First there was nothing stopping NV from making a 100watt box SOC. Wisely it seems now, they passed due to lacking console sales (see wiiu off 50% in sales already and VITA can't even break 7mil last I checked) and single digit margins for AMD. AMD says model for low double digits (that's less than 15% margin even then right? LOW DOUBLE?) but that may not happen for a while and even if sales are excellent (say 10mil for each of xbox1 & ps4) they won't make more than 100mil on them in the next 12 months (maybe 150mil? $100 or less chip at single digits is what like $10 or less per chip? 20million units total in a year won't make you rich). That won't get anywhere near the 600mil or so NV already makes yearly and this includes LOSING money on tegra still (I think T4/T4i/Kepler changes this shortly). So I'd say they passed for good reason. I think console sales will tank (already are) as the mobile stuff takes over. There are so many competitors coming this year or next (and shield, ouya etc say revving yearly, so kepler shield next year), that there will be a LOT of lost sales from casual gamers (the ones who buy in years 4-8 of a console's lifespan) causing the audience to only be hardcore which in turn will be a massive FAILURE. Run on?
Ouya, Shield, Gamepop, Wikipad, Madcatz, google, apple, and more I'm probably forgetting. They are all consoles. I suspect Google/Apple (or something coming soon) will be in an xbox1 sized box and run at 100w or so. Either of these two can customize a soc from NV etc. IF you don't have to run in a box the size of shield or a tablet I'd imagine 2-4 LOGAN's (kepler mobile coming Q1) would be very impressive and shouldn't cost more than $80-100. Add a $40HD (250-500GB?) a 100w PSU, 8-16GB of ram, and a fan/heatsink and you have a serious REAL console competitor for $250-300 which neither google nor apple need to make a dime on (no need for kinect crap or bluray, pure download boxes). Their appstore sales to these units (and ads sold on them etc) pays for it all allowing some aggressive hardware sold at cost. All they hope to do with these rev1 models is kill some console xmas sales etc and evolve them yearly to finish them off in the next 3-4 years. Kill the console sales, and you kill dev interest. No games=no console sales...see the vicious circle here? Consoles are dead and thank god, as mobile+PC will bring 4K gaming instead of sticking us in 1080p for 8yrs.
Take a good look at the GDC 2013 USA (2500+) and Euro devs (300+) and you can see they have little interest in anything console until some serious sales happen. They are focusing all efforts on mobile and PC (YAY finally!). Also note that now PC game sales EQUAL to total game sales on PS3+Xbox360. This is why they have turned, and also why they are waiting on console Q1 sales to see if they are DOA or not. Why make a game if you have to wait for a few years for sales to materialize on a console that may never hit even 30mil units sold each? Wasted efforts until they hit 10mil+ each. This is why MS announced 1Billion for games for xbox1 THEMSELVES. They have to get some games out there to hopefully spur sales since nobody else is planning games (only EA/Activision and even they have stated a wait and see approach for Q1-Kotick himself said he's watching for Wiiu like dropoff after xmas for the xbox1/ps4).
This is the classic Chicken/Egg syndrome, but this time they have a 1/2 dozen or more competitors not to mention phones/tablets revving yearly and they are a Billion unit+ audience already there to sell to and heading to over 2Billion sold yearly in the next 2yrs. Game devs go where the numbers are. Right now and for the next year (unless consoles prove otherwise Q1 etc) the numbers are ALL on mobile/PC.
Nothing is stopping qcom or ARM themselves from making this chip for the imagined console from google/apple either. Any of these can fund a dual quad A15 paired with massive gpus and slap them in 100w boxes especially if they wait for 20nm and jack them up to 3-4ghz with a fan/heatsink on them (this isn't just an NV ballgame, all can do this with google or apple funding the chip dev cost). Next xmas will be very interesting for anyone doing this with 20nm SOCS. I could see 2-4 quad cores (A15 quads) strapped to say 4 kepler SMX's per soc or something to up the gpu power instead of the SINGLE SMX coming on kepler mobile. Again, Arm/Qcom can be paid to do something similar with google/apple funding it all (heck apple can do it themselves with powervr backing it for gpu-whatever you get the point). Consoles are not alone this year
This story will get worse every year going forward as they rev the competition yearly.
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