PS4 not worth the cost, says Nvidia

March 14, 2013 6:49AM PDT

By Mark Walton, Senior Staff Writer - Reviews

Chip-maker Nvidia didn't want to work with Sony "at the price those guys were willing to pay."

Nvidia passed on its hardware being used in the PlayStation 4 due to the "opportunity cost."

 

PlayStation 4: not powered by Nvidia.

 

"I'm sure there was a negotiation that went on," Tony Tamasi, Senior VP of content and technology at Nvidia told GameSpot, "and we came to the conclusion that we didn't want to do the business at the price those guys were willing to pay."

"Having been through the original Xbox and PS3, we understand the economics of [console development] and the tradeoffs."

Announced by Sony earlier this month, the upcoming PS4 is powered by rival chip-maker AMD. The company is also strongly rumoured to be behind the hardware of the next Xbox, but Nvidia does not appear to be troubled by the loss.

"We're building a whole bunch of stuff," continued Tamasi, "and we had to look at console business as an opportunity cost. If we say, did a console, what other piece of our business would we put on hold to chase after that?"

"In the end, you only have so many engineers and so much capability, and if you're going to go off and do chips for Sony or Microsoft, then that's probably a chip that you're not doing for some other portion of your business. And at least in the case of Sony and Nvidia, in terms of PS4, AMD has the business and Nvidia doesn't. We'll see how that plays out from a business perspective I guess. It's clearly not a technology thing."

AMD will be hoping that its PS4 business pays off, having recently fallen on hard times. Earlier this week it sold its Austin-based HQ for $164 millionto raise cash, while a leading analyst called it "un-investable" following an operating loss of $131 million in its quarterly earnings report.

In Nvidia's latest earnings call, the company posted a profit of $174 million.

← Find out everything we know about the PS4

Nvidia does know how to run a business better than AMD, that's for sure.

Gamespot was the ones who titled this.  It is basically Nvidia making an excuse for a big loss in my opinion.  Both NeXbox and PS4 will be using rival AMD chips which could potentially lose nvidia over 100m  units sold in the next 5 years

Sounds like Sony shopped for the cheapest option.

That's good news for us.

It's all for the hits/views. All news has to be sensational these days even if it means exagerating the truth in your title to lure people in.

"I'm sure there was a negotiation that went on," Tony Tamasi, Senior VP of content and technology at Nvidia told GameSpot, "and we came to the conclusion that we didn't want to do the business at the price those guys were willing to pay."

Lol, so an arrogant VP who played no part in negotiations, nor even knows if any occurred concludes this. Nvidia really employs some idiots.

That is a possibility as well but I think both the PS4 and NeXbox will be just fine in the graphics and power department.  No they wont be as powerful as PC's but they dont need to be either.  People want consoles to be a good price and Nvidia will make people charge an arm and a leg.  I love Nvidia, dont get me wrong.  I buy Nvidia for my computer but when it comes to consoles people are looking for good prices.  Also take into consideration developers will be devloping games with those specs in mind which will help power improve in games after launch as they learn more about the hardware.

Then why did Nvidia poach the guy who negotiated both console deals from AMD?

AMD offered a better complete package with the CPU, that is why they were picked. Neither their CPU nor GPU tech alone is the best on key metrics.

The Headline is a little bit missleading
Reads like "Don't buy that cause it isn't worth it" while they mean something completely different and aimed at their own business decisions.

Some people really try hard to find something negative or at least write headlines(not aimed at you TC cause i know this isn't from you) in a way like the PS4 has any flaws.

I think right now both would do fine without AMD if it would happen like that.
They use their own versions of the chips anyway - They only probably need the patents or rights to produce them alone.


Good choice from Sony - Customer oriented.
Nvidia would have made the PS4 much more expensive probably for not much difference in terms of power.
I love Nvidia but only for my PC.

Sour grapes, nVidia?