"AMD is also supplying APUs for the upcoming PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, which should be incredibly lucrative cash cows for a company that's struggling to gain its footing in a declining desktop market. AMD has also entered the cloud gaming market with its Radeon Sky line of server-side single-and dual-slot cards."
This assumes first that consoles will sell well which is so far proving wrong as wiiu/vita sales have sucked since they came out which ends up costing dev support as shown by gdc 2013 usa and euro (2800+ devs saying no to console and HELLO to mobile/PC). If Xbox1/PS4 sales crash after xmas (die hard console buyers jump first) like the wiiu being off 50% then this won't be any cash cow for AMD. Single digit margins won't make it a cash cow either with only aiming for LOW double digits later. Those numbers suck no matter how you slice it. For AMD to make anything off this they need these to sell as good or better than the last version. The problem with that theory is Google, Amazon, Apple, Shield, ouya, wikipad, gamepop, madcatz, gamestick etc etc are all coming with consoles. Look at the damage mobile is already doing to wiiu/vita sales and you can see the future quite easily.
CONSOLES ARE DEAD. If not this year, then next year as they all rev again with kepler etc. The CASUAL gamer (the ones who buy in years 4-8 of a console's gen) is where the money is made. The first few years just pay for development and get software on board. But the devs don't even get on board until millions of them are sold, and if that doesn't happen you get chicken egg syndrome (ask wiiu/vita).
The second statement here acts as though NV isn't in cloud gaming...ROFL. I guess you are unaware NV already has GRID and sells boxes for it. They were there first and long before AMD. Considering AMD keeps losing money, and NV is where the devs are already heading in droves (MOBILE, and own 65% of discrete), how do you think this turns out? Shield is just a test run that will end up being grid related at some point (already gaining low latency network gaming experience from PC streaming). AMD should have avoided the consoles and left MS/Sony to figure there own stuff out as this will end up being a loser for AMD which is why NV passed. At most this will make 100-200mil per year (and only if they sell 10mil+ each for ps4/xbox1 every year) which won't do much to pay off the debts they owe or trim the losses they keep having (break even is NOT the goal correct?).
They should have spent all the console dev money on BETTER drivers, new GPU's and BETTER CPU's. Instead we get a meager update this xmas on gpus, a crap steamroller (15% faster will be miles behind Intel still even vs. haswell, let alone broadwell) and drivers a lot of people wish were done a year ago. Meanwhile NV has the cash to keep funding tegra until desktop meets mobile (kepler Q1 or so in logan) which will lead to major gains in mobile as nobody has the gaming experience of AMD or NV. This is why AMD should have spent money there first not consoles. This will end up as a totally wrong strategy. They aimed at a shrinking market (will end up niche hardcore gamers) instead of the massive billion+ unit yearly market of mobile devices and strengthening their core cpu/gpu businesses. How dumb can you be?
Jen hsun made the correct move 5 years ago and it's about to pay off.
2 toshibas with T4 (Excite Write and Pro, and a 3rd with a T3)
Vizio has a T4 (and T3) coming also that they showed at CES
Also the Asus Transformer Pad Infinity update with T4,
HP SlateBook x2 & an AIO device (20in?) both T4, not to mention
Mad Catz MOJO (they are SEEKING deal T4 they said).
BungBungame's Kalos tablet uses T4 also
Xiaomi Mi3 handset
http://www.phonearena.com/news/Xiaomi-Mi3-scores-highly...
Looks like T4 owns the top so of the list right? Xiaomi phone is impressive.
http://www.nextpowerup.com/news/1949/acer-prepping-tegr...
Acer with TA2 coming with T4
Of course shield, and now maybe a tegra tab7 Q1?
Surface RT rev2 coming shortly (I think RT kills anything, but it's another device)
Couple those with Ouya, gamepop, wikipad etc and I think tegra (3 & 4) has a pretty good year lined up even before the T4i. Hp, Toshiba, Microsoft, Asus, Acer all showing tegra 4 support.
http://www.phonearena.com/news/NVIDIAs-rumored-Tegra-4-...
ZTE also has U988S phone coming. I'm sure I'm missing a few devices but these are already coming.
So while T4 is late (due to pulling in T4i/kepler mobile next year, and only started shipping July) we are starting to see many T4 products and a lot of them have already been benchmarked and are available. Up to now it has just be tegra models to get noticed and not much to brag about perf wise. But we're about to see them take the lead. No S800 benchmark shows it winning cpu wars vs T4 (A15 is better than S800 cpus, this isn't just an NV story, it loses to A15), but I'd guess gpu may go to S800 but it has to be proven in actual games. But this changes next year early with kepler upping the gpu even more. They will keep rehashing the desktop GPU's on mobile yearly so Qcom has a new war coming. It's GAMING that is about to become #1 in mobile, not the modem any more (NV has already demoed 150mbps LTE that isn't even out). Everyone has a modem next year, so now you have to win in GAMES.
AMD should have a list of devices this long for an ARM soc and already be rehashing their gpus on mobile. But consoles made this list impossible to fund. I really hope their first SOC is awesome but I have my doubts it will be more than just a semi capable soc that has x86+Arm in one chip. I'm guessing it will be WEAK with it's only feature being able to go both ways (that costs chip real-estate right?). It will either be LARGE to go both ways strong, or weak to match sizes of single way chips with arm only. I don't see how that works out great for a first rev but I may be wrong. Time will tell. T4 was always going to be backend loaded (Q4/Q1 2014) and we're about to see how well they'll do with that. It will be interesting to see the next two FULL quarters of Shield sales and how they do stealing some console xmas thunder (or not), not to mention all the other players looking to enter in the next 6 months again, stealing console thunder. There are over 1/2 dozen people trying to take their pie with a HUGE android library (not to mention steambox, again with a huge library at launch no doubt) vs. what like 23 announced games for xbox1 at launch? Bad press for them right and left. PS4 has how many launch titles? At least they don't have the truckload of bad press but they face all the same competition from mobile and new consoles.
I think consoles have already lost. Which would also mean AMD gains nothing from their chips being in them for optimizations. It's easier to sell millions of copies of $5-20 games to a BILLION unit casual audience than to sell a few million copies at $60-70 on a console that may fail from Q1 and forward like Wiiu/Vita. The wait and see attitude from Devs has already been shown by GDC 2013. The numbers of devs looking at next gen consoles is abysmal. PC and Mobile dominated their minds in the surveys for both usa an euro conferences. In the words of Bill Paxton's character "Hudson: That's it man, game over man, game over!"...LOL.
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