Book details how Sony paid for Xbox 360 dev, let Microsoft borrow its car, acted like a doormat

This year we've seen the PS3's Cell processor pitch in and help break the petaflop barrier, exploit a major security hole in SSL encryption and enable adolescent hijinks on PlayStation Home. Obviously, this is one serious piece of kit. According to The Race For A New Game Machine, written by two of the folks responsible for designing the thing, the Cell (a partnership between Toshiba, Sony and IBM) was the product of a deal that opened the door to IBM selling key parts of the chip to Microsoft before they had even finished building it -- even though this was clearly not part of the plan. Essentially, Sony's R&D money was spent creating a component for their rival, helping the Xbox 360 make its launch date of November 2005, while the PlayStation 3 was pushed back a full year. It seems somewhat fitting that the troubled game system should have such dysfunctional origins, no?

[Via PS3 Fanboy]

[KAIKAI @ Jan 1st 2009 9:07AM]

oh........THIS EXPLAINS EVERYTHING
/sarcasm

[lax @ Jan 1st 2009 9:11AM]

I think you mean last year...

[blissend @ Jan 12th 2009 1:01PM]

your gonads on fire aiyeeee!

[IpseResLoquitur @ Jan 1st 2009 9:12AM]

I agree with you; it doesn't explain everything. But it certainly account for some of the PS3's troubles. Can the average grandmother who is buying her grandson a game console for Christmas differentiate between the specs of both products? Of course not. She will generally go with whatever seems most convenient and reliable; (price aside) the 360 had a whole year to establish its gamer base that wasn't devoted to one side or another, and the earlier release certainly contributed to that.

[KarlW @ Jan 1st 2009 1:02PM]

Why does everybody point to sales figures like they're the most important thing? I'm not an investor, I don't really care.

What I care about is that there are great games for me to enjoy on the platform. The PS3 has those. Sales figures don't necessarily mean there will be great games for the platform - just look at the Wii. There are some fun titles there, but not nearly as many as the sales figures would lead you to believe.

You sales figure junkies go right ahead and laugh. I'll be too busy playing LittleBigPlanet, MGS4 or Killzone 2 to notice.

[Hamidxa @ Jan 1st 2009 2:16PM]

KarlW

The Xbox also has a significantly higher game attach rate per unit than does the PS3.

Someone can correct me if im wrong here, but last I read, it was something like
7.5 games per unit for X360 versus
3 games per unit for PS3

Also, if you look on any top 10 rated and selling games list, the X360 titles by far occupy more slots than PS3 games do.

[Matt @ Jan 1st 2009 2:16PM]

Wait, did you just imply that the 360 was reliable? Seriously?

[KarlW @ Jan 1st 2009 2:34PM]

Please explain what exactly game attach rates do to affect my enjoyment of games.

Besides, those figures are likely rubbish anyway. I'm sure many people buy the PS3 as a Blu-Ray player or media hub and never play a game, lowering the attach rate. That doesn't mean there aren't any good games for the system, and it doesn't mean I can't have fun playing a PS3.

[Hamidxa @ Jan 1st 2009 2:51PM]

Game attach rate means that there are usually more games that people want and are therefore worth playing on the X360 than there are on the PS3.

Case in point:
There are only 9 games on the PS3 with an average score a 9.0 or higher http://www.metacritic.com/games/ps3/scores/
Thera are 17 games (2x as many) on the X360 with an average score of 9.0 or higher http://www.metacritic.com/games/xbox360/scores/

This disparity, a 2:1 ratio, could very well be correlated to attachment rate per console as well.

Still think it's irrelevant and has nothing to do with anything?

[Maeztro @ Jan 1st 2009 7:56PM]

Karl,

What you are missing is that you are not looking forward. You state you are not an investor and I assume not a game coder either. If you made a living creating games you would be interested in creating for the console with the biggest base. It really is that simple.

[KarlW @ Jan 1st 2009 8:46PM]

Then what happened to the Wii? It has the biggest user base, but most games for it are pathetic.

It's not as simple as that. You don't just need games, you need good games. Typically from innovative developers like MediaMolecule, not production line rubbish from EA.

[nicmonson @ Jan 7th 2009 8:47AM]

Wow... Think for a second. The user base under the Wii is much different than the user base under the XBox and the user base under PS3. Therefore, the type of games produced for the Wii will differ and thus you think they suck because they are not for you. Still, the fact that the Wii has such a big audience does suck in a way for you because it means many game makers decide to build games for the Wii instead of the PS3 and possibly make them for a different audience as well. Thus, you get less games. Same applies to the XBox going back to earlier comments.

[Tom Moitie @ Jan 7th 2009 4:39PM]

@Karl, Hamidxa and Maeztro

It's nice to see informed open debate on Engadget for once, rather than insulative arguements.

Surprising for a console conversation!

Keep up the good work :)

[Jon @ Jan 1st 2009 9:16AM]

A whole year wasted IMO ... as far as gaming goes its still very much behind .. Great Bluray player ill give it that ...

[XGM @ Jan 1st 2009 11:58AM]

Its always good to have both. Play the 360 and when it RRoD's ship it back and enjoy the few good PS3 exclusive games while a new 360 is on its way.

[Jon @ Jan 1st 2009 12:09PM]

Except when my PS3 had its own RROD and had to be sent back and then its harddrive crapped out a year later (I could play games but could not watchs DVDor or Blurays it was odd)

So then im stuck with my Wii ... Zzzzz

[required @ Jan 1st 2009 12:10PM]

"...its still very much behind"

no it is not. http://www.metacritic.com/games/ps3/scores/

[Penguin Warlord @ Jan 1st 2009 2:54PM]

@returned
The only exclusive ones on that list are MGS4, Little Big Planet and Ratchet and Clank with an 89.
http://www.metacritic.com/games/xbox360/scores/
By the time you get to an 89 scored game there are 10 exclusives for the 360, plus all the shared one that the PS3 has, plus a couple shared ones that were better on the 360.

Yes there are fun games on the ps3 and it's a perfectly good system but don't try and BS people into thinking at has as many good games as the 360.

[ohforfucksake @ Jan 1st 2009 6:05PM]

I waited to get PS3 until now, I've got to say it really is very good! Its certainly as good as 360 and clearly holds great potential, much more so than the 360 can offer.

[Jon @ Jan 1st 2009 6:55PM]

Yeah like potential like HOME .. its awesome .. um .. well .. no its really REALLY bad

the most fun i had was doing the running man with 5 dudes .... that is not my idea of fun

i did type "i jizzed in my pants" a few times that was fun for a few seconds

[mr.mac @ Jan 1st 2009 9:26AM]

O SNAP! IBM you got told!

[Fred @ Jan 1st 2009 9:25AM]

QUIET! I think I hear fanboys approaching...

[required @ Jan 1st 2009 12:11PM]

you sure sound self-centered

[Christopher Price @ Jan 1st 2009 9:40AM]

On face value, I disagree with the analysis... though I haven't read the book. The Xbox 360 benefits from IBM's cost-reducing strategies in the Cell division, but the chip is basically a standard PowerPC G5. The real loser here was Apple; IBM spent their time on this project, instead of making good on their promise of 3 GHz desktop PowerPC chips for Apple.

[nikster @ Jan 1st 2009 9:59AM]

meh IBM has more than enough research departments to work on two chip designs at once, it's just that they hit the same problem that Intel hit at 3GHz only IBM didn't have a backup plan like Intel with the Pentium M.

I am not too impressed with the Cell either, seems like both 360 and PS3 have some severe heat issues. PS3 gets pretty hot while the 360 regularly dies with RROD. And a general purpose multi-core CPU plus a dedicated GPU seems like a simpler and better architecture...

[Rob @ Jan 1st 2009 10:46AM]

MS would have been given the thermal specs of the chip, the design of the box was presumably MS own and so they are themselves at fault for the overheating issues.

[TheNetAvenger @ Jan 1st 2009 5:03PM]

The the tri-core 3Ghz processor in the XBox 360 was what Apple was wanting, they just couldn't get it into a macbook form factor, as Apple wasn't prepared to do the desktop in a laptop design like other laptop MFRS did.

[loosely_coupled @ Jan 1st 2009 5:22PM]

@Nikster

How exactly does the fact the PS3 runs hot make the Cell unimpressive? It's actually an incredible processor, particularly the PowerXCell 8i variant or whatever it's called that has native double-precision/64-bit FP. The real problem is that developers haven't yet taken full advantage of it yet, and it certainly doesn't help that the market has been essentially split by the success of the Xbox 360 nor the fact that the 360 is so easy to develop for.

Regardless, I'm sure both will have a good life, but I'm really interested in the NEXT generation. First of all, the consoles are planned way ahead of their production and even then they don't use the highest end GPUs. The PS3 essentially has a ~7800GT. The next consoles I assume are coming at the end of 2010 give or take. I can only imagine the awesome cards Nvidia and ATI will have by then.
Even the current gen is awesome. A GTX280/4870 used in a consistent platform (aka can be optimized perfectly) would easily run games with high polygon count and great textures at 1920x1080.

[eggothewaffle @ Jan 1st 2009 9:43AM]

"It seems somewhat fitting that the troubled game system should have such dysfunctional origins, no?"

It's funny because without the link, no one would know which troubled game system is being talked about :]

[J. Baker @ Jan 1st 2009 11:14AM]

Exactly what I thought. I had to click the link to find out lol

[Hife @ Jan 1st 2009 12:33PM]

Ha! I was about to post that exact same thing.

[Oliver @ Jan 1st 2009 9:44AM]

I can't wait for game consoles to go intel with opengl.

[zippy757 @ Jan 1st 2009 10:02AM]

Sorry Oliver..that's not going happen....

[Jaimi @ Jan 1st 2009 12:28PM]

Just like the original Xbox! I guess we know what machine you're getting now.

[Rsxhawk @ Jan 3rd 2009 1:13AM]

I can't wait for the Universal Console...........the NINTENstation360!!!! Imagine what all three developers could create together. I would buy that in a heartbeat.

[Zippy @ Jan 1st 2009 10:01AM]

...what a bunch of crap.... "IBM hiding their work" ... under any commercial contract, when an employee is working on a project for company "A", that company, i.e. 'A" virtually always insists that no part of their work is shared with any other company, say company "B"... so it's not hiding, it's called basic business 101. If IBMers shared information of the three project between themselves, they would have violated contracts.

The authors are simply business immature.

All three companies, Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo got massive tech benefits from their IBM relationship...and BTW, that's why these three companies gave their business to IBM.

[Rob @ Jan 1st 2009 10:43AM]

Indeed, no way would information be shared. Different teams would have been setup to work on the SONY, MS and Nintendo projects.

Also the CPU that MS uses is pretty much a standard 64bit PPC, but with three cores. IBM has been selling dual-core versions for a long time, so it was not a big departure from already established chips.

The Cell on the other hand is a different beast and surely required much more work on both the chip architecture and the software, so the fact that it was available later then the (almost) standard chip MS uses is not a surprise.

[Motoken @ Jan 1st 2009 11:15AM]

A new "partner" entered the picture. In late 2002, Microsoft approached IBM about making the chip for Microsoft's rival game console, the (as yet unnamed) Xbox 360. In 2003, IBM's Adam Bennett showed Microsoft specs for the still-in-development Cell core. Microsoft was interested and contracted with IBM for their own chip, to be built around the core that IBM was still building with Sony.

All three of the original partners had agreed that IBM would eventually sell the Cell to other clients. But it does not seem to have occurred to Sony that IBM would sell key parts of the Cell before it was complete and to Sony's primary videogame-console competitor. The result was that Sony's R&D money was spent creating a component for Microsoft to use against it.

Mr. Shippy and Ms. Phipps detail the resulting absurdity: IBM employees hiding their work from Sony and Toshiba engineers in the cubicles next to them; the Xbox chip being tested a few floors above the Cell design teams

[mabhatter @ Jan 1st 2009 1:23PM]

it sounds like cell was far too over reaching. IBM was allowed to sell the "easy bits" to other companies and Microsoft was able to build a console around what was already finished, right now, rather than waiting for some magical super-chip to be created. The Xbox360 is still very traditional in it's architecture compared to PS3. They used a Graphics chip from a different company that's similar to PC ones rather than designing a brand new chip like Sony was trying to do.

The real issue in the console war is "exclusivity" and Microsoft is the established player in making things "exclusive" to Windows for years... they just updated PC game tools for Xbox and 360... Sony or Nintendo have nothing to compete with Microsoft on the tools front especially when Microsoft brought their PC experience and developer contacts into the mix. Of course Microsoft gutted it's PC games market for 360 and it's not really coming back, People are spending less money on $300 game consoles and not $300 video cards meaning that PCs are just used for business work... which is where Macs shine right now.

[SHoe @ Jan 1st 2009 3:18PM]

@ mabhatter

"meaning that PCs are just used for business work... which is where Macs shine right now."

Dude: nobody uses Macs in business. In graphic design and other creative niche stuff, Macs are used. But other 'business' is all about Windows followed by Linux (with most Linux being server-side)

[loosely_coupled @ Jan 1st 2009 5:26PM]

@mabhatter

"The Xbox360 is still very traditional in it's architecture compared to PS3. They used a Graphics chip from a different company that's similar to PC ones rather than designing a brand new chip like Sony was trying to do."

I don't know if you don't know what you are talking about or just wrote it down wrong, but you are confusing two different components. The PS3 and XBox360 both use traditional PC graphics cards (and traditional 3D APIs), it is only their CPUs that are specialized. The X360 uses a custom 3-core PowerPC chip from IBM, while the PS3 of course has the Cell.

[dahauns @ Jan 2nd 2009 4:18PM]

@loosely_coupled

The PS3 GPU (RSX) was quite similar to PC GPUs at design time, but the X360 one (Xenos) definitely wasn't. (eDRAM framebuffer connected with huge bandwith, unified architecture waaay before DX10...)

[Sea Urchin @ Jan 1st 2009 10:09AM]

"was the product of a deal that opened the door to IBM selling key parts of the chip to Microsoft before they had even finished building it "--------------Sue the pants off IBM, that'll teach them a lesson.

[ehoikilla @ Jan 1st 2009 10:31AM]

No need just switch partners with different company THAT will teach them a lesson

[ShyGuy91284 @ Jan 1st 2009 11:17AM]

Reminds me of how what became the Playstation started out as a CD add-on for the SNES. Then Nintendo backed out, which is probably the biggest mistake they have ever made since worst-case scenario, it would have probably stalled Sony from making a console until the generation of the PS2.

[makoto42 @ Jan 1st 2009 11:25AM]

Saying the PS3 processor helped break the petaflop barrier is a tad misleading. The one in the petaflop system is a different generation of part. The PS3 cell processor is 10-16% as fast as the new variant at 64-bit floating point arithmetic. It's like saying the Pentium 60 helped to make your Core2 gaming rig.

And before people ask if this could be used in future PS3, I would seriously hope not. The whole point of consoles is to provide an even, constant experience. Meaning the first adopters have the same game experience as people who buy years later.

Also, I wonder about the relationship between the 360 part and PS3. PS3 wasn't their gateway into modern consoles, Gamecube's processor was. The Cell design's enhancements over PPC970 don't appear in Xbox360. That design pretty much was already in the Apple systems and in their JS blade servers.

[Carl @ Jan 1st 2009 11:43AM]

The PowerXCell 8i in Roadrunner is *very* similar to the version in the PS3. Essentially the only difference is that the SPEs are pipelined for dual precision (at the cost of minimal transistors over the original version), and the onboard memory controller is for DDR2 vs XDR. Sure you're not going to be breaking any DP Petaflop barriers with Cell v1, but DP isn't at all required for a ton of hugely beneficial scientific work, and we see PS3's clustered and otherwise standing in and doing supercomputing work in the areas of astrophysics, crytography, and life sciences. If we're making analogies, it's more like the next model year or a limited edition of the same car, rather than anything so vastly drastic as a Pentium 60 vs a Core2. I mean c'mon.

As for Cell and the XeCPU, neither has anything to do with the PPC970, and indeed the PPC core of the PS3 and the cores of the 360 look extremely similar; some extra instructions and beefier VMX units are basically the only differences to the 360's favor. Either IBM felt that the work on the PPC was still their domain due to its being an internal POWER development, there was an incredible coincidence and both teams drew from the same legacy project, and/or they were just lazy at developing these POWER cores. I believe bits of each aspect.

[loosely_coupled @ Jan 1st 2009 7:05PM]

@makoto42
First of all, the new CELL 8i variant is still the same architecture as the original in the PS3, but the SPEs have been modified to do native 64-bit/double precision FP and its memory controller can connect to 64GB of DDR2. While this is certainly an excellent addition for many HPC and cluster applications, the last thing in the world that needs double precision calculations is gaming. The importance of 64 bit FP for science is that their simulations runs hundreds of billions of complex calculations... when you are having to round off the results so many times, you want as much precision as possible. With single-precision/32-bit floating point numbers, 23 bits are used for representing the significant digits (about 7 decimal digits) so the inherent loss of information when rounding is about 1 part per million. With 64-bit, you get 52 bits or 16 digits in decimal, so 1 part per one-hundred trillion.

Conversely, although modern 3D games do a ton of calculations, they don't need a ton of accuracy (relatively speaking). PC and console GPUs and drivers are optimized for maximum frame rate and perceived image quality and not absolute precision. This situation is reversed however for the professional CAD/CAM OpenGL GPUs from nVidia and ATI.

[Brian @ Jan 1st 2009 1:32PM]

Oh, wow. You can't make this stuff up!

I'm buying this book, tomorrow.

[Alistair loveless @ Jan 1st 2009 4:15PM]

While picking up this book, i also recommend IBM and the holocaust.

Basically talks about IBMs computing inception and how quickly, easily and efficiently a single company made for the most atrocities of war. And how after so many people died they came out on top ...


When IBM was still having major offices in chicago (near the wrigley building not field wrigley Building... they would send employees to "computer science classes" where the instuctors had no idea what a "coputer" really did... IBM is a strange company from end to end.