What does Sony need to do to win next gen on consoles?

[Netyaroze]

I have my doubts about a backwards compatible PS3. Seems like an important feature for a lot of people but:

First problem is that Sony would limit themselfs to Nvidia. And I doubt Sony would do that .it makes negotiations very hard. If Sony gets an offer from AMD which is better then Nvidia offer they will go for it. Ok maybe AMD GPU could emulate the RSX.

But this is not the only problem. The Cell is a nice chip indeed but look at it from todays perspective. It has something like 250 Million Transistors. Thats super tiny. A full blown Power 7 has 1200 Million and thats gona be outdated soon.

To make the Cell able to compete with future CPUs it has to be 4 times bigger then now. 4 PPEs and 32 SPEs. Also get rid of XDR Ram interface its ancient by now. It would need countless Millions to redesign the Cell properly. IBM has moved on already and the design philosophy behind Cell pretty much failed. Sony wasnt investing the Millions into the Cell directly but into the ideas behind it. Those Investments were wasted. The Cell although succesful in SuperComputer and Server never catched on in the market Sony hoped for (Consumerelectronics). In the PS4 would have to be a Cell 2 and since IBM has no interest in it Sony would have already given Millions to IBM for further developing the concept.

IBM has a very very successful new Chip. The Power 7. Which is very strong and rules the server market. Its also easy to programm for and the Wii U has a small Version of it.Sony and MS could take the Power 7 in different Variations (would also immensly help reduce costs for Multiplat Development) They wouldnt have to spend too much money to customize it. And Sony could safe costs on the Hardware site (No XDR(2) and on the Software side-> easier programming less cost. And yes the Devs are good with the Cell but its still more time intensive to programm for. Cell 2 could open up new problems.

Also with a strong GPU the Cells single precission performance wouldnt be as benefical anymore.In the PS3 the RSX and Cell have comparable SP Gflops. But with a modern GPU that wouldnt be neccessarly the case even if Cell2 would have 4 times more SP Gflops.

The Cell lacks in Double Precission flops. But those could be more important with a next gen GPU.

I doubt that the Cell/XDR is going to be in the PS4 and I doubt that Nvidia is the only possible GPU manufacturer option for Sony. That makes a BW compatible PS4 less probable imo. Also Sony wont put the Cell/XDR additionally into the PS4 because it would lead to a price explosion.

Sure even with Power 7/AMD GPU inside a Software Emulation could be achieved but it would be significantly harder. (Would make things very easy for Microsoft and 360 Emulation though.)

To OP .

Sony needs to have the games that people want and they need to differentiate themselfs from this Gen through Graphic and Online portal. Also they cant be more expensive then MS.