PlayStation 4 Reportedly Codenamed Orbis, Will Feature AMD Hardware, Lock Out Used Games
The codename likely means something to Sony; the orbis.scedevnet.com address resolves correctly whereas ps4.scedevnet.com does not.
Let's tackle the report, starting with the hardware specs. Rumors that AMD would provide the GPU tech behind all three consoles date back to last June. Of the three, only Nintendo has confirmed that the Wii U is based on a DX10-era Radeon 4000 part, but there's been bad blood before between Microsoft and Nvidia concerning console development, so AMD's continued presence in that segment would make sense. AMD winning Sony over is a bit more surprising, but sources have previously indicated that AMD was willing to aggressively compete on price.
The irony of an AMD GPU hat trick is that the company's ability to turn a profit on console GPUs isn't all that great. Still, of the two hardware rumors, this one is easier to buy at face value.
AMD Llano Integrated Fusion APU Die Map
An AMD-Powered PS4? Why It Makes Sense -- And Doesn't
Sony has a history of opting for esoteric CPUs with impressive functionality that are both expensive and difficult to use. Sony contributed a hefty chunk of the estimated $400 million it took to develop the Cell processor at the heart of the PS3. In 2005, Ken Kutaragi, onetime President of Sony Computer Entertainment, remarked that the PS3's price was justified because the company wanted consumers to think "I will work more hours to buy one." Four years later, Sony's ex-CEO, Kaz Hirai, admitted that the Cell Broadband Engine was intentionally problematic to develop for. "We don't provide the 'easy to program for' console that [developers] want, because 'easy to program for' means that anybody will be able to take advantage of pretty much what the hardware can do, so then the question is what do you do for the rest of the nine-and-a-half years?" explained Hirai.
Trying to predict what Sony might do with the PS4 is murky for several reasons. IBM, Toshiba, and Sony originally intended to market Cell as a blade server, cluster computing product, and mainframe solution. IBM did provide one commercial update to the Cell architecture Sony uses -- the 2008 PowerXCell 8i, which vastly improved double-precision floating point performance. IBM publicly terminated Cell development after that, and Toshiba jumped ship on its foundry venture with Sony in 2010.
Opting for anything as conventional as an x86 processor would be a sea change for the company, and using an AMD product is a bit curious at this point. On the one hand, AMD might be able to offer Sony an SoC that combined CPU and GPU function to keep costs down -- but such a product would have sharp constraints on die size and any sort of on-die dedicated cache. Even if we assume that AMD can fix Bulldozer's performance problems and substantially ramp up the performance of its integrated GPUs, the idea of launching a console with an estimated 5-8 year life cycle on even an optimistic SoC 18 months from now is...interesting.
To be perfectly blunt, it's hard to imagine that AMD can deliver a CPU with the sort of longevity Sony has demanded from its previous consoles. Granted, a modern GPU can provide the same sort of FPU muscle that made the original Cell such a power house, but the CPU is still important, and Bulldozer's enormous cache latencies cripple the chip. Piledriver is supposedly an incremental improvement, while Kabini/Kaveri aren't expected until 2013. AMD could theoretically be building something custom for Sony, but everything Rory Read has said has pointed towards delayed process node adoption and maximum IP re-use, not expensive custom work.
This one is a puzzle. It could point to a fundamental change in what Sony considers a console, it could be a hint that AMD has much better hardware in the design stages that it isn't talking about yet -- or it could be an incorrect rumor. We'll let you make the call.
Last, But Not Least:
Finally, there's the question of whether or not the console will include a feature that locks out used game functionality. According to rumors, the console will require that all titles be authenticated with a PSN account and one-time activation code. Try to install the game without a new code, and it'll only function in a limited or trial mode. The exact details would presumably be left to each developer, but the idea is to provide publishers with a single lockout service rather than having each company implement its own.
We recently discussed both sides of the issue, ultimately concluding that attempts to lock out the used game market truly have no precedent in other media and are violations of what's known as the First Sale doctrine. Our conclusion owed nothing to the pair of Gamestop defenders who contacted us -- we spoke with one manager and one shill, who variously bombarded us with insults, diatribes, and hyperbolic generalizations, with one brief bout of actual conversation. We left out the insults and red-faced hilarity when we wrote up that conversation, not because we dared not publish, but because the entire episode had become tiresome. The irony is that we were left no choice but to defend Gamestop's business model, despite the best efforts of a Gamestop manager.
The really ugly problem with this sort of lock out is that it won't be used to keep prices lower -- on the contrary, we've seen game publishers talk about how the used market is theft and forcing prices up, despite plenty of evidence to indicate that game demand fluctuates considerably with price. Games aren't like gasoline -- they aren't a product people buy because they have to get to work and changing one's consumption is extremely difficult (and expensive) after a certain point.
The problems with this approach are legion. Would the price of new authentication codes scale downwards as a game's price drops? A 2010 survey reported that 22% of PS3 owners don't have their console connected to the Internet -- are those buyers SOL? We've spoken out against Gamestop's monopoly on used game prices, and we remain opposed to some of the company's practices, but the idea that publishers and Sony are a trusted alternative is positively laughable.
There's no faster way to drive people towards tablet/phone gaming and freemium games that don't cost anything than to try and kill the used market.
But again, just a rumor. Of the ones gathered here, it's the one we hope most is wrong.
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The majority of my game purchases are either used or way past release date so that they're cheaper. Sometimes I even buy used for ethical reasons, like if I really want to play a game but disagree with the company or developers business practices. If they go through with this, there's basically no real incentive for me to buy one anytime soon until a couple of years into the cycle when the launch games are cheap. It's too bad. The way they talk you'd think if they were getting a cut of the money from the used market, they'd pass it along to the consumer, but you know they won't. But then again, I'm not exactly their favorite type of customer so they probably don't care what someone like me thinks. |
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AMD and Sony is interesting; it seems like two of the consoles are going to be AMD powered if the rumors are correct. I have not seen any performance results from Piledriver but the performance increases do sound promising, Bulldozer has potential but the poor design and the rushed production of it marred it's potential; if AMD can do Piledriver right and make a version suitable for Sony to put in their PS4 then just imagine the possibilities at hand. It doesn't seem like Sony to do this but it would be surprising if they did and having AMD both have a powerful CPU and it being in the PS4 will do wonders for it's image. I have to wonder what happened with NVIDIA. I mean they were the one that powered the PS3 previous (with it's 7800 GPU wasn't as powerful as the Xbox 360's potentially DX10 capable ship.) and with the stuff that they've released, surely Sony would come back to them right? I don't know what NVIDIA will do, maybe they'll turn to Microsoft and patch things up in an attempt to have some form of graphics chip in a console on the market; I mean the 680 is powerful and is able to last an entire generation and it'd be a waste to have that entirely in consoles; and let's not forget the fact that AMD would possibly dominate the console market if all of it's chips are in the big three consoles. I don't know if Microsoft and NVIDIA will patch things up but if the rumors are true, they should; because it's would be a win for both companies. I have already commented on used games on the GameStop article and a lot of the same points apply here. While I understand the lost profit with every game that's resold, I don't stand by the restriction of used games in consoles; this will do nothing but alienate the market Sony has worked so hard to conjure up. Simple as that. |
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I don't know why you're puzzled about the possibility of an AMD x86 CPU being in the game console. It may not be as powerful as an Intel x86 CPU, but it's no slouch, and it's likely more powerful than all other possible processors that could be used, such as PowerPC, and ARM. I'm pretty certain it'll likely be a Llano or a Trinity, since it's got the GPU built-in. The Llano integrated GPU's are already nearly as powerful as most discrete GPUs on laptops, and they can have support for Eyefinity where they can run upto 3 monitors. The GPU is the more important component of game console anyways, not the CPU. The integrated GPU in AMD's processors alone would make them the favourite processor for all of the consoles. |
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yKhan67, Because I'm not at all certain AMD has a CPU that can power a console through a 10-year life cycle while offering the sorts of performance targets Sony is likely to want. Your comments indicate you didn't read the article closely. The CPU/GPU combination is extremely important; Cell's unique SPE capabilities allow developers to use the SPE's to handle GPU tasks that would otherwise be beyond the system's capacity. Could AMD provide a chip? Of course. Can AMD build an CPU/GPU SoC that's powerful enough to deliver next-generation performance (relative to current consoles) for another 10 years? That's just not clear. It's much easier to imagine a high-end AMD box if we assume discrete CPUs and GPUs, but while the GPU section of the design is more than capable, Bulldozer just isn't much of a much in the computational department. Furthermore, AMD has yet to talk about anything beyond Piledriver (AMD claims this chip will be an improvement over BD, but nothing I've heard suggests it'll solve BD's cache latencies in one fell swoop.) An integrated SoC would be great for keeping costs down, but can't necessarily scale very well. Discrete parts would deliver better performance, but if you aren't buying an AMD SoC, you'd be better off using an AMD GPU and Intel CPU (at least from a performance standpoint) |
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