Nvidia made over $500M on RSX royalties

[ssj12]

Squilliam said:

ssj12 said:

1. Actually its not that bad of a deal since the deal also includes R&D to constantly shrink the RSX cutting manufacturing costs for the GPU and console.

2. Plus you guys are forgetting how many PS3s have actually been sold. If the PS3 was a total failure then yes this would be a ton, but its not. I actually believe Microsoft probably has paid AMD just as much in royalties for the 360's GPU.

3. Cost per console started at like $70~ when the PS3 was launched. Now it probably costs like $20 max. Next revision it will drop again by at least 15% for the GPU and the rest of the console due to shrinking the PSU, and mobo.

4. Sony has made several billion off the PS3 so far, this is actually a drop in the bucket now.

1. Thats an assumption. All the Nvidia CEO was talking about was royalties. Quite likely Sony had to do that work themselves or pay someone else to do it. They were after all fabbing them in Toshiba fabs IIRC.

2. Its likely they paid a lot/most/all of it as a per unit basis. They possibly have to state the shipment numbers in the financial reports for royalty purposes as they aren't allowed to fudge those numbers. Microsoft probably has paid a lot of royalties to both ATI / NEC corporation for their GPU technology. However as we don't have the terms handy all we can do is speculate.

3. Numbers like that only come from one place. Only someone familiar with the processes and who could give an adequate estimation on yields could come up with numbers which had any resemblence to reality.

4. Revenue.

1. Sony hired the people, or Nvidia hired them. Either way they are working on the RSX. I saw announcement documents revolving around this ages ago when I worked for PlayStation Universe. The deal with mutually beneficial for both Nvidia and Sony. Can't quote exact details as its been like 4 years but I do know I saw the full press release with excerpts of the contractual details.

2. This is very easily speculated upon. The GPU the 360 has in it has base DX10 capabilities and had these features before any other GPU on the market. Just the basic R&D to make the GPU somewhat compatible so that some DX10 features can fit Microsoft's DX software specs had to cost a lot. It cost a lot.

3. Using iSuppli data from over the years, fairly easy to get these estimates.

4. Yep, more specifically gross revenue.