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XBox (Games) Entertainment Games

ATI Wins Bid For Next Xbox 466

Posted by simoniker from the nvidia-grizzling-in-corner dept.
TypoNAM writes "CNET News is reporting that graphics chip underdog ATI Technologies has signed a contract with Microsoft to produce components for future versions of the Xbox game console, beating out market leader Nvidia." According to the article, "The announcement ends months of speculation over whether Nvidia, the leading maker of graphics processors for PCs, would renew its troubled partnership with Microsoft on the Xbox."
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ATI Wins Bid For Next Xbox More

ATI Wins Bid For Next Xbox

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  • Gotta love marketing jargon (Score:5, Funny)

    by mao che minh ( 611166 ) * on Thursday August 14, 2003 @12:15PM (#6695939) Journal
    From the article: "We selected ATI after reviewing the top graphics technologies in development and determining that ATI's technical vision fits perfectly with the future direction of Xbox," Robbie Bach, senior vice president of Microsoft's home and entertainment division, said in a statement..... "Nvidia has really given a lot of signals...that they're trying to distance themselves from Xbox2,"

    This roughly equates to: "We choose ATI because they begged more and offerred to do it for less. I don't want to burn any bridges with Nvidia, so let's just say something about vision, or strategy, or something. Besides, Nvidia wanted more money. Right, well, time to crush some little entertainment company now, recycle their goods, and call it innovation!" in normal, human language.

    • Re:Gotta love marketing jargon (Score:5, Informative)

      by PainKilleR-CE ( 597083 ) on Thursday August 14, 2003 @12:29PM (#6696096)
      "We selected ATI after reviewing the top graphics technologies in development and determining that ATI's technical vision fits perfectly with the future direction of Xbox," Robbie Bach, senior vice president of Microsoft's home and entertainment division, said in a statement..... "Nvidia has really given a lot of signals...that they're trying to distance themselves from Xbox2,"

      The second part of that statement (the part about nVidia) came from an analyst, not from a statement from anyone at Microsoft. The full quote about nVidia was:

      Nvidia has really given a lot of signals...that they're trying to distance themselves from Xbox2," Michael McConnell, an analyst for Pacific Crest Securities, said earlier this summer. "That relationship has really soured over the last year...Microsoft in general is just not a very nice partner to deal with. I think the whole experience left Nvidia with a bad taste in their mouth."

      My prediction:
      Tomorrow's a good day to buy nVidia stock.
      • >Nvidia has really given a lot of signals...that they're trying to distance themselves from Xbox2," Michael McConnell, an analyst for Pacific Crest Securities, said earlier this summer. "That relationship has really soured over the last year...Microsoft in general is just not a very nice partner to deal with. I think the whole experience left Nvidia with a bad taste in their mouth."

        I wonder if that has anything to do with MS forcing Nvidia [slashdot.org] to destroy a batch of chips for no good reason?

      • Re:Gotta love marketing jargon (Score:4, Funny)

        by sharkey ( 16670 ) on Thursday August 14, 2003 @02:03PM (#6697100)
        I think the whole experience left Nvidia with a bad taste in their mouth.

        And a burning sensation in the other end?

  • I'm thinking Microsoft made a mistake, with NVidia they could of renamed the game executables to 3DMark03.exe [slashdot.org] and gotten just that much more power!

    Mike
    • "Made in Canada"

      Maybe this will help us get over that Lumber/Mad Cow hump.

  • No backwards compatibility? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by JamesSharman ( 91225 ) * on Thursday August 14, 2003 @12:16PM (#6695948)
    If this is the case it seems unlikely that we will see any backwards compatibility between xbox2 and the original. The original Nvidia chip was based on a DX part (and it's likely the ATI one will be as well) but the better games access a lot of the hardware directly.

    Of course it's possible that MS were smart enough to have conditions in the original X-Box contract with Nvidia that would allow them to produce a more or less compatible chip.
    • Or it's possible that Billy and Steve-O would just walk over to Nvidia's CEO and beat him to death with their wallets while their flesh eating lawyers cleaned up any evidence.
    • It's also possible that the Xbox2 will be powerful enough to emulate whatever hardware is missing/needed to run Xbox games...Or simply have built in the hardware the ability to redirect direct hardware calls of the original xbox games to be used on Ati's hardware. Realisticly the two are going to be DX compatible there can't be that much hardware confliction.
    • funny how MS was trumpeting the console as "One platform to rule them all" what with the single architecture to program for resulting in less bugfixes and whatnot.

      I wonder if Microsoft made Nvidia disclose specs then gave them to ATI, the same way they screwed the cellphone manufacturers? That'd be more interesting to watch than the old WordPerfect/Word battle of last decade.

    • Not necessarily (Score:3, Funny)

      by phorm ( 591458 )
      It depends on how closely the games tied to the GPU. My games work equally well on an ATI or NVidia card in windows, no reason the same shouldn't apply on a console. Now, it could be that they have to do a little modification to make it run right, or that not all old games will be quite exactly same as X-box #1, but ah well.

      That being said, I wonder how many people here would go for an X-box anyhow? The current game linup isn't great anyhow, much better stuff on other consoles, though perhaps this will c
      • Yeah, but people who write games for Windows understand that releasing games for ATI and NVidia is a good idea. AFAIK, there are two revisions of the X-Box, the original release, and one that has some security fixes in it.

        As long as Microsoft make sure that the X-Box acts the same when you use the same API, the games work. You really only need to test on the X-Box. The console market is much easier to develop for because the hardware is very, very well known, and very stable.

        As long as you stay with

    • I'm sure they'll have backward compatibility. To not have would hurt sales a lot... Especially since XBox is such a huge box and I'd hate to have to keep it around after XBox2.

      Hmm... Is Sony planning to have PS2 compatibility in PS3? If yes, and XBox2 doesn't have XBox compatibility, that'd be a very good reason to get PS3 instead and forget XBox2.

      Especially since I doubt XBox2 can do anything that a modded XBox can't do as a "living-room entertainment center"... It certainly won't have as big HD as

    • FUD (Score:5, Insightful)

      by *weasel ( 174362 ) on Thursday August 14, 2003 @12:49PM (#6696261)
      access the hardware directly? where would you get such an idea?

      developers are using dx8 and at most are hand-coding vertex and shader routines; which if you hadn't noticed, may have been proprietary to nvidia 2 years ago, but are directx 9 canon now.

      there is no reason to expect that xbox2 will not have backwards compatibility. there is every reason to assume that it will. heck, nintendo might even cave and have backwards compatibility.

      if anyone has learned anything from the ps2 run - it's that backwards compatibility guarantees solid sales out of the gate. you can accuse microsoft of many things - but being bad businesspeople is not one of them. they know where the money goes.

  • Microsoft competitor for platforms (Score:5, Interesting)

    by BWJones ( 18351 ) on Thursday August 14, 2003 @12:19PM (#6695969) Homepage Journal
    Hrmmm. Given that the CEO of Nvidia has made comments discussing his "platform on a chip" concept for the company, it makes me wonder if Microsoft views him as a potential future competitor?

  • ATI = Gamecube (Score:5, Interesting)

    by WhytTiger ( 595699 ) on Thursday August 14, 2003 @12:19PM (#6695976)
    How do you think this will affect the current relationship between ATI and gamecube?
    • Do they care?

      They'll make more money with M$ since the XBOX is selling better than the "production on hold gamecube"
      • Dunno if that's true. The Xbox still has only sold a few million more than the GC, and that's with Halo and being the only real reasons to own an Xbox. Nintendo only needs a major killer app to catch up to the Xbox. And they have the cash to do it with...I just wonder if they have the game.

        Honestly, I doubt Nintendo will care. They're going to be looking for specific graphic capabilities in the GC2. They'll go with whichever company can give it to them for less.

    • Not any more than the relationship between ATI and Apple? I don't think a company like ATI can survive with only one vendor using their stuff anyway.

    • Re:ATI = Gamecube (Score:5, Interesting)

      by mattwolfewvu ( 642717 ) on Thursday August 14, 2003 @01:05PM (#6696451)
      *Sigh* ArtX did the graphics hardware for the GameCube. ATI bought them out sometime between the time the bulk of the design for the hardware was completed and the release of the console. Thus, the GameCube has a little ATI sticker on the front, even though it's not really an Radeon type product.

  • What day of the week is it? (Score:4, Funny)

    by IWantMoreSpamPlease ( 571972 ) on Thursday August 14, 2003 @12:21PM (#6695992) Homepage Journal
    I'm so confused...

    SCO - Eternally bad
    Microsoft - Very Bad
    IBM - Good? Bad? They are the guys with the guns.
    RedHat - Good
    Nvidia - Bad, or good? I don't know this week.
    ATI - Good or bad now they partner with MS?

    Help!
    • You are bad, Microsoft Man! You are bad and we are good! Your badness will be your demise, and our goodness will be our triumph! Bad is bad, good is good! Good-good, bad-bad, bad-bad, good,bad, good,good,bad,bad,good.

    • Re:What day of the week is it? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by mcc ( 14761 ) <amcclure@purdue.edu> on Thursday August 14, 2003 @12:39PM (#6696169) Homepage
      Okay, well, I'm going to leave my personal opinions are out of this one, but just so you know, this is what the official Slashdot Party Line(TM) seems to be:

      People who partner with MS are not necessarily bad, and in fact in some tiny way on the "good" side, because they are Victims. Victims, and nothing worse than misguided. Anyone who partners with MS are going to get screwed, eventually, in the end. Remember: *everyone* is a competitor to Microsoft. The world is simply split up into people Microsoft can replace and people Microsoft can't replace *yet*. If you're in the second group, Microsoft temporarily needs you, so they cuddle up to you and try to ensure that the alliance works out in such a way that at the moment Microsoft gains the ability to replace you they can as efficiently as possible stab you in the back and quietly wipe you out of existence.

      Look at MS's business partners and allies for the last ten years. It's a steady stream of broken promises, broken hearts, and dead companies.

      Once/if it becomes clear there's no way the partner is ever going to wind up a Victim-- say, NBC or SCO (and SCO's pretty clearly about to implode.. f you can think of any other examples offhand of a company that's partnered with MS and not lost an arm and a leg in the end, feel free to speak up)-- the company becomes a "puppet" or "shill" and defaults back into the "Bad" camp, indistinguishable from MS itself.

    • A chart to help you (Score:5, Funny)

      by Lord_Slepnir ( 585350 ) on Thursday August 14, 2003 @12:50PM (#6696263) Journal
      Day of Week: M T W T F S Su
      SCO E E E E E E E
      Microsoft E E G E E E E
      IBM G G E G G E G
      RedHat G G G G G G G
      NVidia G E G E G E G
      ATI E G E G E G E

      • Re:A chart to help you (Score:4, Funny)

        by guacamolefoo ( 577448 ) on Thursday August 14, 2003 @02:19PM (#6697322) Homepage Journal
        Shouldn't it be more like a win/loss chart for relative evil/good?(1) (I'm sure that my chart is internally inconsistent somewhere, so bugger off). Read the company name at the left to see whether it is more or less evil than the companies at the top.

        ---------Opposing company
        Company: MSFT RHAT NVID IBM ATI SCO
        ----MSFT--X----E----E----E----E----G
        ----RHA T--G----X----G----G----G----G
        ----NVID--G----E--- -X----E----G----G
        ----IBM---G----E----G----X----G ----G
        ----ATI---G----E----E----E----X----G
        ----S CO---E----E----E----E----E----EE

        Legend:
        X = competing vs. self
        G = "Good"
        E = "Evil"
        EE = "Evil^2"
        Alternatively, a BINGO-style chart might be good for /. Bingo:

        A random set of items could be generated on the user page containing a matrix of company names and "good" or "evil" acts (decided based on reported stories and a "good" or "evil" mod point system).

        Example card:

        MS-G NV-E NV-G RH-E SC-E
        CS-E AT-G DB-G NV-G IB-G
        IB-E MB-G LT-E RM-E SC-G
        RM-G RH-G CS-G AT-B LT-G
        NV-G BG-G RM-G vi-E SC-G

        MS = Microsoft
        NV = nVidia
        AT = ATI
        IB = IBM
        CS = Cisco
        RH = Red Hat
        DB = Debian
        RM = RMS
        LT = Linus Torvalds
        BG = Bill Gates
        MB = Steve Ballmer (2)
        vi = vi
        First person to get five in a row shouts "BINGO!" and wins something.

        GF.
        (1) Admittedly, this is highly derivative of your most excellent and funny post, but here goes...
        (2) MB = Monkey Boy
  • 6 days changes a lot in the graphics card business...... So much for Nvidia cashes in on Xbox chips [businessweek.com]

  • Poor ATI!! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by heironymouscoward ( 683461 ) <heironymouscoward@yah3.14oo.com minus pi> on Thursday August 14, 2003 @12:22PM (#6696016) Journal
    Every company that ever deals with MS gets shafted. I give them a year before Microsoft discovers that it is perfectly able to produce its own graphics systems, using technology that is amazingly close to ATI's, yet incredibly much cheaper.

    • Re:Poor ATI!! (Score:2, Insightful)

      by badboy_tw2002 ( 524611 )
      Just like they did with NVidia!!! Now they're producing their own graphics chips without the help of another com--

      Oh wait.
      • Yeah, yeah, make fun of me just 'cause I don't remember further back than... uh, where was I.

        Anyhow: working assumption (based on utter and total ignorance but compensated by attitude) is that the Redmond Boys took what they could from NVidia (who are probably feeling somewhat like the Goatse guy) and decided that they need a bit more before they have that they need.

  • Now might be a good time (Score:4, Interesting)

    by gazuga ( 128955 ) on Thursday August 14, 2003 @12:23PM (#6696018) Homepage
    to pick up some ATI stock. I thought about investing in Nvidia a while back but didn't really have the money to throw down at the time. IIRC, that was a little before they started winning all of those big contracts (like with MS). Would have at least tripled my money (or maybe more). DOH!

    And the opportunity might be here again, and still no money to throw around. (Sigh)

  • Troubled partnership (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Jippy_ ( 564603 )
    The announcement ends months of speculation over whether Nvidia, the leading maker of graphics processors for PCs, would renew its troubled partnership with Microsoft on the Xbox.

    Does anyone have a link to a story or /. submission regarding their 'troubled partnership'? I'm curious as to what's been happening.

  • Perhaps this will help ATI with it's drivers (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Genjurosan ( 601032 ) on Thursday August 14, 2003 @12:23PM (#6696029)
    I would hope that this relationship will assist ATI in fine tuning their still awful drivers that seem to conflict with everything on my system.

  • Size? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Interesting Username ( 697410 ) on Thursday August 14, 2003 @12:24PM (#6696033)
    Will this decrease the size of the oh so HUGE current Xbox? Frankly who wants to lug something of that massive stature into their homes? I for one think it hurt the sales of the original Xbox.
    • I take my XBOX with me alot, it's not that big, the Xbox isn't what takes up alot of space, it's the controllers, cables, and the plethora of games I take with.
    • You think the Xbox is huge? Guess you don't go to many LAN parties. Try lugging a mid tower and 17" monitor around and you'll come to appreciate that little black box.

  • So who is Nintendo going with.... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by GweeDo ( 127172 ) on Thursday August 14, 2003 @12:25PM (#6696044) Homepage
    This poses the question of whom Nintendo will be using for their next consoles graphics processor. With the Gamecube it was ArtX (whom ATI now owns). So with this deal with the devil will Nintendo have to go else where? With all the talk of their next box coming in 2005 and that specs are already getting released to developers I would imagine they already have a team in place for this, but have they said who?

  • This sucks (Score:5, Funny)

    by blackmonday ( 607916 ) * on Thursday August 14, 2003 @12:25PM (#6696047) Homepage
    Now its gonna be a real pain in the ass to configure video drivers once I put Linux on my Xbox2.

  • Good bye to ATI's open soucre support (Score:3, Insightful)

    by TheWanderingHermit ( 513872 ) on Thursday August 14, 2003 @12:26PM (#6696061)
    ATI Technologies has signed a contract with Microsoft... ...which means ATI will be yanking all their open source and Linux support within the next 60 days.

    It's Corel all over again.

  • Good thing for XBox (Score:5, Interesting)

    by GeckoFood ( 585211 ) <geckofood@nosPAM.gmail.com> on Thursday August 14, 2003 @12:27PM (#6696071) Journal
    It has been demonstrated that while nVidia may have the fastest overall chip, ATi has concentrated on a more balanced solution -- better color and clarity of the image. ATi's ship is not all that much slower than nVidia anyway when you look at the specs and benchmarks. I would rather have a game console that's fast and has a good, crisp image than a fuzzy-around-the-edges rendering. This is a good thing for XBox.

    • bad for ATI though (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Matt Ownby ( 158633 )
      Some have speculated that the reason ATI caught up with (and surpassed) nvidia in the overall speed category was because nvidia took time off from their R&D to do the xbox. I think even John Carmack may have referenced this in one of his .plan updates. At any rate, nvidia no doubt realized that they couldn't do xbox2 _and_ regain the speed crown. I predict that this move may benefit ATI in the short run but they will allow nvidia to catch up again and overall I think this benefits nvidia.
      • That could be, but Nvidia really messed up with their migration to 0.13 micron production for the FX line. They put all their eggs in one basket and promptly dropped it. The leaf blower (aka GeForceFX 5800) was a complete piece of junk. The 5900 has redeemed them in the eyes of many, but the next releases from either company is going to be key in establishing who the "leader" in the graphics market really is.
    • Fast good crist image means nothing if you're still using a low-resolution crappy TV (which probably 75% or more of gamers are)

  • Standard Microsoft strategy (Score:3, Interesting)

    by downix ( 84795 ) on Thursday August 14, 2003 @12:28PM (#6696077) Homepage
    nVidia starts warming up to non-Microsoft OS's (see Mac OS X, the binary drivers for Linux, some discussions of opening up docs, etc) then Microsoft offers them a spot on the XBox. Suddenly, top-end support for getting their chipset used elsewhere seems to evaporate. By this time, nVidia is pretty much an also-ran on other platforms, support is horrid and people are fleeing to ATI.

    Now, Microsoft buddy-buddies up to ATI, promices big contract. How long before ATI's non-M$ efforts start becoming lackluster, and support is dropped?

  • ATI is an underdog? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Tirephus ( 219544 ) on Thursday August 14, 2003 @12:28PM (#6696080)
    I don't understand why ATI is considered an "underdog" these days.

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday August 14, 2003 @12:28PM (#6696084)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • New Name (Score:5, Funny)

    by tds67 ( 670584 ) on Thursday August 14, 2003 @12:30PM (#6696097)
    ATI said it entered a technology agreement with Microsoft to develop "custom, leading-edge graphics technologies" for the console.

    Microsoft also announced that this will be a Special Edition XBox, or SEXBox for short. So ATI will actually enter into and penetrate the SEXBox market.

  • What about Sony? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by CommandNotFound ( 571326 ) on Thursday August 14, 2003 @12:30PM (#6696104)
    Considering that ATI probably didn't make out well with the GameCube, and NVidia didn't fare much better with the XBox, shouldn't they be scrambling to provide hardware for the PS3 instead of fighting over the "scraps", since the PS2 has pretty much cleaned up the console market? Not trying to start a flame war, but 50/8/8 is pretty much a win. Does Sony produce their own GPUs?

    If I were a GPU manufacturer, I'd rather have my widgets in 50-60 million PS2 units rather than 8 million GC or XBox units. Anyone know the story on this one?

  • Underdog?? (Score:4, Informative)

    by Frobozz0 ( 247160 ) on Thursday August 14, 2003 @12:35PM (#6696135)
    Um, calling ATI an underdog is a gross misrepresentation. Not only do they have the best performing chips, but their marketshare is actually dominant in many areas.

    http://www.beyond3d.com/#news7249

    DX9 Marketshare:
    ATI 40%
    nVidia 60%

    Integrated Marketshare:
    ATI 21%
    nVidia 27%

    Laptop Marketshare:
    ATI 68%
    nVidia 32%

    In most cases, nVidia's share in the last quarter fell, while ATI's was on the rise. Plus, ATI will be in all XBox sales and Playstation sales.

    Underdog? That's one brawny underdog.
    • Plus, ATI will be in all XBox sales and Playstation sales.

      I'm pretty sure Sony does their own graphics for PS2. ATI owns ArtX, the company responsible for the Gamecube's graphics set.

    • Re:Underdog?? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Yeah indeed. Not only that but the performance from the ATI line seems better. Especially when you consider size and cooling. The XBox is a big and noisy enough beast as it is without needing the kindo of turbo cooling that is on thye NVidia FX lineup.

      Also (IMHO as a XBox developer) Microsoft were not too pleased with nVidia's insistance that they weren't going to allow the developers the specs to the bottom end of the hardware -i.e. most of the pushbuffer stuff for the XBox is undocumented as nVidia wo

    • Re:Underdog?? (Score:3, Informative)

      by PainKilleR-CE ( 597083 )
      In most cases, nVidia's share in the last quarter fell, while ATI's was on the rise. Plus, ATI will be in all XBox sales and Playstation sales.

      In most cases, nVidia had 0% share of those markets only a couple of years ago (and the DX9 market didn't exist anyway), especially that 'integrated marketshare' which was the only thing that kept ATI alive while nVidia rose to dominance against 3dfx in the 3d market.

      But, given that Sony produces the chips for Playstation consoles, I'm wondering how ATI gets anyth

  • And this just in... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anita Coney ( 648748 ) on Thursday August 14, 2003 @12:40PM (#6696180) Homepage
    Seattle WA: Microsoft, with the ink barely dry on its chip deal with ATI, turned around and sued ATI in an attempt to get ATI to lower its chip prices.

    A Microsoft spokesperson was quoted as saying, "We're losing about 100 dollars on each Xbox we sell. We feel that ATI should bear the burden of at least some of these tremendous loses. At least until we steal their technology and get our own chip plant up to speed."

  • Talking Out my Ass Here... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ewhac ( 5844 ) on Thursday August 14, 2003 @12:42PM (#6696189) Homepage Journal

    I imagine the "troubled partnership" between Micros~1 and NVidia is largely based on the fact that NVidia made damn sure they had a good contract in place.

    NVidia and Microsoft cut their deal when NVidia was the undisputed leader in graphics chips, and Microsoft was the undisputed leader in anti-trust crimes. NVidia, being founded in part by ex-Sun employees, knew full well that dealing with Microsoft was a sure-fire way to get screwed. So no small amount of time was spent making absolutely certain the contract between them left no room for "creative misinterpretation" on either side.

    I imagine NVidia wants/wanted to exercise the same care in the Xbox2 deal, but Microsoft would rather have someone they can walk over. Hence the "troubled partnership."

    This is, of course, all pure speculation.

    Schwab

    • Re:Talking Out my Ass Here... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by dackroyd ( 468778 ) on Thursday August 14, 2003 @01:27PM (#6696677) Homepage
      I imagine NVidia wants/wanted to exercise the same care in the Xbox2 deal, but Microsoft would rather have someone they can walk over. Hence the "troubled partnership."


      Too true. Microsoft have been playing hardball with nVidia for quite a while now. Firstly they wanted to renagotiate they terms on which nVidia supplied chips for the Xbox (basically MS realised how much money they were losing per box and wanted nVidia to share some of that loss).

      They were also fucking both nVidia and ATI over with respect to the DirectX 9 specification - basically they wanted both companies to hand over their patents for any graphics techniques that would be used in DirectX 9, ATI who were in a bit of a hole at the time (ie before the 9x00 cards came out) agreed, mostly because they were desperate. nVidia told Microsoft to f' off and so Microsoft changed the DirectX 9 specs at a relatively late date, so the cards nVidia was planning to release as the first DirectX 9 cards couldn't be because they didn't have the right pixel shaders.

      Anyway whoever does the chip for the Xbox 2 is going to have a massive task on their hands, as it is going to have to be quite different from the chips nVidia and ATI are used to making (because, even now three years after it was released, the PS2 still has a higher fillrate than any PC graphics card)

  • Mistakes on several levels... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Rahga ( 13479 ) on Thursday August 14, 2003 @12:48PM (#6696246) Journal
    This is all simply observation from where I stand, and may or may not indeed be accurate, but I've got a strong feeling that nVidia's getting slapped by the trout of irony in the short term, that Microsoft is having fun with their spot on the totem pole of cash, and ATI and nVidia may in fact switch places again with this move.....

    What we saw with X-Box one looked like this: nVidia makes waves with graphics cards. nVidia scores humongous x-box deal. nVidia wisely focuses on development of their x-box product, while losing some focus on their core audience, home PC gamers. R&D mishaps, and one bad mini-product-line later, and now ATI's got a clear lead in the game.

    Honestly, I bet that if Microsoft makes ATI contort and wrap themselves around all sorts of bad practices and ideas just to make the perfect X-Box 2 chip, ATI may just lose ground back to nVidia... Remember, ATI thinks they are the ones with nothing to lose now, while nVidia learned the hard way that a dustbuster makes for a sloppy cooling fan, and are resolved to quit making mistakes.... especially since they probably aren't happy with the net results of their first Microsoft outing.

  • Makes some sense... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mraymer ( 516227 ) <mraymer@nOsPaM.centurytel.net> on Thursday August 14, 2003 @12:48PM (#6696248) Homepage Journal
    ATI is better for raw power, which is probably what MS wants to brag about with their next console.

    nVidia's strong point has always been their continued driver development (yes, I know the Linux driver is not open. Yes, I know about the 3Dmark controversy), and since updating drivers on a console is not something people would be used to doing, or even allowed to do, ATI's raw speed bonus seems logical.

  • So much for seeing Dawn on Xbox2.

    Oh, wait... [rage3d.com] Nevermind.

  • XBox All in Wonder (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Hamfist ( 311248 ) on Thursday August 14, 2003 @12:57PM (#6696347)
    Hopefully MS will take advantage of ATI's other strength (swiss army knife video card) and expand the concept of a console into PVR, etc.

  • hahaha.. I can just see *this* coming back now.. http://tinyurl.com/4ui Why do people love to send you things like this.
  • I for one welcome our new ATI masters....

    Well, nobody else said it, so I figured I'd get it out of the way.
    I still miss Natalie and Ellen though...

  • Bad deal.... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    They are gonna get screwed, just like Nvidia.

    Sooner or later the production price of the x-box has got to go down *again*, microsoft doesn`t want to have a cheap box now becouse they couldn`t get normal pc game developers over to the new x-box. The single reason the x-box has games for it is becouse the hardware/software is a plain direct-x windows box, meaning PC developers could just "hop over" to the console side without major engine rewrites. If the x-box 2 doesn`t have any power compared to pc`s ther

  • K. Y. Ho - Coolest Name Ever (Score:5, Funny)

    by syntap ( 242090 ) on Thursday August 14, 2003 @01:16PM (#6696570)
    "This agreement cements ATI's position as the prime graphics supplier for the future of the games industry," ATI CEO K. Y. Ho said in a statement.

    I like this new graphics chip already.

  • My Theory: Microsoft not buying the graphics (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 14, 2003 @01:20PM (#6696610)
    They're buying the package. nVidia doesn't have a Pentium IV bus license. Their nForce 2 efforts have been with AMD. ATI's Pentium efforts will soon shine when the RS300 integrated dual-channel DDR solutions are released. ATI has long been ahead in the low-power and pda/settop box area. That is what Microsoft wants Xbox to become - the new media center. Microsoft is not going for ATI as much for technology (which kicks ass - my 9700 pro rules) as for the relationship ATI has Intel and the fact that ATI can better deliver on Intel processors.

    XBOX will use Intel. ATI-Intel are cozy (Intel licenses graphics tech from ATI, ATI gets to use the Pentium IV bus. nVidia is not getting a license to use the Pentium bus for daring to help AMD. Microsoft would have to dump Intel to use nVidia. Prediction: The rumored nForce for Pentiums will never be seen.
  • Why? Because the X-Box business was designed to be a high volume, low-profit enterprise, and with X-Box mired way back behind the PS2, it just wasn't high volume enough to make up for the thin margins.

    Moreover, because they were so concerned with X-Box, NVidia took their eye off the ball and let ATI catch up and even pull slightly ahead. I would not be at all surprised if the same thing happened to ATI this time around. There's only so much graphic card technical talent available to throw at a problem, and with so many of them working on X-Box2, I wouldn't be at all surprised to find that 6 month product rev cycle shipping to nine months or a year.

  • So much for linux drivers. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Bruha ( 412869 ) on Thursday August 14, 2003 @02:04PM (#6697107) Homepage Journal
    Wonder if MS would push them to not make Linux drivers anymore.. They've done things similar in the past. Though the driver quality is dominated by Nvidia I'd like my 9700PRo to work in Linux.

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