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Comment by zitterbewegung | Hacker News Reader

Console market is where usually the chip maker in second or third place tries to make a play for their business because console makers are basically assured sales but they will have strange requirements.

PS3 XBOX360 and Nintendo Wii were all IBM chips . They tried a bunch of new architectures but for the most part developer ergonomics was horrible.

So for the PS4 and XBOX One they decided they needed regular computer parts. I'm sure AMD and Intel may have put bids on it but AMD would be the one that would have been extremely motivated to make sales to Microsoft and Sony. As time goes on you can make higher and higher margins since the chips don't change (but on the other hand we are seeing console revisions within the traditional generation). But, I think that the margins will keep on increasing.

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Well, there's motivation on AMD's part, but they also have a value proposition that nobody else could have matched. They can provide both the CPU and GPU on one chip, which simplifies the console designs pretty dramatically. More compact, easier to cool, etc.

Intel graphics solutions were (and remain) sub-par, and Nvidia has no x86 solutions (and their ARM chips would have been underpowered).

I don't know if an ARM chip really would be underpowered - remember the consoles are using the ultra-low-power jaguar cores. Probably not a million miles away from an A57, or whatever denver-based core NVidia could pull out of the bag.

It definitely wasn't underpowered for the Switch. And they managed to get Skyrim and Doom running on that. I'd imagine they could do even better performance wise in a traditional console rather than kind of a portable hybrid.

The Switch is definitely underpowered compared to the other games consoles though (and certainly compared to PCs). Reviews consistently mention that it's underperforming its competitors in frame rates, graphics quality, etc. Heck, it doesn't even do 1080p in all modes of play.

A lot of that has to do with it being a handheld hybrid, as you point out, but these compromises would have been a lot harder to stomach if it had been a dedicated set-top console like its direct competitors.

The Switch has sold almost half as many units in the last 10 months as the Xbox One has in the last five years.

If the only concern is resolution and not quality or gameplay, then the Switch doesn't stack up, but I think the sales numbers point to the Switch being a smash hit with consumers so those compromises seem stomachable from my perspective.

(Anecdotally: I wish the graphics in BotW were better, at least in terms of draw distance, but then I take the Switch out of the dock and take it to work to play Mario Kart with my coworkers and it seems like a fine tradeoff to me.)

They're not debating the competitiveness of the console. The OP suggested a modern ARM core is comparable in performance to the Jaguar cores used in the AMD chips in the PS4 and Xbox One.

The ARM core is garbage even compared to modern ARM cores, it’s not only an old GPU and CPU it’s also quite underclocked compared to other products with the same SoC.

That just sounds like a Wii 2.0 situation to me. The Wii sold like crazy thanks to the motion controls gimmick but due to the console being so vastly underpowered there was no real third party support and as a result, most of the Wii game releases boiled down to shovelware.

And while this time the Nintendo gimmick seems aimed more at the core gamer crowd (Take your console game anywhere!) I'm still not convinced this won't be turning out the same way like the Wii did.

Btw: If you want BotW with better graphics you can play it using a Wii U emulator, all the 4k BotW your eyes can handle.

can i transfer my saves?!?!

Well, Skyrim is from late 2011, so I'm not sure it's necessarily a good indicator that a modern game system processor is up to snuff. Doom is considerably more recent, but then again, I'd be willing to bet Carmack's legacy at Id is strong, and there's lots of people there that could (and possibly did) tweak the engine for good performance given the Switch's limitations. Actually, I think they demoed Rage on mobile, so they probably already had it highly optimized for ARM.

That said, I love the switch, and BotW has quickly become one of my all time favorite games. My only problem is resisting the urge to kick the kids off the switch so I can play. ;)

I know it was part of the appeal for some (most?), but I hated the breaking weapons. My method of playing was to use the crap weapons, hoard the nicer ones and try not to use them. But the unfortunate side effect is the crap weapons had poor durability so you'd be mid-fight and break.

Well, the benefit is that they do double damage (I think) when they break, so it's not as bad as it could be, but yes, they do seem to break too often. Then again, it depends on your play style. I'm a completionist and item hoarder, so I'm running around with almost an entire full inventory screen of high-end weapons and using the crappiest I have (which is still pretty good now) to fight with. Having to choose to drop a great thunderblabe with extra durability because there's a chest with something better and I'm full with better weapons is excruciating. I would agree they break too quickly through, as going through multiple in a battle is sort of ridiculous. Lasting maybe 2x to 3x as long might be good (or having a difficulty level that affected it).

> they managed to get Skyrim and Doom running on that

Original Doom was already running on the SNES like 25 years ago.

Getting something to run is not really that big of a hurdle as you can always scale down resolution/graphical fidelity/frames per second. The question after that rather being: Who would want to play an obviously inferior version of the game? Because that's exactly what these Switch versions of Skyrim and Doom are, inferior.

Inferior, except for the fact I can take them with me.

The value proposition is also developer ergonomics on x86 systems . I think I failed to mention that sorry .

Those margins are usually baked into the contract and decrease over the lifetime of the console. At least that's how I've heard it told with people who were in the know.

I'd suggest those people "in the know" are probably talking out of their arse.

It's commonplace for consoles to go through a number of hardware revisions over the lifetime of the console. These revisions are rarely made for performance reasons, but instead would be made to improve reliability, security and manufacturing cost. Setting aside security (which is would be done as reaction to a hack that can't be patched with software), the whole idea is to increase the margins for the manufacturer. Note that the brand owner may, in some cases, sell consoles at a loss, but the manufacturer is very unlikely to be working to the same business model.

Eh, I've been in the consumer electronics space a while and it's pretty common for a SoC/CPU vendor to offer a time-based tiered price as a part of a procurement contract.

As your chip goes from cutting edge process technology($$$) to mid-tier($$) and commodity($) they usually pass that savings along, otherwise they would incentivize going for a mid-cycle refresh and suddenly a large revenue stream for your chip dries up as a product moves to a (potentially) different vendor.

> "as a product moves to a (potentially) different vendor."

The only other manufacturer of x64 CPUs in Intel, and the only other manufacturer of (competitive) GPUs is Nvidia. Why would Microsoft or Sony incur the high NRE cost to switch to two different suppliers mid-cycle just so they can shave a small amount off their unit cost?

That's not to say AMD wouldn't pass on some of the savings to Microsoft and Sony, I'm sure they would, but it's not likely to be a one-sided deal.

The same reason you fight tooth and nail for pennies on the BoM, because at scale every cent matters. There's also the inverse where if the jump to the next chip is small(see XB One/S/X) you may migrate early and EoL a product before planned leaving a chip production line with no product.

You also always have multiple vendors bidding so if one of them offers a sliding scale you're going to use that as leverage against the other vendors.

> "The same reason you fight tooth and nail for pennies on the BoM, because at scale every cent matters."

It doesn't matter if the potential savings are sunk by the NRE costs of shifting to new vendors before the projected end of the product. You have to look at cost holistically.

Well, duh ;).

When you're talking 15M+ units being able to drop $1-2 from BOM is a huge motivator for things like this. When you get into the millions of dollars worth of savings you can fund a lot of engineering time.

They also may never go through with the switch but use it as leverage for a better deal. Back when I did SoC evals we'd take products right up to the brink of production just to apply pressure. It was almost like a game of chicken between 2-3 vendors to see who blinked first and gave us a better BoM/deal on the core chip. These weren't easy bring-ups but usually were vastly different GPUs + CPU combos. It's very much a thing that happens, at least back when I was involved with stuff like that ~6 years ago.

I don't doubt it happens with other electronics manufacturing, and negotiating with multiple vendors is a good negotiating tactic, my comments are purely directed at the console business.

If you look at the average lifetime of a (successful) console, you're looking at between 5 to 10 years. Within that time, multiple revisions take place, often to replace peripheral components to reduce costs, but in the case of the longest living consoles they will often get a design refresh, including a redesign of the CPU / GPU. I can think of only one example in recent memory where a console switched manufacturers for these core components during its lifetime (that example being the GPU for the Xbox 360, which switched from AMD to IBM). In the case of the Xbox 360, IBM were already manufacturing the CPU, and the redesign combined the CPU and GPU into a single SoC. Aside from that one example, there haven't (to my knowledge) been any other examples of companies switching manufacturers for their core components mid cycle. Contrast this with the PC business, where OEMs will frequently swap between motherboard/CPU/GPU manufacturers, and you'd have to wonder what makes the dynamics in the console market different.

It sounds like we're just arguing past each other at this point.

I spent a while in the industry(and shipped some god-awful titles) so I tend to trust the people I know(and don't plan on outing them) but can understand if you don't want to take the word of a random person on the internet.

For what it's worth, I don't doubt you know industry insiders, and I agree we're just talking past each other at this point. It's completely uncontroversial to state that console manufacturers will shop around, my main point was that there's a certain amount of momentum (both business and technical) that comes into play with the more complex parts of these consoles, which is compounded by the limited number of companies that are able to compete (a high proportion of the consoles of the most recent generations have used IBM and AMD chips). It's not the same as the embedded space where there's tons of competitors. In any case, I respect this conversation is going nowhere fast, so I'll respect you have a different point of view on this, and concede that I was unable to convince you of mine.

Yeah, it's an easier conversation in person(combined with the fact that there's generally very few secrets inside the industry). It's certainly an interesting space and appreciate the conversation.

I know you were probably talking about traditional consoles(xbox/ps/etc) but when you start including portables(with the switch just smashing the 1 year mark at 15M units) then the field opens up significantly. You've got at least 5-6 different GPU vendors and a whole host of companies providing SoCs. Embedded GPUs have been making huge strides and I wouldn't be surprised to see some of the top end of that space start nipping at NVidia/AMD soon. Lots of the people in that domain came from desktop(Adreno is a anagram of Radeon for instance ;)).

Protip: When you accuse people of talking out of their arse, don't then proceed to talk out of your arse.

Protip: When you disagree with someone, try to offer more than just an ad hominem.

If you disagree with something I've said, by all means explain why.

I'm not trying to start a debate here. It's obvious from your posts that you don't have any particular knowledge of AMD's console dealings, or even console dealings in general. You only speak to generalities which are well known among even casual observers of the industry. None of what you've said specifically refutes the original claim. I know you don't have any grounds to speak with any authority on the matter, and you know it too if you're honest with yourself.

> "I'm not trying to start a debate here."

Interesting.

> "It's obvious from your posts that you don't have any particular knowledge of AMD's console dealings, or even console dealings in general."

I never claimed to.

> "You only speak to generalities which are well known among even casual observers of the industry. None of what you've said specifically refutes the original claim."

It's precisely because these market generalities do not match with what was proposed that I called it into question.

Developing new silicon is a risky endeavour. Even going from one process node to a smaller process node without changing the design architecturally is fraught with problems, resulting in lower yield until the manufacturing kinks are worked out. Why would a chip manufacturer agree to a deal where they're expected to take on increased risk for a lower reward? It makes no business sense. That's what I was calling into question.

> "I know you don't have any grounds to speak with any authority on the matter, and you know it too if you're honest with yourself"

I may not personally know the same people vvanders knows, but I can put myself in the shoes of a businessman running a chip manufacturer. I enjoyed debating with vvanders, and aside from leaving out the dig at the people they know in the industry, I'd do it again.

Please don't post uncivil comments here, even if you're right that someone else is wrong. There's nothing substantive here, which means you're just degrading the site.

If you know more, which you may well do, the way to comment here is to share some of what you know in a way the rest of us can learn from.

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