How Intel Lost the Sony PlayStation Business (reuters.com) 55
Intel lost a bid to design and manufacture Sony's PlayStation 6 chip in 2022, dealing a blow to its contract manufacturing business. The contract, worth potentially billions in revenue, went to rival AMD after Intel failed to agree on pricing with Sony, Reuters reported Monday.
Discussions between the companies spanned months and involved top executives. Intel's loss has hampered CEO Pat Gelsinger's turnaround strategy, which hinges on expanding the company's foundry operations. The PlayStation deal would have provided steady business for Intel's struggling manufacturing arm, which reported $7 billion in operating losses last quarter. Sony's need for backwards compatibility with older PlayStation models complicated Intel's bid, as AMD designed chips for previous console generations, the report adds.
Further reading:
Intel Foundry Achieves Major Milestones;
Intel Weighs Options Including Foundry Split To Stem Losses:
Intel's Money Woes Throw Biden Team's Chip Strategy Into Turmoil.
Discussions between the companies spanned months and involved top executives. Intel's loss has hampered CEO Pat Gelsinger's turnaround strategy, which hinges on expanding the company's foundry operations. The PlayStation deal would have provided steady business for Intel's struggling manufacturing arm, which reported $7 billion in operating losses last quarter. Sony's need for backwards compatibility with older PlayStation models complicated Intel's bid, as AMD designed chips for previous console generations, the report adds.
Further reading:
Intel Foundry Achieves Major Milestones;
Intel Weighs Options Including Foundry Split To Stem Losses:
Intel's Money Woes Throw Biden Team's Chip Strategy Into Turmoil.
Unsurprising (Score:4, Informative)
Intel has never wanted the kind of margins they'd have to take to get console design wins. Their last console was the original Xbox. Plus they didn't even provide the graphics IP or hardware for that thing.
Ironically, Intel's best shot at getting 18a chips in PS6 would have been for them to fab an AMD at their foundry (instead of TSMC). It doesn't seem like many of Intel's current design IP would be appropriate for PS6. Especially not their graphics.
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If it were up to Intel it would be all enterprise customers shutting up and paying whatever Intel says they should for Xeons; along with some i7 and i9 parts in AMT-equipped thin and light laptops; but if they were chatting with Sony in 2022 Epyc Naples, Rome, and Milan would all have been launched alre
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Sony's requirements were probably that Intel's GPU be backward compatible with at least the PS5, to the extent that the OS could do any translation necessary to make older games work.
AMD has a huge advantage there, since they have supplied GPUs for the PS4 and PS5 generations.
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Their last console was the original Xbox. Plus they didn't even provide the graphics IP or hardware for that thing.
Intel strongarmed AMD out of the original Xbox project, which was supposed to use AMD CPUs and was developed with them. The chipset of the original Xbox was made by AMD too, but Intel could not tolerate having AMD under any form in the new console, and they renamed it to "nForce".
AMD is not going to allow Intel to repeat that trick so easily. And yes, payback is a b!tch.
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Bitter much? I do have a gaming PC (with high end nvidia), and yet I many times prefer my PS5 for some types of games. And no, not exclusives either.
Re:And (Score:4, Insightful)
Bitter much?
To be bitter, I'd have to purchase, or want to purchase, anything branded by Sony. I haven't purchased Sony hardware since the Discman, because that was the last decent product they made.
for some types of games
Yeah, and for those games, I just plug in a controller. Tada. Same experience (or better) and I don't have to deal with Playstation's horrible UI and annoying sounds it makes. If they aren't exclusive to the console, the console provides absolutely no benefits.
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What's wrong with the UI? It has a horizontal scroll bar of your most recently played games which ends in a link to your full library.
It's ugly as fuck, and just not even close to good.
Mine doesn't make any UI sounds. I turned them off. In the UI.
I don't want to have to go and turn them off. It shouldn't make any of those stupid noises to begin with.
it sits nicely in the cabinet under my big screen tv so I can play from the couch and then switch to the tv when family is around.
I can also play on my iPad over the net, with controller and head phones when I don't want to hear the women gossiping or if they need to watch some girlie romcom.
What exactly was wrong with the ps5?
Yeah. I can do all that with my PC. And more. With a larger library of games.
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A good UI wouldn't make me cringe just by seeing it. A good UI doesn't need customization options to begin with (though still appreciated).
I don't need to design my own UIs to know and recognize a bad UI from a good UI. I know it's not easy to create a good UI. A lot of times what makes sense to the designers of the UI ends up not making sense to end users. And sure, without the design experience, it's harder for me to qualify exactly what the issues with the UI are.
If I want to play on my TV in my living r
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And it likes to redraw the screen three times, clumsily and obviously, any time you do anything. Truly, Sony engineers would fail high school programming.
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Bitter much?
To be bitter, I'd have to purchase, or want to purchase, anything branded by Sony. I haven't purchased Sony hardware since the Discman, because that was the last decent product they made.
for some types of games
Yeah, and for those games, I just plug in a controller. Tada. Same experience (or better) and I don't have to deal with Playstation's horrible UI and annoying sounds it makes. If they aren't exclusive to the console, the console provides absolutely no benefits.
Ah, so you have no actual experience with anything recent.
If you think the controllers on Windows work as well as on the PS5, you're sorely mistaken. And I speak from experience, unlike you.
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Bitter much?
To be bitter, I'd have to purchase, or want to purchase, anything branded by Sony. I haven't purchased Sony hardware since the Discman, because that was the last decent product they made.
for some types of games
Yeah, and for those games, I just plug in a controller. Tada. Same experience (or better) and I don't have to deal with Playstation's horrible UI and annoying sounds it makes. If they aren't exclusive to the console, the console provides absolutely no benefits.
Ah, so you have no actual experience with anything recent.
If you think the controllers on Windows work as well as on the PS5, you're sorely mistaken. And I speak from experience, unlike you.
Imagine being THIS out of touch with the actual reality of PC gaming. The controllers on Windows work WAY BETTER and this is coming frrom somebody who owns both PS5 and Switch. My selection of controllers on PC is like 3x that of the selection of console-compatible ones and I can tune like 3-4x the amount of gamepad settings on PC. Even the Dualsense Edge tuning options arer a laughing stock in comparison.
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Bitter much?
To be bitter, I'd have to purchase, or want to purchase, anything branded by Sony. I haven't purchased Sony hardware since the Discman, because that was the last decent product they made.
for some types of games
Yeah, and for those games, I just plug in a controller. Tada. Same experience (or better) and I don't have to deal with Playstation's horrible UI and annoying sounds it makes. If they aren't exclusive to the console, the console provides absolutely no benefits.
Ah, so you have no actual experience with anything recent.
If you think the controllers on Windows work as well as on the PS5, you're sorely mistaken. And I speak from experience, unlike you.
Imagine being THIS out of touch with the actual reality of PC gaming. The controllers on Windows work WAY BETTER and this is coming frrom somebody who owns both PS5 and Switch. My selection of controllers on PC is like 3x that of the selection of console-compatible ones and I can tune like 3-4x the amount of gamepad settings on PC. Even the Dualsense Edge tuning options arer a laughing stock in comparison.
Huh, so you have to tune your controllers to work well? That doesn't seem like an improvement. And why do you need 3x the controllers?
My point is that I've seen very few games on Steam that offer full support for DualSense, with haptic feedback. Just the controller, it works, with half the games showing Xbox-style hints (A/B/X/Y) instead of PS hints. On the PS5, it just works, out of the box.
So yes, for many games I prefer the PS5, and it "just works" - I don't have time to tinker - as opposed to the earlie
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Huh, so you have to tune your controllers to work well? That doesn't seem like an improvement. And why do you need 3x the controllers?
My point is that I've seen very few games on Steam that offer full support for DualSense, with haptic feedback. Just the controller, it works, with half the games showing Xbox-style hints (A/B/X/Y) instead of PS hints. On the PS5, it just works, out of the box.
So yes, for many games I prefer the PS5, and it "just works" - I don't have time to tinker - as opposed to the earlier poster who thinks PS5 is just junk.
Huh, you imagined the default settings for deadzones, stick tension, acceleration curves, stick algorithms (rounds vs square), debounce, autocentering, etc etc of any given controller are all just magically a perfect fit for everybody? What on Earth gave you that idea? OF COURSE being able to tune everything precisely to your personal preference is a massive improvement.
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Oh yeah, there is your other problem. Sony's controllers are fucking garbage. I use Xbox controllers, which gets full Windows and Steam support for all functions.
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Oh yeah, there is your other problem. Sony's controllers are fucking garbage. I use Xbox controllers, which gets full Windows and Steam support for all functions.
Maybe you don't know how to use controllers? I have no problem playing games with DualSense.
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Yeah. I use an xbox controller, and therefore maybe don't know how to use controllers.
No, you fucking moron. Too fragile. Newer versions have too many useless features and functions. The older models were too small. I can use them when I have to (at a friends house or something). But using the controllers on Steam? And then complain that a bunch of Sony exclusive functions that require the developers of the game to specifically program them into the PC port are missing? That's just insane. Why would I bothe
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Controllers on windows work much better than on consoles, because current default Xinput is an exceedingly good system that is basically everything that console can do (as it was originally designed for xbox) and then has modifications to make it run on a much more capable machine enabling a lot of extra bells and whistles.
This is one of the things that windows does really, really well. I've no idea what your "experience" on the subject is, but it sounds like it's subjective experience of a fanboy. And I'm
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Tell me how many of the games support proper haptic feedback for DualSense controller (and not xbox-style controllers). Or, if all do, tell me why by default it doesn't work out of the box on Steam. I must be doing something wrong.
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Why would anyone support's Sony specific system that isn't used anywhere outside Sony's console world? You instead support the one that is properly documented and supported that does the exact same thing. That is present in pretty much every game engine out there, including ones that run almost all Platstation games.
You're like that brainlet in the other thread about Sony who was waxing poetical about purportedly superior Sony sound system in Playstation. Meanwhile basically everyone had the 3d audio engine
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Why would anyone support's Sony specific system that isn't used anywhere outside Sony's console world? You instead support the one that is properly documented and supported that does the exact same thing. That is present in pretty much every game engine out there, including ones that run almost all Platstation games.
You're like that brainlet in the other thread about Sony who was waxing poetical about purportedly superior Sony sound system in Playstation. Meanwhile basically everyone had the 3d audio engines made for Windows as it was Vista that originally made the sound generation fully software, and Windows games can run pretty much any directional sound setup as long as they follow the correct API standards. That are notably default in things like Unreal and Unity.
Before that you needed hardware support, which was still vastly superior in PC world compared to consoles. How would I know? I ran a proper 5.1 calibrated directional sound system since 2003. Because I used to like shooters, and being able to shoot someone based on direction of his steps is one of the key things to know how to do. All the Sony soundbar "directional sound" crap are hilariously bad in comparison. Better than stereo, and absolute trash fire compared to a proper 5.1 setup. Except when you do configure a proper 5.1 on it, in which case its pretty much the same thing as on Windows.
I don't understand why the heck you went on a tangent about freaking audio.
I asked you - do games on Windows support haptic feedback, and instead you started a rant about how your audio 5.1 is better than whatever. I don't have any idea what you're talking about, because I do all my gaming with headphones, which are anyway better for directional audio.
Again - my point was that the playstation works simpler and better for normal people, not ones that want to tune their controllers response curves. And your a
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My point remains that Sony console fanboys have weirdest tiny quirks they claim their favorite thing does better. Tiny and irrelevant 3D positional audio config was a few days ago. Same thing for force feedback today. It will probably be how pretty the console looks in your living room tomorrow. That never changes.
Just like it never changes that all these tiny "improvements" are there to convince fanboys that they're still cool and widely marketed as such. And then said fanboys are confused as you are now w
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My point remains that Sony console fanboys have weirdest tiny quirks they claim their favorite thing does better. Tiny and irrelevant 3D positional audio config was a few days ago. Same thing for force feedback today. It will probably be how pretty the console looks in your living room tomorrow. That never changes.
Just like it never changes that all these tiny "improvements" are there to convince fanboys that they're still cool and widely marketed as such. And then said fanboys are confused as you are now when people point and laugh at you when you repeat the promotional material of the corporation you are a fan of.
I never claimed Sony is better at X. I only said that Sony's controllers work easier on the PS, and from that you somehow claimed I'm a Sony fan.
And regarding confusion - are you actually mistaking haptic feedback with force feedback? Of course force feedback exists for 30 years, but I was talking about compatibility and whether Steam games can support the *haptic* feedback of the Dual Edge.
Take it easy with your high horse attitude, and you might learn new things in life.
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I've now looked into this sudden explosion of Sony fanboyism, and I found out why there's suddenly a small army of Sony fanboys crawling out of the woodworks on every forum touting various "advantages" of Sony platform.
Reception of the PS5 pro announcement, price, and hilarious claims like "8k gaming" that came with it. It's an attempt to divert attention from the problems that Sony has with its pseudo-but-not-quite-PC.
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I was talking about compatibility and whether Steam games can support the *haptic* feedback of the Dual Edge.
They can. If they wanted to. Currently, you'll get basic haptic feedback, but not whatever counts as "virtualized DualShock emulation" - which just sounds stupid anyway.
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I was talking about compatibility and whether Steam games can support the *haptic* feedback of the Dual Edge.
They can. If they wanted to. Currently, you'll get basic haptic feedback, but not whatever counts as "virtualized DualShock emulation" - which just sounds stupid anyway.
Sounds stupid? Man, are you a child? Do you have actually no arguments, just know how to swear? "Sound stupid" is no datapoint.
Are you this bitter because you can't afford to even try a PS5?
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Because the whole topic of discussion is stupid.
Bruh, I've got a 2k PC. I don't need a PS5, or their shit controllers.
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do games on Windows support haptic feedback
I got you. Yes. It does. At least for superior xbox controllers. PS controllers are ass and always have been all the way back to PS1.
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do games on Windows support haptic feedback
I got you. Yes. It does. At least for superior xbox controllers. PS controllers are ass and always have been all the way back to PS1.
Uh, which XBox controllers are those that support adaptive triggers? Tell me, please, the internet claims that there are no such things. Just give me the model name that has the same haptic/adaptive triggers that DualSense does.
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Adaptive triggers are a completely different and separate thing from haptic feedback, and a Sony exclusive stupid "feature". It adds absolutely no immersion or any value. I would rather manually adjust the tension in the triggers to be a good default all the time for everything.
It is up to the game developers to program in these Sony native functions on their PC ports. The whole framework has to be included by the devs. Steam can't help you here because if the game doesn't include the framework, there is no
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Adaptive triggers are a completely different and separate thing from haptic feedback, and a Sony exclusive stupid "feature". It adds absolutely no immersion or any value. I would rather manually adjust the tension in the triggers to be a good default all the time for everything.
It is up to the game developers to program in these Sony native functions on their PC ports. The whole framework has to be included by the devs. Steam can't help you here because if the game doesn't include the framework, there is no way for Steam to know how to adjust the triggers appropriately for said game.
That said, there apparently there are many games that have shipped with the whole Sony framework.
https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/w... [pcgamingwiki.com]
OK, finally we have a reasonable conversation, modulo you repeating "stupid".
I think you misunderstand the effect of adaptive triggers. It's not about having a different tension. It's about having dynamic, non-linear tension depending on the exact situation in game. You should really try it once, it's different than simply a static tension curve.
And we're back at the original conversation, you claiming _everything_ Sony does is shit, and I'm trying to say that some things they do are actually better than wh
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It's about having dynamic, non-linear tension depending on the exact situation in game
Yeah yeah, I understood it fine. Different tensions at different times depending. I don't want that. Ever. It's just asking me to end up breaking the triggers. I play with three stage trigger locks. I keep them on the highest setting, meaning that I can only pull the triggers back about 1/3 (probably less actually, but hard to judge) of the total travel that could make if they were unlocked, and they work as if I fully pressed them down.
Rumble, adaptive triggers, probably other controller features I can't r
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Yeah, and for those games, I just plug in a controller. Tada. Same experience (or better) and I don't have to deal with Playstation's horrible UI and annoying sounds it makes. If they aren't exclusive to the console, the console provides absolutely no benefits.
Ah, so you have no actual experience with anything recent.
If you think the controllers on Windows work as well as on the PS5, you're sorely mistaken. And I speak from experience, unlike you.
Ha. Hahahahaha. Once you're in game, it literally doesn't matter. Though actually it does depend on the game sometimes. There are some games that give console players auto-aim assist (or some variation) that PC players with a controller won't get, but that isn't what you are referring to, and it just means PC players gen
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Whoops, forget to close the second quote tag.
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The PS6 will be just as much an expensive, shitty paperweight as the PS5 with zero actually good, and not over-hyped, exclusives.
Their exclusives come to PC anyways now.
It's not like PS3 where exclusives stayed there and never came to PC.
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Also true. And the argument "all my friends are on " doesn't work anymore, because cross-platform multiplayer exists on just about everything now as it always should have. Sony being the biggest hold out, for the longest time. Even Nintendo (normally the last to realize, or do, anything) recognized the good of cross-platform playability.
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In my home there has been a moratorium on Sony ever since the PS4, the last piece of Sony equipment I will ever purchase. Bunch of dumb fucks. They insist on home brewing their own miserable excuse of an operating system for one thing, and it shows.
Once supercomputer parts, now fearful company (Score:2)
https://www.wearethemighty.com... [wearethemighty.com]
AMD crushes on these types of projects (Score:4, Insightful)
From some things I have read is that AMDs team for customizing their chips for sorta-embedded applications is very mature compared to Intel and their integrated GPU has always been ahead of the pack.
There's good reason both Sony and Microsoft have used Zen for their last 2 or 3 generations of consoles as well as the Steam Deck. The fact Intel was in the running at all is surprising and for it to fall strictly on price is a bit of a downer, they have to know they are the higher risk option and should price accordingly. Can't be the odd-man-out for decades and expect to get a premium for the type of project you'd be doing for effectively the first time.
The fact they were being considered though may be a promising sign for the next generation Intel GPU's though.
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It's not just integration, it's the underlying tech on their mainstream technology as well. We can see this in steamdeck style portable gaming PCs that are becoming relatively popular now. They feature a SOC that includes a CPU and a GPU, and where GPU must be both powerful enough to run games and energy efficient enough to last a couple of hours on that small battery while running games on full tilt.
They're almost all variants on several different AMD SOCs. There was one major attempt at making intel based
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AMD is a good fit because they can supply both the CPU and GPU technology and are willing to allow companies like Sony to customize those designs to suit their needs. It also lets them put it all on a single APU instead of having separate dies, which isn't nec
Leader in market share (Score:1)
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I don't think they wanted it (Score:1)
I don't think anyone expected consoles to stay up in price like this. A PS4 or XBone was going for $300-$400 USD right at the PS5 launch and a PS5 is *still* $600. That gives AMD a lot of room to negotiate more profit for them. But if market forces still existed like they did in the PS 1/2/3 era the consoles would be selling for about $150-$200 now an AMD would get squeeze
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My observation is that it is not so much "market forces" but physics. The writing looks to be on the wall regarding the plateau of technological progression. Without technological progression to drive market forces, those "market forces" won't do much. Likely this is the impetuous behind the A.I. marketing "blitz"
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There isn't anything comparable to the APU which is being used on the current consoles. Traditional APU's on desktops are CPU first with a traditional 2-channel 64bit DDR4/5 memory bus whereas the APUs on sony and MS consoles are a GPU first with more channels of GDDR6 memory connected to the GPU portion.
AFAIK Intel has never tried connecting a processor to memory though the GPU although AMD was doing it on separate chips going back to 2013 and IBM/AMD did mostly the same with the xb360.
The architecture an
Complete nonsense (Score:2)
Intel doesn't have a decent APU. AMD does.
Second, Intel node is inferior to TSMC.
In 2022 and before, AMD's commitment to Sony was hurting them since they had to create PS5 APU at razor thin margins instead of server CPUs at huge huge margins.
Intel would have to make a CPU design for TSMC. Their GPU is already made at TSMC.
Sony probably got Intel involved just to scare AMD and get a good price out of them. AMD surely must have cited a massive price for their APU since they lost so much making PS5 chips rathe
Short sighted (Score:4, Interesting)
If Sony would realize that simply mandating keyboard / mouse compatibility with every game created for their consoles, they would eviscerate the gaming PC market. Gamers could then connect either a keyboard / mouse or a controller ( user preference ) to play said game. Hell, would you even need to port games over to the PC market at all ?
Yeah, I know. Some folks aren't satisfied unless they can run 840hz screens on a 15k monitor in full blown HDR with 7.1 Atmos Audio and smell-o-vision.
( You won't win over the enthusiast market )
But, you would get a very large majority to ask themselves why they need to spend all the money and hassle on a Windows ( let's face it, -most- gaming PC's are Windows based, which is why I'm not including Microsoft in this. They won't cut off their own foot since they want to keep selling Windows machines ) box, with all the headache of Microsoft's mandatory updates, hardware compatibility, power draw, heat generation and driver issues that come with a typical gaming rig.
I wouldn't even bother with games on the PC if I had the option to use a keyboard / mouse on my Playstation and all games were required to support it.
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The keyboard and mouse are primarily productivity devices, with game controller being a secondary function. Some games benefit from the abundance of buttons on a keyboard, and some games benefit from the accuracy of a mouse over a joystick, but in many instances the keyboard and mouse is inferior to some alternative control method. PCs have long relied on additional apparatus to supplement the keyboard
Everybody was laughing about Otellini (Score:2)
passin on manufacvturing the OG iPhone chip, including Pat
Well, here we are.