work on.

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All the best,

Dav
@B^)
My page of stuff

Shinji

I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss the X-Box. They're committed to releasing a console, not a mini-PC, and have illustrated this commitment in a lot of ways - such as not giving email and web access on the box. The technology being used is good (600Mhz Intel cpu, NVIDIA NV20 Derivative graphics chipset, 64Mb RAM, unified memory architecture...) and will NOT be upgradeable. Also, it'll have the backing of Microsoft, the value of which is, naturally, huge.

_CreeD_

And don't forget, one of Microsoft's marketing pluses with the X-box will be its ability to play then current and older PC games at least. Expanding their market.

How long do you think it would be before some inventive little guy comes up with a PS2 hardware emulator for the PC?

Microsoft lands on Sony territory and they give themselves the ability to form a Beachhead on the PC.

Shinji

X-Box will not play PC titles.

However, it should be a doddle to convert PC titles to the X-Box...

Ja,
Rob

Nitro-G

Fatal error, game will not load. For further assistance email haha@micro$oft.com. We will take your x box back, and you'll have to buy a new one. Please restart your x box and reinstall windows xbox using the system disk that did not come with the machine.

>

Jamie www.irishplayer.com

bugs

Hahahah , nice one

Shiminay

Originally posted by _CreeD_:
How long do you think it would be before some inventive little guy comes up with a PS2 hardware emulator for the PC?

Myself and a guy from work were just talking about that...

He said before on his Amiga, he was able to put a PC Motherboard into it and run the 2 at teh same time. Think about it - you could plug a PS2 PCI card onto a PC bus (only real requirements are a DVD and sufficient hard drive space for the software). I reckon it'd go down a treat - I'd certainly buy one!

Dav
@B^)

[This message has been edited by Kharn (edited 20-06-2000).]