| WolfpackN64 said: The PowerPC architecture saw the light of day in 1992 with the current form Power ISA v2.07 released in 2013. For comparison, x86 started in 1978 with the most recent implementation x86-64 or AMD64 being 2003.
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The dates you say are mostly right, however contrarily to what's implied here X86 has not stagnated at all since 2003.. back then the AMD Athlon line of CPUs were the X86 CPU with the best TDP while Intel were chasing the extremely high clock speeds with their P4 architecture, they eventually came out with the Core architecture, a derivative of the PIII and since then things improved in therms of TDB...
Since then, Apple stopped using the Power CPUs in their desktop computers, IBM/Freescale stopped focussing on the performance segment for these CPUs (I think they are still used in many set top box or other devices that require little power consumption and performance)... So for a console there is no development in the direction Nintendo or anyone would need the architecture to go, which was not the case just a few years ago, PPC used to mean cutting edge.
It's not to say that the CPUs in the PS4 and XB1 are cutting edge, but it shows where the X86 architecture is now, you have a relatively interesting CPU on the same chip as a good GPU that consumes a decent amount of power and the price is pretty reasonable considering what's in the PS4 at least... PPC does not have that kind of push in R&D, it greatly limit the choices in therms of how the architecture is developped (they target specific niche markets).
